No regrets: my top ten missed gigs

Regrets, I've had a few / But then again, too few to mention ...

Yeah, that would be the self-satisfied voice of Frank 'Not-At-All-Connected-To-Organised-Crime' Sinatra, boring us all half to death with his horribly-corny My Way. Horribly corny but also one of those infuriating songs that occupy a lot of space, using up valuable cultural bandwidth. Anyway, I'm borrowing the hackneyed "regret" line to tee up this little blog about gigs over the years that I've missed (or sort of missed) and that have stayed with me ever since. Haunting me. Plaguing me. Oh what might have been. Here's my personal top ten of missed gigs:

1: Buzzcocks: Apollo Theatre, Coventry, 1979

2: Uncle John & Whitelock: somewhere in New York, 2006

3: Pastels, somewhere (a working men's social club?) in Nuneaton, 1986

4: Hamer: house party, Leeds, 2019

5: Smiths: Sheffield University, Sheffield, 1983

6: Stiff Little Fingers: Locarno, Coventry, 1979

7: Chupa Cabra: somewhere in Glasgow, 2020

8: Sex Gang Children: General Wolfe, Coventry, 1982

9: Public Enemy: Apollo Theatre, Manchester, 1988

10: The gig I was lining up tonight but then failed to go to because I was "too tired"

Yeah man, if only I'd gone to that Buzzcocks gig in 1979, the one that - gulp - my mother said I wasn't allowed to go to as I was too young and it would be "dangerous" (ditto SLF). If I could have got that early show under my belt (aged 15) I'd have surely gone on to be a truly cool teen who could later brag about all the amazing punk/new wave-era gigs he'd been to. Or what about that Smiths concert during their early John Peel-promoted period, midway through my (very unemployed) dole-not-coal Sheffield days of signing on, mooning penniless about the city centre and - belatedly - trudging up to the students' union ticket office only to be told, firmly, "it's sold out"? Hmm, another bandwagon I tried to hoist myself onto far too late. Or more recently, there was that Hamer house party thing where I contacted the group and was supplied with an address in Leeds but then backed out as I thought it could be embarrassing turning up solo at someone's (semi-) private party. Fuck man, embarrassment be damned, I should have just gone. This was to have been the psych-rock juggernaut of Hamer playing at extremely close quarters in somebody's cramped living room. A gig for the ages! The Pastels show falls into the category of gig-I-technically-went-to-but-only-to-find-a-note-on-the-venue-door-saying-"cancelled". Yeah, in those pre-internet times going to gigs was sometimes a precarious business (it still is now). The fact that Glasgow's mighty Pastels, producers of epic tunes like Baby Honey, were ever intending to play a gig in not-very-rock-and-roll Nuneaton now seems highly unlikely. Did I imagine this? Is it a rock gig false memory? Have I, oh dear, succumbed to Rock Gig False Memory Syndrome? Yeah, quite possibly. But anyway, I'll go on inisisting that er, I was there. There, at the top of the stairs outside the bolted-shut door bearing a sign saying "Tonight's Pastels concert has been cancelled". Bragging rights, indeed. To quickly gloss the others on my fascinating list: Chupa Cabra was a gig I was hoping against hope to get to during the dark gig-starved days of the covid lockdowns. Despite assurances from the band that it was "probably" going ahead, naturally it ended up not happening. Chalk it up. Uncle John & Whitelock was an overseas gig I genuinely hoped to get to, feeding off my big enthusiasm at the time for both UJ&W and NYC. Why didn't I go? Er, no-one to drag along with me. Yep, beware the dangers of thinking gig-going is something you only do in the company of a pliable friend (a fatal mistake). Which brings me to - unlikely pairing - Sex Gang Children and Public Enemy. With the latter I got sold a fake ticket in the street on the way to the venue. What gullibility. "Sorry, it's fake. There are a lot of those going around tonight". I actually saw Public Enemy about six months later when they were back in Manchester and, in fact, didn't overly like them, but I was still sorry to be barred on that first occasion - the sinking feeling of realising you've been duped (again), with your friends disappearing inside leaving you to walk home alone, Morrissey-like. And what about good old Sex Gang Children? Yeah, I actually did make it inside the door for this one, catching about three songs before leaving because my gig companion said they were "shit" and we should go before hearing any more. Hmm, where was my backbone? "No, I'm staying, see you" were the famous words I never said. But no, despite me cobbling together this regrettable list it just won't do to have regrets about gigs you swerved/failed to get to/had maternal prohibitions placed on. As Frank Sinatra was probably trying to say in his hoary old song, you've got to move on to the next gig (explore, ahem, each and every byway). Let it be said: I sincerely hate Sinatra's music and his macho-swagger, and it almost galls me to quote from his dire mega-hit song, but it fits the message of this blog so that's it: no regrets. Music, especially live music, is surely for enjoying in the here and now. Forget past misses and focus on er, present-day hits. Stuff that's going on around the corner right now, not "legendary" bands playing at "legendary" venues 40 years ago. And not, either, revival shows where bands from decades ago return and people dutifully attend these shows to try to recapture their youth or, in some cases, to see that band they missed first time around. So no, I sort of renounce everything in this blog except number ten on the list. That's the gig I really shouldn't miss ...

A Hamer gig I did get to: Chunk, Leeds, 21/9/18