"I Prefer Their Old Stuff"

Balls. I’ve been dreading this one since the start, guilt is one emotion I can’t remember ever feeling when listening to music. That either means I’ve led a very virtuous life (yeah right!) or I’ve just led a rather boring one (distinctly possible!)

I’ve drawn a blank on this each time I’ve thought about it, until this morning when I realised there is an occasion where I’ve felt guilty with regards to music, not by association with anything I’ve done to someone to cause the guilt but rather guilty for not having done something, ie. buying a ticket for a gig and then being too lazy to go. The guilt in this case is therefore directed at myself as these are gigs that I was due to go to on my own (as per 95% of the gigs I go to). Also, I wouldn’t bail on a gig just through apathy if I were going with someone else, that would be a shitty thing to do!

I’m slightly ashamed to admit that this has happened on more than one occasion. However, the tickets were usually only around the tenner mark and a lot of the time I would realise I wasn’t as keen as I thought when I bought the ticket. But one occasion that sticks in my mind that I feel an element of guilt and regret about was Rammstein at the Manchester Arena at the start of 2010. I bought a ticket with all intentions to go as I’d heard great things about their live spectacle. Then the winter weather set in. If there had been a big dump of snow preventing me getting safely to Manchester then so be it, that would be very annoying but not something I could do much about. But on this occasion there was a gentle flurry of snow during the afternoon and I suddenly had a silly thought that I may get stranded up on the moors in the snow on my way there or back!

Consequently my lazy streak cut in and started whispering sedition in my ears and I managed to convince myself it wasn’t worth the effort!

So, £45 out of pocket, the snow did not get any worse, in fact it stopped completely, and I was without the memories of what was (so I believe) a gob-smacking show 😦 I keep telling myself they’ll be back and I can check them out at a later date but that’s what I said about the Twin Towers when I was in New York in 2000 and short of time (it was them or the Empire State and we were closer to that)!

I guess that this will do for today’s post then. It’s also a good excuse to play some German industrial music, or to give it its germanic name Neue Deutsche Härte (“New German Hardness”, blimey!)