On Tour For DUMMIES

A Fans Guide To Being On Tour

 

HOLIDAYS

 

Where do I start with this one? I often get asked, “Why do you want to see a band more than once?” or, “Why do I do it?” Well, the answer to those questions is very simple, “Why not?”

For example, it’s only the same as someone buying a Season Ticket at a football club, why go every week when you know that you’re only going to lose. Especially if you’re a Walsall fan. No one ever questions their loyalty to their team, although, if you’re a Walsall fan it’s your sanity that should be questioned.

Seeing a band play live is a very visceral thing. You can’t divorce yourself from the fact you’re in a room, with complete strangers, all feeling the same thing, for the same reason.

That the stranger seating or standing next to you is about to become a lifelong friend. Maybe even a lover, or future husband or wife.

It’s a bit like asking “Why climb a mountain?” You know, without doubt, that is the most redundant question ever posed. If you’ve ever seen a mountain, you’d know why you have to climb it, it is an act of pure instinct, just like an infant sucking their thumb.

When it’s your favourite band, you want, you need, you must, see them more than once. Having their Rock N’ Roll circus roll into your town isn’t good enough, you want it to never end, you want them to never leave, but they do, just like Ye Olde Travelling Minstrels, they move on and leave you behind to wait for the next travelling minstrels.

The only problem is that the next travelling minstrels aren’t as good, they aren’t your travelling minstrels, so you either wait for your travelling minstrels to return, or you run away and join their Rock N’ Roll circus, if only for a week or two. 

For me, it’s more than that, it’s about being on tour, which makes it more than just seeing a band, it becomes more about seeing the land (that rhymed, write it down quick, I’m a poet ay I?).

For me, there is another side, it is my holiday. Yes, you read that correctly, for me, I’m on holiday. Let me try to explain how it works.

I do not know you, but I’m going to guess you did this with your annual holiday. You worked hard. You saved hard. You then decided to fly to some far-flung destination “where the weather is much better and the food is so much cheaper.” Without giving a second thought to your carbon footprint. *

Where you lay on a beach for two weeks getting tan lines next to places that no one is ever going to see anyway, which you could have done down your local high street tanning salon saving yourself a small fortune while helping a local business in the process.

Really, who are you trying to kid? Who exactly is going to see those tan lines anyway? Anyone intimate enough to see those tan lines is going to be seeing more than those tan lines, so why spend all that money creating them? You thought that through didn’t you. Fuck’s sake.

And when you finally arrived at those far-flung places. Did you interact with the locals? Did you visit their museums? Art Galleries? Places of cultural interest or value? Their markets? Their local shops? Did you try any of the local food or drink? Did you even bother to try to learn some of their language, even if was only “Yes, No, Please and Thank you”?

No. No, you didn’t, I’m going to tell you exactly what you did when you went to that far-flung place of beauty and interest that you coldly ignored.

You found a street, a street which is probably older than any street in the UK, full of bars, fake British pubs, selling British beer, selling British food, showing Sky Sports and that was the limit to your interactions with the people and the culture of that far-flung place you worked so hard and saved so much to travel to, which you completely ignored for two weeks while you got drunk, fat, and sunburnt.

So next time you ask why I do it, maybe you should ask yourself that very same question.

In the meantime, I’m going to runaway and join the circus, if only for two weeks.

 

* The Motors, “Airport” from the album “Approved By The Motors” (1978)

 

Noggin xx