Lula Loves

Lula Loves

Wednesday 5 October 2011

The joy of middle-aged gigging

Went to see Devonian electro-pop meisters Metronomy the other day. I've barely stopped playing their album, The English Riviera, which was released earlier this year, and am now busy discovering their back catalogue. If you like music of the electronic genre, do check this album out (it was nominated for the Mercury Prize this year and thankfully didn't win or we'd never be hearing from them again...) 

They put on a good live show, too, but what really struck me about the evening was just how broad the age range of people attending was. We (both 38) weren't the oldest people there! Obviously there were lots of lithe youngsters in attendance - Big G got chatting to a group of students (average age 19) who'd travelled down from Reading and were intending to stay out all night and catch the first train home...we felt exhausted just thinking about it. At the other end of the spectrum were two women in front of us in the queue who'd spotted their sons' teacher ahead of us in the line. They'd bought said teacher his Metronomy tickets as an end of year leaving present! How's that for trendy parenting?

As a middle aged gigger there's no pressure to stay right till the end, and you really don't care about looking trendy or worrying about your dancing - that stuff just doesn't matter anymore, you're just glad you're out throwing shapes when you'd normally be watching Question Time. My only request would be for gig venues to offer us oldies a bit more seating - just a few 'banquettes' around the side of the dancefloor would be nice - and it would be great if you could get a hot drink at the bar. I was spitting feathers mid-set and would have killed for a sit down and a nice cup of tea...