At our local disco when I was a kid, out of pity for us gaggle of new waver young people, standing around in our winkle-pickers, long overcoats and half-blinded by our ridiculous fringes, the DJ would spin a few decent platters – New Order, Joy Division, Psychedelic Furs, Bunnymen, Cure, Talking Heads etc. We had the floor to ourselves, as nobody else would venture out onto the dance floor while “that shite” was playing. Then, as the venue filled up with mullets, big perms, stonewashed jeans, and puffy white boots, the jock abruptly would switch to playing vile, soppy chart fillers, and we’d retreat to a corner, making sarcastic remarks about the music and the clientele. Such is youth.
Thanks to the Internet though, that swaggering tribalism largely is gone.
Used to be, going to see bands was a vaguely cool thing to do. Part of this was because gig-going was often countercultural. The bands often were made up of people who were viewed as “misfits” or “wasters”.
Your mere attendance at such events spoke of a desire to align yourself with a way of being that eluded conventional dreams, and to be present in solidarity with people your parents, teachers, and careers adviser probably would not have viewed as role models lol. Which is how it should be.
Nowadays, by stark contrast, music festivals are safe spaces, in every sense of the word. They’re big bourgeois days out. The average golf tournament would be more rock ‘n’ roll than most singalong modern pop love-ins.
This colonisation of popular music fandom by featherheads has been gathering pace for years.
It must have been 15 years ago when a work colleague in Dublin mentioned that she was going to the Rory Gallagher festival in Ballyshannon. The late Rory was a genius guitarist, a musician’s musician, and I was surprised, and impressed, as I had not figured this person as being anywhere near discerning enough to appreciate his music, frankly.
“Didn’t know you were into Rory!”, I said.
“Oh, I’m not”, she said, and continued: “well yeah, I never heard of him actually; I’m just going for the crack.”
Imagine the following conversation between two people in 2023:
A: “I have a spare ticket for some music concerts next year in Ireland, cost €280; are you interested, for the crack?”
B: “Great, I’ll take it, for the crack!”
In the old days, there would have been another sentence: “Er, who’s playing?”
But details about who is actually playing, which were so critical of people of my vintage, no longer matter.
The Electric Picnic musical festival in Ireland has sold out already, despite no line-up being revealed until next year:
That is, all of the people going are set on attending, regardless of who may or may not be performing.
Thousands of people attending a music festival, and they manifestly have no, or very little, interest in music.
To have an interest in music means having strong preferences. I would not buy such a pig-in-a-poke ticket in case a bunch of useless cunts showed up on stage.
In general, I prefer people who like music to people who do not.
One of the great joys of gig-going was that you not only heard your fav songs performed live, and got to jump about like a loon, but you also were in the company, not only of music fans, but in the company of your tribe. Whether you knew them or not, whether you conversed with them or not, when I was at a punk gig, a New Order gig, or a Fall gig, I was among my own.
Paying money to go to a music event, which could well be starring bands and performers that you might consider would be better off being shot? And, while enduring said sonic torment, you would certainly have to rub shoulders with muppets who don’t much care about music in the first place?
Count me out.
I’m off to see the Undertones, in Derry-hi:
Disjecta 
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