Having just listened to the “Old Gods Almost Dead” podcast (great ‘cast chaps!) the panel made a salient point.
Which act did you have a chance to go and see but declined on the grounds that “I’ll see ’em next time they tour”
DFB and DoctorJ both missed seeing Bill Hicks
My one is Nirvana 1991 at Nottingham Rock City.
The gig was on the Monday after the famous TOTP performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
There was a bus trip going from Scunthorpe but my mate wasn’t too arsed and I didn’t fancy going on my own so gave it a miss.
The cost, by the way, was £12 for return coach trip and gig.
Still we managed to get tickets for their Aston Villa leisure centre in 1994…….
So who have you missed out on as you thought they’d go on forever?
“S’alright I’ll see ’em next time”
Said it before, but I was at that Nirvana Rock City gig!
My missed gig regret was another Rock City show, Jane’s Addiction touring Ritual De Lo Habitual. I did exactly what you say above – figured I’d see them next time whereupon they promptly split up. (I know they’ve reformed since, but it’s not the same is it?).
Late night ITV was there too. Can’t recall if this was ‘Raw Power’ or ‘The Beat
Ziggy. I turned down the chance to see Bowie in 73 because it was a school night. Hmm…
Nick. He flexes like a whore, falls conjugating to the floor…
forget all that, just bring me the quaaludes and red wine
Kirsty MacColl at Shepherds Bush Empire in 2000. Mrs BP was pregnant and I’d seen her at The Fleadh in the summer so I figured I’d catch the next album/tour.
I saw Jackie Leven once and missed a few subsequent dates when he played in Birmingham. I then had a ticket to see him at the Kitchen Garden Cafe but he sadly died before the gig. A massive disappointment to this date.
Prince at the O2, which I decided against because getting back to North London afterwards would be a pain. D’oh!
On a, sort of, similar theme (well, at least as far as deciding not to attend something at the last minute with consequences goes), I was supposed to be a first aider on duty at Hillsborough in 1989. I regularly volunteered there (with the St John Ambulance) and had done the two previous FA Cup semi-finals there, but this particular time my own team, Barnsley, were at home (to Birmingham City, 0-0) the same day. So late in the morning of the game I called my mum, who was one of the senior St John Ambulance members in Sheffield, to see whether we had enough to cover the game, which we did (there was a requirement for us to have x amount of people on duty, which we more than covered that day, as we did every game), so I said I would give it a miss, cos I didn’t want to miss a Barnsley home game for a piddly FA Cup Semi-Final.
Of course, since then I have had mixed feelings. Partly feeling guilty for not being there, although what little difference an extra first aider would have made in the scheme of things I don’t know, but also selfishly being thankful that I haven’t had to go through what my mum and all my mates had to go through, both on the day and ever since. My mum, who had to relive it all again when she had to give evidence at the inquest (and, trust me, the images that she had to go through in preparation for the inquest are far more harrowing than anything we have seen on TV or in the media), is most certainly glad I wasn’t there. But I’ll always have the feeling of what if.
I was training to be a nurse at the time, funnily enough in Liverpool, so I did get involved in the aftermath, being sort of a link between the Sheffield St John Ambulance and the city. But a few years later I moved to Brighton, where I worked in A&E. One of the sisters there had only been working on the department a few days and was living in a flat with 2 other nurses from the A&E. She said they were all in bed when the phone went in the early hours, but none of them got up to answer it. She was on a late shift the next day, so the other two had gone to work already when she got up. She pottered around the flat, got ready for work, but as she neared the hospital there seemed to be a lot of people milling around, lots of TV vans, reporters and the like and when she asked what was going on she was told there had been a bomb in the Grand Hotel!
It had all pretty much died down by this time, but there was a big backlog of patients that had been queuing up whilst they were dealing with the major incident, so she spent most of the shift dealing with all the little old ladies who had slipped on the wet leaves and needed their wrists pulling and plastering. But we bonded over a mutual avoidance of major incidents.
Mmm, two stories with a tenuous link to the original question, but at least I started with the Prince one!
The Clash (supported by Wah! And Theatre of Hate). I guess the last tour 82 or 83. Was at Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, I could have walked there, but my gig going mates had no interest. Didn’t want to go on my own…
If I remember correctly I decided not to go to the Pretenders playing the SFX in Dublin sometime in the mid 80s because it was raining too much that night. I eventually saw another line-up sometime in the late 90s when they’d become less rock’n’roll. A few days after the SFX gig I was talking to someone who had braved the elements. He was raving about the support bands World Party and Big Audio Dynamite. I never got to see either of them live!
The Smiths at Coventry Poly, March 1984, “What Difference Does It Make” was in the charts, and I was even on the guest list because I was on the ENTS committee, but nah, probably just went out on the piss instead, I’ll catch them next time, yada, yada… sigh!
To be fair, they did tour quite a bit afterwards…
Oh yes, totally, this one just rankles because I was there, in town, and could even have gotten in free, and I decided I had better things to do… even at the time it was a “hot ticket”, in retrospect even more so…
Willard Grant Conspiracy toured Oz, and I knew then the chances of them ever returning were close to bugger all in the best case. And the Robert Fisher died shortly after. Ah well. Gotta take your chances.
As previously posted at another time, Jeff Buckley playing Upstairs At The Garage, in Islington.
Not my favourite venue by a long way at that time. It was a Sunday night, busy at work…
Jeff Buckley, Thurs 22nd June 1995, Cambridge Junction.
It was the night before Glastonbury, I thought I’d see him there and headed off to stay the night at my best mate’s, who handily lived just off the M3, half-way to Glasto.
I arrived on site to hear from the Pyramid stage “thanks to Jeff Buckley” and wild applause. “Oh shit, I’ve missed him”. Little did I know he’d just sung BVs with EBTG (checking, I see it was The Indigo Girls) and his full set would be on after. I went off in a sulk and watched someone crap (think Shed Seven) on the second stage. All the while he was just round the corner, which I’d just vacated.
Oh well, next time.
Later on, a BBC pal gave me a pre-FM transcription CD. It’s bloody fab. I’d loved to have been there. Bugger.
I missed Joy Division supporting the Buzzcocks at Hemel Hempstead on 5 November 1979, because I had a test the next day at school or something.
I figured I’d catch Joy Division some other time. Bugger.
5th November eh?
“I’ve been waiting for a Guy to come and take me by the hand”
Stevie Wonder on his most recent tour. I’d read somewhere that he was disappointing, like bundled his early hits into a short medley and so on.
Everyone said it was fantastic. Then I saw a video of a concert from that tour, and it was fantastic.
D’oh
I’m sure I’ve recounted the tale of having tickets for a 1987 Peter Gabriel concert and then not being able to travel down for it…only to find out later that it was the only show to have a surprise guest appearance from Kate Bush! As the decades passed I was resigned to the prospect of never seeing the blessed one, ever, until quite miraculously I got to see them both in the same year.