Happy Anniversary

I went to a gig this week. I know, look at me trying to be hip and trendy at my age. But don’t get any ideas about me seeing any cool young bands. I went to see a guy called Mike Peters, who was celebrating 30 years of his once-quite-popular beat combo The Alarm. He’s older than I am and so were many in the audience. There wasn’t much thrashing, moshing or stage-diving in evidence. To be honest there wasn’t much movement from the crowd at all, unless you count the frequent trips to the loo. Well at our age, and with many of us having a prostate the size of a goat’s head, after a few beers it’s a case of one in, one out.

But it was a great gig, I loved every moment of it, just as I did when I saw 10cc not too long ago. Kiss were fantastic too and so were the old guys in Yes. I think it’s fairly obvious that I don’t see young bands these days. I prefer to relive my youth, my glory days (not that there were that many of them - and they weren't particularly glorious).

But isn’t that what most of these guys are doing? OK, they’ll maybe throw in a few new songs in the hope of attracting interest in a new album (and to give us in the crowd time to replenish our glasses) but in most cases they’re living on former glories. Some of them are blatantly cashing in on them. Bryan Adams’ upcoming ‘twentieth anniversary arena tour of the Waking Up the Neighbours arena tour’ springs to mind. He has nothing at all to promote apart from an evening of unabashed nostalgia. But hey, if it makes people happy.

A look at the upcoming gig list shows that Big Country, Shakin’ Stevens and Go West are all soon embarking on thirtieth anniversary tours. Rush, W.A.S.P., Level 42, Ultravox – they’ve all recently done the same with varying degrees of success. Perhaps I should take a twenty-night road trip around the country, seeing a random band in a new city every night to celebrate my thirty years of gig-going?

But why should this kind of thing be restricted to musicians? Many major authors do book signing tours too, and those are usually much more intimate affairs than seeing a band in a huge arena or even in a sweaty club. With authors you usually at least get the chance to get your copy of their latest product signed and maybe even have a little chat with them. It’s much more civilised.

So as we approach 2012 I’ve come up with a cunning plan. I’ve taken a look at a list of books published in 1982 and have decided to have a word with my local branch of Waterstones to see if they could arrange some thirtieth anniversary tours.

Published in 1982
Graham Greene – Monsignor Quixote
Sidney Sheldon – Master of the Game
Robert Ludlum – The Parsifal Mosaic -
Isaac Asimov – Foundation’s Edge
Arther C Clarke – 2010:Odyssey Two
Roald Dahl – The BFG

Ah. Looking at that list of authors, I think there may be a slight flaw in my proposal.

© Shaun Finnie 2011