Might As Well Go On Holiday

When did going to gigs become such a colossal pain in the arse? Seriously, when? I've never been to one that didn't require huge amounts of planning, organisation or luck to make the whole thing go as smoothly as possible.

It's that time of year when band's start thinking about next year, Pulp have reformed and will be performing, Foo Fighters are playing humongous shows, and Blink 182 are going on a big arena tour, all in summer of next year.

The main problem, as far as I can see, is that I don't live in one of the UK's main cities. I live in either Cheltenham or North Devon. The only time rock stars ever bother going to the Cotswolds is when they want to live there, and as for North Devon, well, I only go there because it's where my home happens to be. The main problem with both of them is that no gig is ever really less than an hour away in a car. You city folk don't know how easy you've got it.

So, as an example, say I want to go and see Arcade Fire at the LG Arena in Birmingham on 8 December. I have to buy a ticket for £31.25 for a ticket (including the booking fee). After this I need to arrange transport, and a place to stay (because Cross Country trains don't exist after 10 o'clock for some annoying reason). Transport to the arena will cost me £20 overall, and because I have no friends in Birmingham (or anywhere for that matter), accommodation will be around £50 at a hotel near the venue. That's £101.25 in total, for a Wednesday night in Birmingham, and that doesn't even take into account any food or drink. Would it not just be cheaper to go on holiday?

Well, why not go on holiday and go to a gig at the same time? Spain's Benicassim festival next summer would almost definitely have better weather than Glastonbury, or a Foo Fighters gig. The expense would be worth it for seven days away from Britain, which by July will probably have been run well and truly into the ground by Cameron and Clegg, and to top it all it turns out that The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys are headlining. Tickets are only around €36 a day. What more could you want?

I'm coming round to the idea rather quickly.

This Blog Post Will Change Your Life

Yesterday turned out to be quite an eventful day. Not for me personally, all I did was go to a lecture and prepare the worst presentation of my life. But as far as news goes, the day was action packed. There was an engagement in the royal family, which somehow warranted blanket rolling news coverage. God knows why, were BBC News 24 hoping that William was going to decide 'actually, I don't think I proposed in quite the right manner, maybe I should ask Katherine to marry me in front of all these TV cameras?'.

Unfortunately (for Apple, anyway), the engagement shoved aside all other news. So the announcement that The Beatles music is finally available to buy on iTunes was put further down the world news agenda.

Yes, you heard right, The Beatles' back catalogue can now be purchased digitally for the first time ever. After years and years of disputes between their record company, Apple Corps, and the computer giants. I have most of the Beatles' material anyway, and I definitely didn't pay as much for it as I would have to on iTunes, but that's not the point. One of the greatest bands ever have finally gone digital!

I do have one slight gripe though. Not so much with The Beatles, but more with Apple and iTunes themselves. They provided a little teaser for this big announcement by saying that yesterday would be "just another day. That you'll never forget." I can't help but feel that they exaggerated a bit too much. Yesterday was average for me, I did some work, went to a lecture, did some more work and went to bed. Maybe if Katy Perry had appeared on my doorstep in a tiny bikini with a bottle of champagne singing 'Love Me Do' then I would feel differently. But she didn't. So I don't.

If Apple thought putting the Fab Four on iTunes was so big, why didn't they resurrect John Lennon to break the news to us all? After all, they can do amazing things with technology. I'm sure no one would have forgot the day Lennon rose again, with it backing up his statement that The Beatles are bigger than Jesus. He could have done an acoustic rendition of 'All You Need Is Love' just to make it that extra bit memorable. I would definitely tell my grandkids about it then.

Anyway, with my issues with promotion aside, I appreciate that having the band available online is a brilliant move. After all, if you're trying to get into the band, their material is so vast that it is a real job to work out what to buy first. Having them on iTunes allows people to find what they want in much simpler terms.

However, I'm about to make the whole process even simpler by suggesting 15 songs that you should definitely download, or in other words, my favourites. Here they are:

• Taxman (from Revolver)
• Help! (from Help!)
• I Am The Walrus (from Magical Mystery Tour)
• She Loves You (from Past Masters)
• A Hard Day's Night (from A Hard Day's Night)
• You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (from Help!)
• Strawberry Fields Forever (from Magical Mystery Tour)
• Come Together (from Abbey Road)
• And Your Bird Can Sing (from Revolver)
• Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)
• All You Need Is Love (from Magical Mystery Tour)
• Revolution (from The Beatles 1967-1970 (The Blue Album))
• I'm Only Sleeping (from Revolver)
• Eight Days A Week (from Beatles For Sale)
• A Day In The Life (from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)

Acting Like Children For Media Gratification

I had to pinch myself this morning. I genuinely thought I had woken up in 1994. iTunes is telling me that Take That have Robbie Williams back in the band, and their latest single is at number 2 in the charts, and The Guardian is telling me that Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins has branded Pavement 'Sell outs'. If it wasn't for the fact that I found all this on my laptop which was wirelessly connected to the internet while listening to my iPod, I would be in the foetal position on the floor, sobbing to myself and wondering how to get back to 2010.

As far as Billy Corgan's comments go, the whole thing seems a little bit petty. After all, Pavement have been touring the world over the last 12 months as part of a reunion tour, while Smashing Pumpkins limp on, unrecognisable from the band that started out in 1988, partly due to the fact there's only one original member left. Partly due to the fact that the one original member doesn't appear to have aged very well.

Anyway, this got me thinking about some of the other rivalries in the music industry, all as petty as each other, but all very entertaining nonetheless.

Blur v Oasis
Starting with the most well known of musical bust-ups. 'The Battle of Britpop' really got out of hand rather fast. With Blur releasing 'Country House' on the same day as Oasis' 'Roll With It', the whole country was divided, the debate was so lively that BBC had the showdown as their top story on the 6 o'clock news. Of course, in reality, the two songs being bought by the public were both distinctly average, but Blur came out on top, placing at number one.

Despite this, Oasis emerged as the more popular band, with sell out shows at Knebworth and commercial success in America. Albarn would later recall that if someone in a house saw him walking down the street, they would open their window and start playing Oasis. However, in the present day it's a matter of opinion. Blur reformed and played some of the best shows of their lives, while Oasis eventually split up after years of the Gallagher brothers not really getting on. Swings and roundabouts seems to be an apt phrase to use.

50 Cent v Kanye West
Not so much the battle of Britpop, but the battle of Hip-Hop. In 2007, Kanye moved the release date of his Graduation album to go directly up against Fiddy's third effort, Curtis. Like a bloody good game of poker, Fiddy called Kanye and then raised the stakes, saying that he would retire from music if Kanye outsold him. Unfortunately, what could have been the greatest thing to happen to the music industry turned out to be nothing more than hot air. Fiddy retracted his comments soon after, probably when he realised Kanye was going to sell 250,000 more records than him. Hip hop still remains rubbish today.

Professor Green v Ryan Jarman and Kate Nash
This story changes depending on which side of the camp you ask. Apparently, Nash invited 'Pro Green' down to the venue she was playing in Newcastle, and after seemingly being up for it, he later changed his mind when he found out that her boyfriend, Ryan Jarman was with her. The aftermath was a war of words on twitter. Jarman told his followers what happened and may have also labelled the rapper 'arrogant' and a 'prick'. Seemingly embarrassed, Green proceeded to leave endless tweets apparently as they entered his head about how Kate Nash is silly and Ryan Jarman has crap hair etc. What appeared to be turning into a small war dissolved into nothing after it turned out Green was about to release his new single. After all, all publicity is good publicity.

I Wasn't A Teenage Girl In The Early 90s.

The modern age has made things so simple hasn't it? Things that used to be so long-winded and complicated, can now be achieved in a matter of seconds. For instance, if I had wanted to publish this 30 years ago, people would have laughed, they would say 'What is this? There's no place for this in the media, you little ballsack.' Today, I've managed to write and publish this for people to read without any sort of permission from a burly, moustached newspaper editor.

There's also buying tickets, how easy is that nowadays? You just look at a list of events on a web page, decide which one you want to go to, click, enter then amount of tickets, enter your card details and you're done. How can anyone involved in that process mess it up?

The answer is quite easily, if you've been involved in buying tickets for Glastonbury or Take That's latest tour you'll have realised that actually, buying tickets for gigs is nothing but a giant ball-ache, unless you enjoy sitting at a computer for four hours at a time pressing nothing but the refresh button. It might be what I do on Facebook on most days, but if there's something like a ticket to see Take That at stake, the intensity is nothing but overwhelming.

I should point out now that I didn't actually want to buy any tickets. I'm not ranting because I missed out on going. They announced new shows, so it's all fine. I actually couldn't care less about them, I wasn't a teenage girl in the early 90s, so I'll never cherish them. However, sitting at a computer for 4 hours trying to get tickets and seeing them appear on eBay straight away isn't really on. The system is clearly flawed, so I've thought of some alternatives to the current ticket buying/selling system.

1) Massive Treasure Hunt

Recreate the atmosphere of a small child's birthday party by hiding all the one million tickets in random places the length and breadth of the country. Of course, there will always be one person who really wants just one ticket, but is just a little bit too simple to find it, even with gentle hints from loved ones, but that's just natural selection. There are some flaws as well, like when the residents of Langtree notice someone in an SJM concerts shirt posting random pieces of paper into bushes as they walk down the street. We don't want it to be too taxing though, do we?

2) The Interview

This one basically speaks for itself. Simply send a CV and covering letter saying why you deserve to see your band to the given address. If you appear to be worthy of a ticket, you will be called for an interview to see if you are suitable for the concert. For example, If I want to go and see The Cribs at Bristol Academy, then I send off my application form that says 'My name is Matt, and I should go and see The Cribs because I have all their albums and know all the words to their songs and stuff.' Then I'll get summoned to an interview in Cardiff which I'll turn up to wearing one of my favourite Cribs T-Shirts only to be rejected by the panel because I wasn't confident under questioning. Bastards.

3) Anarchy

This one is basic. Simply place all the tickets available for the show inside the venue. Organise a time and date when people can claim them. Whoever manages to get a ticket from the pile and get out alive earns the right to go to the gig. Of course, security would have to be tight, but if anyone gets a little too greedy and makes away with 40 tickets, there would obviously be a sniper posted strategically to take that selfish creature out. Anyone who gets a ticket will have to go back through the box office and pay though, no matter how many broken ribs they suffer in the process.

Of course, there are other, less extreme alternatives, like simply putting different shows on sale on different days; or simply making sure that if there are a million tickets, you have the capacity to deal with one and a half million customers. But what fun would that be? I'd much rather go looking for a Take That ticket on a cold Friday morning at the top of Pendle Hill.