The Waiting and The Ritual
It's only a short time to go now before the concerts start again. It's time for those old rituals to start.
The following points apply to any year and to any album and tour. This has been the ritual since, well, who knows?
NEW ALBUM PURCHASE
This must be arranged with the local record shop, such that it may be bought before the store opens, whilst on the way to work that Monday. I will arrange on the previous Saturday with my record-shop-owning-friend to collect the CD at 8.15am or thereabouts. I would usually pay for it on the Saturday, so all I need worry about is collecting it. With the aid of the portable CD player, or in-car CD, I then hope that the journey to deepest Mid-Sussex to work is slow enough to last the album. The lunchtime will consist of walking out to get a sandwich again with the portable CD performing its most necessary task. My work during the day will be up to its usual most excellent standards of course (!), but my mind will be lost in the new wave of sounds. The journey home will be in expectation of hearing the album on the main stereo
ACCLIMATISATION.After a few listens, the tracks I hought weren't so good turn out to be the best! The tracks I had heard before only on the radio or phone line or wherever seem to improve. The subtleties of the sound begin to come through. The richness of sound is well worth appreciating as best as possible before the tour, as the concerts will no doubt put a new style on the tracks, emphasising different parts perhaps.
SPECULATION. After a bit you get caught up in the expectation of it all. You start thinking what the stage set will be like, or the tracks that will be played. Your imagination should not run into overdrive in case of disappointment. I have to say that this has rarely happened. Perhaps some of the stage sets were too similar around the Isolate period, but then we shouldn't be greedy.
RUMOUR AVOIDANCE As the first concert to be attended draws nearer, one tries not to hear too many rumours in case they may be facts! If you're not attending the first night, but perhaps the fifth, then you don't want to hear from someone what the first track was. Some years I have known in advance from friends, who've seen the first night, or the rehearsals somehow, and the guesswork has gone. It's all right to hear the odd rumours a month or two in advance, but by a week to go, there's a chance these rumours may be facts.
THE GATHERING Who to go with? It's always good to go with a crowd, especially with people who have never seen Gary. Its rewarding when they say they didn't expect it to be so good, or so spectacular, or sound so good, etc etc. We all know it's unfair that Gary's music is not seen by a wider public. Each year we are more hopeful. We are rewarded when we think others have enjoyed their 'first time' in the same way we did. No matter that they may not be as dedicated as us, that's for us to enjoy
THE EVENT. Well, for the last few years I have been attending the coach-trip, and so the rituals have changed. Until then I travelled to Guildford or London or Southampton or wherever with, amongst others, my good friends Steve and Colin (who I'm sure won't mind being mentioned). I would leave straight from work, and meet them in Brighton or my home town. We would travel in one of their cars, and I would have prepared a cassette tape for the journey. To those two I was 'JB' - or 'Jammy Ba****d' on account as I would have some rare recording on the tape that they hadn't got. We are older now and less fervent in our record collecting (families etc have intervened), but there's always a few JB tracks on the tape. As the venue is only a few miles away, the tape is stopped as we savour the approach. If it's Guildford, we check that the local burger bar will be open for the standard milk-shakes after the concert (the best way of cooling down). Once parked, we join the queue and start recognising some faces. Again, avoiding hearing too much about any previous nights, we wait for the doors to open. Tee-shirts and programmes wait until after the concert as we get one last drink at the bar before the performance. We stand and pass comment on the back-up bands ('not as good as 'Yen'', or 'whatever happened to 'OMD' (!!)'). That over, the cheering starts, and as the lights dim we look across at the faces of the new attendees we have brought along, as the concert starts in earnest.