Happy Talk?

Watching a gig through a screen is one thing - constant chat is quite another

Disclaimer: This was written back in 2014 after witnessing the (now sadly defunct) band Messenger. While my levels of discontentment have - happily - never reached the same heights as that night, I did consider ‘retiring’ from gig going for a while afterwards. I still attend many gigs, but it does appear this issue hasn’t really gone away. Read on.

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Recently I went to The Borderline, a rather famous music venue in the heart of London’s West End. The reason for my going was to see an up and coming band called Messenger whose album ‘Illusory Blues’ is a favourite of mine from earlier this year. Having seen the band capably support Devin Townsend’s Casualties of Cool back in early September, I was looking forward to seeing how the band would fare with their own headlining gig. 

For those that are not familiar with The Borderline’s layout, it is a small venue with a bar to the left as you look towards the stage and it is renowned for attracting some well known faces from the music (and other) industries who sometimes drift down to the venue from The Crobar and other watering holes close by. 

Consequently, the noise levels can be quite high as people congregate at the bar to socialise and hang out at a ‘trendy’ venue with absolutely no intention of listening to the music. For that reason, it isn’t one of my favourite venues to watch music, but the prospect of seeing Messenger again far outweighed any concerns I had about the noise.

Messenger topped a three band bill and the first two bands came and went with the usual chatter plaguing their performances. I naturally (and perhaps naively) thought that the babble of conversation would dissipate once the headlining band took to the stage. 

After all, the vast majority of the audience would be there to see and enjoy the band, wouldn’t they? It turned out that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Messenger’s music is varied and at times extremely powerful but there are just as many wistful and quiet interludes that make their album such a good listening experience. 

Sadly, those quiet moments were completely drowned out by the relentless prattle, not only from the bar area where it could at least be expected and ignored, but also, and perhaps more worryingly, from the ‘floor’ just a few feet from where the band were performing. The band couldn’t have failed to hear the noise but to their credit, they ploughed on to produce a very good performance. 

As good as the band were, it still left me with a feeling of real disillusionment; this time the degree of noise had reached a new level of annoyance and there was no challenging the talkers as they were so numerous. I’ve long been resigned to hearing people having isolated conversations at gigs but this was on a completely different plateau with people clearly not there for the music but for the ‘event.’ Had I not been reviewing the gig for an online rock magazine, I would have departed as there was no point in staying just to grow more frustrated as the evening progressed.

By the way, this isn’t a case of an old fart about to launch an attack on ‘the youth of today’ and its lack of respect; I’m sad to report there were a number of older ‘fans’ there just as happy to babble on over the band. Assuming that these people go to gigs regularly, they must remember when this didn’t happen. 

Have they now given up and adopted an “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” mentality? I must also point out that I’m no pompous, self-righteous ass who demands the audience are totally quiet when the band are playing; if people want to have a good time that’s fine, but not at the expense of others watching. I don’t even get too huffy if people want to watch the show through their phone; as long as it’s not obscuring my line of sight, please go right ahead! I don’t understand it, but I’ll get on and watch the band thank you.

Up until the Messenger gig, the most extreme act of talking during a show I’d witnessed was still only an isolated incident. In 2013, I went to see Rush at the O2 Arena in London, only to be assailed about an hour into the show by two guys who finally made it to their seats –beers in hand- then proceeded to talk to each other for the rest of the first half of the show. 

They chatted so much that they were actually standing sideways on to face each other in an effort to seemingly improve their chatting experience. At the interval, they disappeared, presumably for more beer, but failed to return at the resumption. As happy as that made me, it left me figuratively scratching my head as to the point of them being there. 

At £70+ per ticket, plus all the beers they’d thrown down their necks and the probable cost of travel, it wouldn’t have been a cheap night, so why spend the little time they were actually in the Arena shouting at each other?

Although the Messenger gig was the first time I’d experienced such a startling level of chatting, this phenomenon is sadly nothing new. There is some YouTube footage that dates back several years of Jeff Tweedy from the band Wilco, pleading with the audience to stop talking and pay attention to the music. 

What’s interesting is that although the audience at the time cheered and applauded Tweedy’s outburst, the comments on the YouTube page aren’t quite as supportive; indeed some of them are quite belligerent in their defence of those making the noise. Is that just one or two trolls with nothing better to do, or is it actually becoming acceptable to criticise in this manner and tell the artists performing to just shut up and play.

Before her 2014 run of London dates, Kate Bush famously put out a statement on her website to ask the audience not to film or take photographs the show. Reports from the shows indicated that the vast majority of people respected her wishes and significantly, this appeared to extend to chatting as well. On the night I was there you could have heard a pin drop when Bush performed ‘Among Angels’ - a song which featured her alone onstage simply playing a piano and singing. So it can be done! 

Maybe there’s a link to the respect the audience has for the artist, or perhaps more artists should challenge the talkers. Of course it could simply be a case of I’m just getting old, but I sadly suspect not. In the end, if it gets to a point where the experience I had at The Borderline becomes more frequent and the enjoyment of seeing a band live is diminished by the noise levels then it may just be that after the best part of 40 years, my gig going days are coming to an end. I have a few gigs lined up right through to next summer so who knows, maybe things will be different by then. Maybe…

David Lack

I Can't Quit You Baby

As they celebrate 50 years, what is it about Led Zeppelin that makes most rock fans go weak at the knees?

There are literally libraries written about the eight-legged legend that tore up the 70s – tales where everything is gargantuan: record sales, tour profits, egos, Jimmy Page’s double-neck, Bonzo’s drinking, groupie numbers, that aircraft – even their manager’s girth. Much of which has grown from tale to myth to legend. As Robert Plant once said “I wish everything that’s been written about us had actually been true”. 


However, when looked at with a slightly cynical eye, there’s much to empathise with people who’ve never understood what the fuss was about. They didn’t have ‘hits’ like their contemporaries; many of their tunes weren’t exactly easy to sing along to; they were all over the place in terms of style (certainly from Led Zep III onwards); they had a singer who looked the part but had a divisive sounding voice; the guitarist had a great tone but wasn’t overly technically gifted (compared to the likes of Hendrix, Richie Blackmore or Eric Clapton) and seemed extremely aloof; the bass player was – well – just another boring bass player; and the drummer was incredibly powerful but looked like he wanted to punch everyone, all of the time (which to be fair was probably true). Above all, they were riding a wave of popularity seemingly based on a song about a woman going shopping and the theme tune to Top of the Pops.  

So on the face of it, understanding why someone wouldn’t like the Zep isn’t too difficult. But of course we know different, so let’s examine what keeps the Zep flame burning…

1.       The Mystery

It’s difficult to name another band who so consciously went out of their way to portray themselves as an enigma. A decision not to release singles (Page and manager Peter Grant were convinced singles would negatively affect album sales) was at the time seen as commercial suicide, but it had the opposite effect, driving album sales through the metaphoric roof. So confident were they of this approach that when it came to releasing the fourth album, the outer cover contained no mention of the band, had no title and no wording on the spine. Nothing but a decrepit picture of a decrepit old man; Andy Warhol it certainly wasn’t. From a distance it does appear much of this came from Page and manager Peter Grant. One gets the impression that Percy, Bonzo & JPJ were mostly along for the ride when it came to these decisions, content to let Jimmy & Peter deal with all ‘that stuff’. This is also borne out by Page’s apparent reluctance to talk about his private life (which is still the case), leading to not unfounded rumours of his obsession with the occult, Aleister Crowley and his alleged relationship with a minor in the US. In the end the level of fame and success they achieved afforded Page exactly what he wanted – millions of adoring fans who loved them for the music and couldn’t give two hoots about what they did behind closed doors. The one thing they were masters of – one could argue they created the model – was an innate understanding of marketing the brand.  It’s a curious thing to imagine Zep being at their peak now, and how they would handle the glare of social media etc. I’d like to think they’d milk it for all it’s worth without giving away anything significant – and they would be bigger than ever as a result.

2.       The Reunion (of lack thereof)

2007. I remember it clearly. The gig was announced, over twenty million people applied for twenty thousand tickets, and no, I wasn’t successful. But I worked with a guy who was. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to punch someone in the face as much as him when he told me. Why? Well, along with the Beatles reforming, this was the other thing that was never going to happen. Plant had said so on, oh, about four thousand occasions since Live Aid. Yes, he’d dropped the most subtle of hints that he might think about it, but then in almost every case had immediately contradicted himself and denied any such thing. Yes there was the Page thing in the mid 90s – Walking Into Clarksdale has its moments, and the No Quarter live album is sublime, but without JPJ and John's son Jason sitting in for his father it was never going to be Zeppelin. (I actually have a theory about the Page/Plant thing; I’m convinced Plant was so incensed about the Coverdale/Page project in ‘93 that it fired him up to show Little David who was the real love in James Page’s life. I’m probably wrong but it’s a fun train of thought).

             3.       Bonzo

There’s a line in the Dream Theater song ‘Just Let Me Breathe’ – “The big machines take care of you until you kill yourself and the sales go through the roof”. Now in the case of Zep that’s not strictly true as they’d already sold gazillions by the time John Henry Bonham drank himself to death in 1980; but it's played a huge part in maintaining the Zep legacy, and sales have indeed continued to rise in no small part due to Bonzo’s demise. As time has gone on – as with many dead rock stars – his own legend has grown, and he continues to be cited as either the greatest rock drummer ever or the most influential (and not just by other drummers). Is the hype justified? Quite often death is the best advert, so it becomes less objective comparing the dead to the still living – particularly as the longer the career, the more likely there are blots on the copybook. In Bonzo’s case, in my humble opinion, the answer is categorically yes. I would point to Bonham’s playing on the softer Zep tracks as the key to his greatness; his sensitivity to the song, regardless of the tempo or style, was always – without exception – spot on. Epics like 'No Quarter', 'Ten Years Gone' or 'Since I've Been Loving You' would not have the same impact had he played them with the same intensity as 'Rock and Roll' or 'When The Levee Breaks', and man could he play hard when he needed to. Legendry status? In the bag.

4.       The Influence

Name a band - any band – that have found success in the rock / blues / hard rock, modern folk, and - to a degree - metal genres over the last forty years, and there is a high probability that they have cited Zeppelin as a key pillar of their direction, writing, sound or a combination of all three. It’s difficult to understate what impact Zep has had – and continues to have. The sheer breadth of their styles across the catalogue ensured their feelers would stretch out far and wide. The legend has inevitably grown way beyond the norm, but the waves created as a result of everything previously mentioned show no sign of abating – and why should they?

5.       The Money Tree

Given that the Zeppelin organisation pretty much created the marketing model that many bands have used since, you’d expect them to be masters of keeping the money rolling in. And how. Between 2011 – 2016 it’s estimated they earned over $60 million; not bad for a band that disbanded 38 years ago. That figure is unlikely to drop off anytime soon, with new box sets out annually, a coffee table book that’s just hit, and Jimmy Page’s seemingly inexhaustible archives. It makes one wonder when the well will run dry – but it’s been running very well for almost 40 years thank you very much, so  let's look forward to the next set of ‘archives’ and to hell with the overdraft.

6.       The Music

If you really want to know why Zeppelin will always be held in a similar bracket to the Beatles & Stones, it’s simple. It’s the songs. If you put everything else to one side (and there’s a lot of it – the level of musicianship, the arranging, the stylistic changes, the blistering live performances etc), it comes back to the fact that Led Zeppelin wrote a shitload of great – not just good – songs. What makes a great song is a highly subjective subject, but there are some basic ground rules most agree on: It needs a highly memorable melody (or melodies); it needs either a chorus you can sing along to or at worst sections that send shivers up your spine; and it should connect with the listener on some emotional level. There are a wealth of Zeppelin tracks that tick all of those boxes – one could argue the vast majority of their material achieves this. Yes, there are a bunch of throwaway songs – but even the Beatles had a bucketload of those. There are even albums that may not be worthy of their name (I’m looking at you, In Through The Out Door). But the simple truth is, their musical legacy is undimmed by time because it is so rich in depth, colour, savagery and beauty. It’s a combination that few have ever matched.