{"id":90,"date":"2007-11-30T20:36:53","date_gmt":"2007-12-01T02:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=90"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:10:04","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:10:04","slug":"beginning-to-see-the-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/beginning-to-see-the-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginning To See The Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m finally too old for all of this.\u00c2\u00a0 Last night I went to see another band – The Black Angels – and I’m starting to feel like I don’t belong.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not the music.\u00c2\u00a0 The band were excellent, and I was shuffling along as enthusiastically as the next person (apart from the guy who was flailing his arms around wildly and making guttural grunts of appreciation at the end of every song, but I put that down to his superior drug intake and not the quality of the music – he would have probably acted the same had it been Rolf Harris playing his vibraphone up there).\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 I just can’t deal with them any more.<\/p>\n

For the kind of music I like, the audience at gigs is almost entirely comprised of college students.\u00c2\u00a0 And students are such wankers<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 And I should know: I was a student once, and I was a wanker, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, I thought<\/span> I was the coolest person ever in my skinny black jeans (that I’d had to take in myself due to malnutrition brought on by the standard student diet of toast for every meal) and my bondage boots and a bullet belt, and a ‘cred’ band’s tour shirt with the sleeves torn off, and my hair teased upwards in sheer defiance of gravity.\u00c2\u00a0 Yeah, I sure thought I had it going on.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was 20-some years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, my legs aren’t quite so skinny (due to a diet of whatever I damn well please), and there’s not that much hair left to tease.\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t necessarily say I’ve matured<\/span> with age, but I’ve at least come to recognize what a\u00c2\u00a0wanker I was.\u00c2\u00a0 So when I see a whole roomful of people in skinny black jeans, and T-shirts with the arms torn off, it’s difficult to feel anything but contempt.<\/p>\n

I used to like going to gigs.\u00c2\u00a0 I used to feel an affinity with everyone else there – a kind of communal pull – brought on by the\u00c2\u00a0recognition that there were other people who liked the same music as I did (most of my friends did not, and I’m sure my girlfriend at the time only used to pretend<\/em> to like the same music just to get in my pants).\u00c2\u00a0 I used to identify with them.\u00c2\u00a0 But as I looked around the audience at last night’s gig I realized that there was almost nothing I had in common with them.\u00c2\u00a0 The guys are all trying to carve out a unique identity by growing out their hair (both head and facial) in a way that’s slightly<\/em> different (but\u00c2\u00a0never\u00c2\u00a0quit different enough) to the next guy, who is also<\/em> trying to carve out a unique identity.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone’s trying to appear non-conformist whilst simultaneously trying desperately to fit in with their peers.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there’s the girls, all pert and bendy-looking, who I would probably have fancied back in the day (but never had the courage\/confidence to\u00c2\u00a0make eye contact with let alone chat up), but\u00c2\u00a0to look at them inappropriately now – when I’m twice their age – would be, well, inappropriate<\/em>, even if I wasn’t married with three children.\u00c2\u00a0 They (the girls) all seem to be in competition to find the ugliest\/stupidest-looking guy there (damn, how come that wasn’t the M.O. when I was in college??).\u00c2\u00a0 For my money, the\u00c2\u00a0girl who’d managed to snap-up the disheveled slacker whose eyes were so half-closed he probably couldn’t even see the greasy fringe that stretched down to his slack-jawed wispy-haired chin let alone the stage, was a clear winner.\u00c2\u00a0 The envy of all her friends, I’m sure.<\/p>\n

It’s depressing.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is a big part of my life, and I want to see the bands I like live, but I just can’t enjoy the gigs\u00c2\u00a0any more.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not that I’m self-conscious about my age – being the oldest person there stopped bothering me ten years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 If people think I’m only there to chauffeur my kids, that’s fine.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t bother me.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m just tired of being surrounded by self-conscious wankers who probably put more thought into what they wear to the gig – and how everyone else will react to what they wear – than they put into appreciating the music.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0A good third of the people were just milling around chatting (shouting) with their friends.\u00c2\u00a0 And those that were listening probably didn’t get half of it, because they lack the depth of musical experience.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0[The Black Angels are named after a Velvet Underground song (The Black Angel’s Death Song<\/em>), mining a similar vein of ’60s psychedelia,<\/em> but I’d bet that 90% of the audience have never even heard the album it came off (The Velvet Underground & Nico<\/a>\"\").\u00c2\u00a0 How can you understand what a band’s doing if you don’t even know what’s been done before?]<\/p>\n

Ah, maybe I’m just tired.\u00c2\u00a0 Yesterday I had to work a 14-hour day before I went to the gig.\u00c2\u00a0 I got home at 1:30am and was up again at 5:30am again to do it all over again.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s hard work<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 Students think they work hard?\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t know shit.\u00c2\u00a0 Go out late, sleep in until midday; skip a lecture, who cares.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Turn up at a meeting unprepared (let alone miss it entirely), or take a nosedive on your KPIs and you damn well feel the squeeze.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I just envy their freedom, their lack of responsibility.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe I’m just squirming uncomfortably at the realization that that used to be me.\u00c2\u00a0 Or the even more uncomfortable realization that I’m slowly turning into my dad, railing against the perceived failings of “youth”.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, I just don’t think I can do this any more.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m starting to think that maybe I’m better off sitting at home in my standard blue Levi’s and an intact T-shirt, with my headphones on and my eyes closed, and being able to focus on the music<\/em> and not the ball of contempt that Johnny Student’s ‘wacky’ headwear is slowly teasing up my throat…<\/p>\n

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OK, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m finally too old for all of this.\u00c2\u00a0 Last night I went to see another band […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[32,42,75],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-music","tag-gigs-2","tag-music-2","tag-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}