It was almost a year ago that I managed to get tickets for Kate Bush, which then entailed me flying half way around the world (well 7000 miles from Singapore to London) just for the concert.
A colleague of mine (who is originally from the US) is currently trying to get tickets for all three nights of the Grateful Dead shows in Chicago in July – apparently its three times oversubscribed and thats only the pre-sale !
So how far would you go for a concert and for who ?
How far? Does this include murder, arson, overthrowing governments, collaborating with extra-terrestrials etc?
I was watching the original Flash Gordon yesterday. I bet that Ming the Merciless would stop at nothing to see a Motörhead gig.
I’ve travelled from Ireland to London and Manchester to attend gigs – Ramsey Lewis, Pharaoh Sanders, Incognito etc. and think nothing of it. Hero might be too strong a term for what I do….
I travel down to Roskilde in Denmark every summer which is a day’s journey. But I do get a whole weekend of gigs, so not quite the same thing.
Me and the GLW flew to Sydney to see Wilco play consecutive nights. We also hooked up with her aunt and uncle to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary so I suppose that doesn’t really count, so the furthest I’ve travelled to a gig was early last year when I flew to Chicago to see Jeff Tweedy play a solo charity show at the height of the polar vortex – I posted a review back at the old homestead.
I am determined to see Depeche Mode at least one more time. They have never played in NZ and seem unlikely to in the future. They also tend to miss out Australia when they tour, so it’s a question of where I am going to travel to. Most likely Is London but it would be interesting to to go to Japan, Chile, Colombia or somewhere else I have never visited.
The Pink Floyd, Manchester for A Momentary and That London for Division Bell. Also did Glasgow to Leeds for a Sisters gig but that was for the meet-ups before and after, the gig was a drag and, actually got in the way of the fun.
I’m off down to Brizzle in December to see the last ever gig on the last ever tour *sniff* by Stackridge.
As far as the nearest gigs go I could often hear bands doing sound checks from my office and simply had to walk down 2 flights of stairs to see the likes of Oasis, Meat Loaf, Prince, Phil Collins, Jimmy Nail, etc. Trouble was when the band played their actual set I was stuck in my office with the promoter, counting pennies.
I literally would not bother popping next door for a gig now. Nasty, sweaty, places full of, ugh, people. The last one I had tickets for was Lee Scratch Perry. I even got some spliff in. Then decided I’d rather stay at home and smoke it. This is my favourite gig I’ve seen recently (maybe my favourite ever) and I saw it from the comfort of my sofa, again and again. Bliss.
(David Sylvian live in Tokyo).
http://youtu.be/4WA1DkKxjgk
I would seriously consider going to the Aimee Mann Christmas shows in New York.
Yes, that would be good.
We went to Van Morrison at the Albert Hall back in November. I have to say, despite his reputation around these here parts (which I’m assuming are like the old there parts) for being less than engaging it was the best Van gig I’ve been to.
That said, there were some people just behind, a couple of whom were from the USA. They talked a lot and ignored my entreaties to quieten down and kept up a constant conversation.
The gig ended and Van didn’t do an encore. This guy shouted out “I’ve come 7,000 miles and no encore” and as I walked past I said “What are you worried about, you can just listen to yourself” as I was dragged away by Mrs P.
I flew from Tokyo to London to see Marah and Nick Hornby a few years back (really it was for my sister in laws wedding, but the dates worked out, and I know which one sounds more rock n roll).
Wayne Hussey is coming back to Cape Town in May. It’s about a 20 minute drive. Far enough these days.
Funniest thing is it’s at the Barnyard Theater which is one of those long table, wood chips on the floor & bring a picnic basket type of place. Seems a strange type of place for old goths?
I’ve done this a lot over the years. It started off when I moved from North Kent, when I’d been commuting into London for a year before I went to University in Scotland. That year (1983/4) had given me a taste for the prog rock bands who generally played residencies at the Marquee in that period but didn’t generally tour to Scotland. Over the next ten years my taste in music broadened, but mainly to U.S. bands that played London rather than Scotland, where we were living. I was in a series of low paid jobs with occasional periods of unemployment: plenty of time but little money, and I was willing to hitch.
A quick calculation shows that between 1984 and 1994 I hitched from Edinburgh to London specifically to see gigs no less than 27 times: I also hitched to Preston, Nottingham (twice), Leicester, Bristol and Manchester to see gigs. I also went to London for gigs by train 7 times, and coach once. After 1994 I had a better job, and switched to trains; from 1998 better paid jobs and low-cost airlines meant that planes kicked in. I was incidentally also seeing gigs from about 2000 onwards while working away from home, and even scheduling business trips that fitted around gigs I wanted to see!
We started going abroad to see gigs – and to be fair fitting weekends around gigs we wanted to see – in 2004. The furthest ever for a specific gig, about 5,700 miles, was San Francisco to see Rain Parade in 2012, which I reviewed on the old site.
We have of course seen gigs that happen to be on when we’ve been on holiday: this is how we ended up seeing (among others) Wilco at the Greek Theater, Berkeley, Chris Robinson Brotherhood in San Francisco, Phil Lesh and Friends in San Rafael, and Patti Smith in New York. We still go to quite a few gigs in London etc. as it’s possible to get there and back overnight without taking a day off work if you are careful with flights and gig timings, and also willing to get up very early the following morning. We managed to see three gigs in London on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday last summer with just one day off work!
We will also be trying to get to Chicago for the “Fare Thee Well” gigs at Soldier Field: however, I’m not booking anything until we get tickets in place first.