GBH
About a year ago I noticed an entry in the local paper regarding an impending rendition of musical tunes by an English band called “GBH”. This was to be their first Australian tour.

“Wtf?” methinks, pondering over the paper with my latte and croissant. “GBH?...can it be the same band I listened to during my well-spent youth?” I leaned back and remembered that somewhere in my garage is a GBH vinyl disk with grooves scratched into its surface. When I was a schoolboy, I would carefully mount this disk on a machine and listen to the amplified scratchings. I have many such disks of a similar genre.

After calling the venue to verify that yes, this was the same GBH from many years ago, I fired up the Mercedes and poodled down to the venue to secure a ticket, lest they sell out.

On the night of the concert, I went straight from work (office attire), parked in a nice well lit place were no scum could deface the car, and entered the establishment.

Now..the days of leather jackets, studs, cropped hair are long behind me, so I sort of stood out like dog’s balls amongst the more colourful clientele. For me, one of the many gifts of middle age is a mental attitude whereas one doesn’t give a flying fuck for the wardrobe opinions of sheep, be they punks, Goths or Mods. Of course they all dress so individually. Yeah, the whole fucking flock of them.

Anyway, the support bands were pretty good, I frantically tapped my foot in time as I supped on my Coke Zero (had to be at work early the next day, and really, alcohol consumption interferes terribly with the anti-depressants...‘though it can be fun... in a controlled environment).

The crowd was a mix of old fat punks, old fat I-was-a punk-once-here’s-my-obscure-band-t-shirt blokes and very young punk folk, who strangely to me, were dressed in the same leather jackets, Docs, tartan pants and mohawks from the late 70’s early 80’s. Fuck’s sake. They were even affecting the same sneers and expectory habits from the day.

Finally GBH took the stage, they certainly had presence. What really brought it home to me about being middle aged was this; all the old fat punks crushed to the front of the stage and were leaping around like a bunch of excited basset hounds. A bunch of eagerly pogo’ing beefy unfit men is a fearsome sight to behold. You defineatly need to be pissed to join in. They were having fun.

But, the younger punks were milling around the outer edges, too scared to go near the scrum of baying fools at the front of the stage. I finally realised that they weren’t really interested, and they DIDN”T KNOW ANY OF THE SONGS!

You know how at a live gig, when your favourite bands strikes up one of their standards and the crowd cheers, well, the over 40’s were the only ones cheering, ‘cos they were the only ones who had any idea what was being played.

One young bloke I yelled with couldn’t name a single song after any of the bands that were patches sewn on his jacket. They were all circa 1982 bands, he was probably born in 1992. They just weren’t interested in the music, let alone leaping around and ruining the carefully created hair (and maybe losing a few teeth in the bargain).

But, there they were, taking pictures on their iphones of each other to put on Facebook. They were there man, they were there the night GBH played.



I dunno, kids of today. Tch.
( Ken Oath, Sun 10 Jun 2012, 16:30, 3 replies)

I like this.

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Sun 10 Jun 2012, 17:46, closed)

Expectory habits! Clicks.
Saw Pixies in Geneva 7 or 8 years ago, I was wearing a t-shirt older than most of the crowd.
*shudders*
( blaireau69 , the Cumbrian Travis Bickle., Sun 10 Jun 2012, 23:05, closed)

Pixies?
With big fat Frank. I like it when band idols go to pot, but still hang in there, belting out tunes.
( Ken Oath, Mon 11 Jun 2012, 5:29, closed)

I had the fey, indie version of this experience.
I went to see Jonathan Richman when he came to Sydney. Everyone else seemed to be there because they'd heard of him as the father of twee indie pop rather than having heard his actual songs.

Mind you I wasn't actually into him at the time, being about three.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 11 Jun 2012, 17:26, closed)