What is the best concert you have been to?
How can anyone who has been to as many concerts as I have possibly answer that question?! Virtually every concert I have been to has had highlights and I have seen pretty much all of the artists I have wanted to. I couldn’t choose a Top 20 of favourite concerts, but what I can do is give you a list of 10 moments that have stayed with me, because concerts are about moments.
- Showaddywaddy playing Under the Moon of Love in the first concert I ever went to at the age of 12 or 13.
- Huey Lewis and the News playing The Power of Love at the Hammersmith Apollo which was my first big venue concert.
- Fairground Attraction playing in Stoke on Trent in my first year at Polytechnic with Perfect being a massive singalong.
- Skin, a rock band who should have been massive playing the loudest gig I have ever been to at Keele University. Look but Don’t Touch was a real piledriver of a track. I think that’s where my hearing started to go!
- Taking Janet to the Pet Shop Boys concert in Manchester, our first concert together. We’ve since seen them four more times together, but when they played ‘our song’ Always on my Mind we both loved it.
- My first concert with one of my children was S Club 7 and S Club Juniors in Manchester. I loved the whole concert as much as Andrew and Reach raised the roof.
- Our first open air concert was Robbie Williams at the Milton Keynes Bowl and he was incredible. Singing along to Angels was an almost spiritual experience.
- As a writer for Subba Cultcha I had the opportunity to write about the Rambling Man festival, a rock, metal and prog two day festival, in 2017. My favourite moment was when Europe raised the non existent roof with The Final Countdown.
- The biggest concert I ever attended was The Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium with 92000 people. It was also the nicest atmosphere I have ever experienced. It was a day of love, acceptance and joy, the like of which I can’t imagine being matched. You Belong With Me was my favourite song of the night.
- Last year I won tickets for Janet and I to see Annie Lennox and Friends at the Royal Albert Hall. As well as seats seven rows from the front we also had a once in a lifetime opportunity to watch her sound check. For a music lover like me that was the most amazing privilege. At the sound check and the concert she played my favourite song of her solo career Walking on Broken Glass.
So there you have it. 10 moments from a life of concert going. I could easily have chosen 10 more and my concert going isn’t done yet! This year I am seeing Midge Ure, Lola Young, The Proclaimers, My Chemical Romance, Eddi Reader and Alison Moyet!! I will be adding those to my blogs. If you’re interested, and I don’t know why you wouldn’t be 🤣🤣 they can be found under the title Reflections of an ageing gig goer ! Happy reading and happy concert going.
Which is the best thing to do in your city?
Rochester is a city which has a huge amount of history to boast of. The fact that it doesn’t seem to boast about it means that apart from festivals it isn’t necessarily a crowded city. It’s less than an hour from London and it’s just over an hour from the Kent coast. As such, it’s a great day trip for anyone in the UK’s biggest city or for someone who wants to get inland when the crowds arrive.
The Castle is a Norman construction dating from 1087, the year of the Domesday Book. Rochester Cathedral became an important seat of Christianity in 644 whilst the current building was built between 1079 and 1238. There are two main festivals during the year, Sweeps Festival during the first weekend of May and Dickens Christmas during the first weekend of December. As the second one suggests, Rochester and Charles Dickens are inextricably linked and a walk down the historic High Street will be fairly similar to the walks Dickens himself took 150 to 200 years ago. So, if you enjoy history, culture and a less frenetic pace of life, come to Rochester!
What super power do you wish you had and why?
I suppose all of us at one time or another have wished to have a super power of some sort. When you are younger it would be encouraged by watching films like Superman, in my younger years, or X Men for my children. It’s often the obvious fantasy of flying or becoming invisible, although with my fear of the former the latter was more likely! (To be honest I was never a fan of superhero films and that’s never changed. I have never seen a single film from the Marvel universe and I really don’t feel like I am missing out.) The reason for having a super power are very often selfish, immoral or criminal as those who have the societal equivalent these days of being richer than Midas prove day after day. Every mega rich person that I can think of has gone over to the dark side and become a scourge of mankind not a saviour.
So, what would be my super power and, more importantly, how and why would I use it? My super power would be an ability to help those who really need it. I would instinctively know what they required and how to make sure it happened. So, who would be the people who really needed my help? Aye, there’s the rub as Hamlet said. I would be completely responsible for deciding who to help and who not to. What would I use to help me decide? Social media perhaps, or following them in their daily lives to see if they were the right person for me to help. Both are worryingly easy these days with the Internet and CCTV but it would be down to me to use whatever evidence I found. Then, it would come down to personal prejudice. Would I help someone who disagreed with me on fundamental issues? Almost certainly not. What about if the help they needed would make a massive contribution to their local community by concentrating on those who society ignore? In that case, could I ignore their views? Well, who is to say that mine are better? What would happen if in helping others they also made themselves much richer? Would that change their basic nature over time with the human instinct to be selfish? All these questions would be taken into account and to be honest I don’t want to be the one to make those decisions. If it’s all the same to you I will leave the super powers to other people who are more self assured. However, more self assured people tend to be more dangerous in whatever field they work in so perhaps people like me would be better for the world. Who am I to make those decisions though? That brings us back to the start! On balance I am really glad that super powers are firmly in the realm of fantasy.
What’s a mystery from your own life that you’ve never solved?
There aren’t any obvious unanswered questions from my own life. Lots of what ifs like everyone else as you look back at different events but no family skeletons hanging in any cupboards! My great mystery is the greatest mystery of all. I have been a religious believer, an agnostic and an atheist at various times in my life. It’s something that I was totally convinced about in my teens and twenties and something I was sure was false in my thirties and really from then onwards. Losing my father just as I was going to Japan and then my best friend six months later ended my certainty and since then I have been variously a firm non believer and a questioning non believer.
I am fascinated by the programme Pilgrimage on the BBC, which is probably one of the best recurring series of the last 10 years. In that programme, people from different faiths and people without faith follow Pilgrim trails in different countries, learn about each other and reflect on their own beliefs. It is in depth, challenging and supportive and I always come away from the series questioning my own beliefs or lack thereof. I would be really interested in going on a retreat and may well do because I wonder if it’s in that setting that I might hear that still small voice of calm. I may not hear anything, but even if I don’t I know I will benefit hugely from leaving this increasingly unpleasant and unsettling world we live in behind even if it is just for a few days.
List the people you admire and look to for advice…
I only look to one person for advice, my wife. She is the only person who really knows me and what’s best for me. Anyone else who offers advice gets a polite nod and if I think it’s possibly useful I will consult Janet. Having a group of people who offer advice is confusing and unnecessary as far as I am concerned. I’m all for streamlining the process and by relying on one person for advice I can do that.
When I was younger I took advice from friends and family, and the result was a total mess! They were offering advice to me based on the person they thought I was rather than who I actually was because I was presenting a mask to society in order to try and fit in. The real person is really only known to my wife and that’s the way I intend it to stay. I don’t need advice from any other source and, in general, I don’t need friends in the way I did when I was younger. That’s just as well as life has caused us to drift apart and lose touch, except for Christmas cards in a few isolated cases, so maybe I am trying to make the best of the situation. It’s sometimes nice to reflect on times, places and people who I once knew, but I am aware that in probably 90% of cases they would be no more than sociable and polite if we were to meet up because we would, in all likelihood, mean very little to each other after such a long time apart.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 