I’m thinking about going to the White Stripes gig at Dublin Castle on the 4th of May. It’s during my exams, but it’s on a Saturday, and it’s a bank holiday weekend to boot. The thing is, though, I don’t wanna see the White Stripes. I wanna see the support bands: the Von Bondies, the Dirtbombs and the Detroit Cobras. I couldn’t give two shits about seeing the White Stripes live to be perfectly honest.
And besides, I can just imagine the crowd of mindless sycophants who’ll be there to see them just because it’s the place to be. (I can also imagine the looks on their faces as I leave well before the Stripes even take to the stage.)
The atmosphere at such shows is pretty bad, there’s very little magic in the air. The last time I saw Yo La Tengo for example, overall I was disappointed (too much new stuff, they seemed to be going through the motions) but they pulled off some pretty neat tricks at the end – a Devo cover, a super-slow version of Little Honda – alas, nobody got it (maybe that’s just the music store clerk in me) and it pretty much fell flat. And I’ve already spoken about the Godspeed show. In contrast, when I saw NoMeansNo, the crowd were predominantly old-school fans, and it really made a difference.
So what’s the moral of this little story? Ban poseurs from potentially good gigs? Heh, in a perfect world, maybe…