Value For Money

So, 7.30am and we’re at Dover. The port at Dover speaks volumes about who is expected to travel by ferry: the terminal is an overpriced coffee stand with a Burger King attached and the tiny WH Smith sells anything you like, as long as it’s by Michael Crichton. Or it’s Nuts magazine. Or it’s a big fuck-off bar of chocolate. No wifi (although there is a booth offering “coin-operated wi-fi” on a terminal with metal a metal keyboard). Depressing. Apt.

Anyway, time to think on re the London gig. I’m not so disappointed – in fact, it was one of the most together gigs we’ve played and things only get better as the dates progress. People expect more out of the band, maybe because it’s been around so long; in trut

h, there was never a time when the band were exactly killer live, it’s always more that, sometimes, there are moments in the gig when it just touches the right raw nerve or hits a momentarily meaningful groove. Of sorts. 

I respect bands like Mogwai a lot. They somehow manage to still pull off sounding angry and emotional live despite playing some of those songs hundreds or thousands of times. There aren’t many bands that have been around a long time that are like that. Dinosaur JR still sound exactly the same as they did 15 years ago, but then they look exactly the same as people (and still haven’t learnt to “play” their instruments in that nice polished way that old musos do, thank fuck). Who’s still around? REM sound like old men trotting out radio singles. I’d rather just not play than be some cock-end like Michael Stipe clearly pretending to be in a world of hurt and then jumping into the limo.

Maybe that’s not a great comparison – we’re not exactly in the same league. But then that’s part of the thing with being a bit shabby and small band-wise, is that our gigs cost less than a tenner, every rehearsal we do costs us money we don’t really have or miles we have to travel to be together. In our horrible consumption society (dons beard, corduroy) we surely expect to “get what we’ve paid for.” On that b

asis, if it costs 6 quid to see us in London, compared with, say, 80 quid to see the Police at Twickenham, that means that we only have to be roughly 1/6^th as good (or 6 times as disappointing depending on your approach) in order to be “value for money.”

And Sting is at least twice the cock Chris is.

Maybe 1 ½ times.

Other things to note from the London gig – if we seemed unserious, it’s because we’re a bit nervous. We aren’t performers in the traditional mode, it doesn’t come naturally. We are normal people who have to bare souls in public, not trot out some old hits – because (a) we don’t have any and (b) what would be the point? It’s unnerving to get really into something when you’re that close to people and especially so when there’s less.

So there you go: we’re probably barely value for money, but on the plus side, we aren’t U2. At least we’re honest.

The idea that you get value for money in a gig seems alien to me. You either get touched or you don’t. Sure, if you buy 3 albums a year to play in the car and you calculate the admission fee divided by the number of singles you heard that you knew then maybe you have a formula for value for money. Me, I like it or I don’t.