I’ve ignored you for a month! And without even a decent excuse like my untimely demise! It’s mostly just because I’m lazy. And because my life is so boring that I’d prefer if there were no public record of how dull it is. OH WAIT TOO LATE. Dang.
In addition to working in my unpaid internship (working for free in the arts sector is apparently one of the latest bits of Stuff White People Like) I’ve mostly been either melting or freezing (England!) and not writing my dissertation. And getting my bearings so I can walk places. For example, it takes me 1/2 hour to walk from Covent Garden to my crapola bedsit in Camden. It takes me 1/2 hour to take the tube from Covent Garden to Camden. One of those options is free! Unfortunately one of those options is also usually quite wet.
I have also been to some concerts, hence the title of this post.
Now as you might know, I am 24 years old. I am ostensibly young and fun and sometimes I like to dress up and pretend that I am also hip. Well me and my neon pink earplugs are here to bring you the bad news: LIES.
I’ve often thought that I belong to an earlier age. I usually just chalk it up to romanticized history dorkiness when I dream of flapper dresses and ocean liners and, of course, mucking out the pigs’ stalls and popping out 5 babies by the age of 16. But you know what? Maybe I belong to a long-ago era when 24 was thoroughly middle aged. Because I suspect I am kind of a geezer.
First I went to the Dr Who Proms, which is perhaps more along the lines of “extremely geeky” than geriatric. I mean, I did have to loose sleep in order to line up around the block for tickets. I did scream like a maniac for some of my favorite performers. (Catherine Tate! She is the coolest.) HOWEVER, there is the small fact that the Proms is a series of classical music concerts. And also? It was Dr Who themed. The other people in the line around the block were mostly families with small children.
Anyway, that was probably the best £5 I have spent in England, and I’ve been here for almost a year. SO GOOD. I can’t wait to go to more Proms, even if they don’t come with daleks and cybermen.
On Friday night I stumbled in from the pub with the £2 Leffes to some emails from my friend which essentially read “OMGTOMBAXTERWTFLOL!.” (She’d been hitting the Leffes just as hard that night.) Last month we had entered to win tickets to a bunch of concerts taking place during the iTunes festival. The venue, Koko, (which claims to be famous. Maybe some of you youngsters can save my aching eyes from looking this up by letting me know if that’s true.) was conveniently located a 5 minute walk from me and everyone likes free things. And everyone likes concerts! Or so we thought.
We didn’t enter to win Tom Baxter tickets, but iTunes thought we would enjoy him and gave us some anyway. I could listen to Tom on the radio. I could use him to lull me to sleep. One thing I could not do was stand there and listen to him in concert. I chalked this up to my general preference for a more physical concert-going experience and slept the blissful sleep of an innocent and worry-free infant.
Despite the fact that I could foresee no circle pits there, I was pretty psyched to win some tickets to the Pretenders. It was only when I was standing there with my pink earplugs in that I realized, holy adult contemporary, Batman! I’m old now.
The Pretenders were actually very good, despite the fact that they completely neglected to sing their most famous song. Disappointing! I enjoyed the bits of the concert I could see, which were viewed through the LCD screen of the 7ft. tall gentleman stood directly in front of me. I did not enjoy the people in front of me at our second vantage point (we moved further back in a misguided attempt to escape the apparently exclusively 7ft. tall audience. These were an VERY ENTHUSIASTIC middle aged couple. The woman had a huge bag and she was dancing the Elaine dance from Seinfeld without any sense that maybe other people didn’t like being smacked constantly with her hair and bag and elbows etc. Guess how tall they were! Now as I’ve already said, I enjoy a more physical concert going experience. Urm, when that’s what the music calls for. The Pretenders? And when you are standing in a sea of people with maybe 1.5 sq. ft. of personal space apiece? And you require about 4 sq. ft.? (NOT TO MENTION THE 7 VERTICAL FEET. But as I said that was the norm.) Then you are an asshole.
I also didn’t enjoy having something very sticky spilled on me from the balcony. Or when the folks at the venue thought a good time to take out the trash would be in the middle of the set. Or that they thought an effective way of removing it would be to drag it directly through the crowd. Clever, Koko. Very clever.
So to summarize, I can’t wait to go back to the classical music concert series, I thought the concerts at the famous and hip venue sort of sucked, and even the adult contemporary scene proved a little hardcore for my tastes.
GEEZER!
