4 hours ago
8
A few years back I went to see one of my favourite rappers, Earl Sweatshirt, at a venue in north London. The sound was so muddy I couldn’t tell which song he was playing. The setlist lurched between his old and new stuff in a way that did justice to neither. The bloke in front of me filmed the entire thing on a phone he was holding above his head for an Instagram story that will be watched by no one. With 45 minutes remaining, I wished I could leave. With 15 minutes left, I decided that making it to the nearest kebab shop before the rush meant more to me than seeing the end of the set.
As a culture journalist, I’ve been to a lot of gigs. Most of them were endured rather than enjoyed, and I secretly think it’s only the most extroverted (or simply least self-conscious) among us who actually feel otherwise. This is the dirty secret of the music industry, which has tackled economic headwinds mainly by transitioning out of actually selling music and into live events. This feeling has occasionally caused professional embarrassment for me, since I am forever inventing reasons to turn down what is supposedly one of the main perks of the job: free tickets.
To make matters worse, we blame the artist for things that are almost entirely outside their control. They don’t design the PA system, they’re not responsible for security and they certainly don’t decide to charge their fans extortionate booking fees. They are working, often gruellingly, to a tour schedule designed to maximise revenue rather than allow them to regularly perform at their best. The fact that more gigs aren’t straight unlistenable is a minor miracle.
The residency model only makes this worse, and it’s hard not to feel a degree of contempt towards artists like Harry Styles whose “tours” primarily consist of turning up at a mega-venue that requires fans to fork out for travel and a hotel on top of the £200 ticket. The artist gets to sleep in their own bed; the audience has to take time off work or school for an expensive city break. Somehow this has been sold to us as luxury – an evolution in how gigs are supposed to work.
Then there is the eternal claim that gigs are about communion – a rapturous coming-together, shared grief, shared ecstasy etc. I have never truly felt it. What I have felt is the soggy embrace of the contents of a plastic cup pouring down my face. Is it a discarded pint or someone’s piss? Pray for the former but neither is ideal.
Compare all of this with the cinema, which has only got better in recent years. You’re sitting down and forced to put your phone away; the screen is massive, you’re in complete darkness and the beverage of choice is delicious Coca-Cola rather than stale lager. Nobody is throwing a pint over your head. Nobody is drowning out the band by screaming half-remembered lyrics.
Mind you, none of this has stopped me from being a typical Glasto bore, and I will be doing everything I can to get a ticket in 2027. But am I devastated that the festival is on a fallow year? Reader, I am secretly thrilled.
-
Sasha Mistlin is a commissioning editor on the Guardian’s Saturday magazine
