Hours before my overpriced illness truly set in, I was lucky enough to squeeze in a quick trip to the Roundhouse last night to see the Gorillaz. In fact, I think they're just 'Gorillaz', no 'the'. I can't quite get my head round that. I feel like they need an article. Aaaaanyway. Gorillaz at Roundhouse. And, despite fantasizing in my head about cameos from Snoop and De La Soul, and a selection of surely technically impossible holograms, neither of which remotely happened, it was still a brilliant night. Damon seemed happy - but it's not Blur, that's for sure, and I don't think I'll ever see him without desperately wanting him to launch into To The End. It was just a lovely night out, standing in a crowd jumping around to good music, feeling sweat forming on my back and everyone around me smelling of beer and fags - I stood there grinning like a loon, counting the weeks to Glasto and feeling as on top of the world as it's possible to feel when you know you have a second-hand sore throat brewing and your skin doesn't even look that amazing post the facial that caused it.The only other cloud within the silver lining went as follows. Halfway through the gig, a little over the limit on beer and a tad restless during one of the songs he didn't know, Luke got his phone out of his pocket. After a few seconds, I leaned over his shoulder to see what he was doing. He was checking football scores. It never fails to stagger me that, had that happened when we were going out, I would have felt a flood of 'OH MY GOD that is SO RUDE, he doesn't CARE about the gig we're at, he doesn't CARE about me, all he's interested in is FOOTBALL, he is such a DICK, we have to break up but god I really fancy him and he's quite nice really, what do I DOOOO? How confusing! Let's have a MASSIVE ROW and RUIN THIS OTHERWISE PERFECTLY BRILLIANT EVENING' and now I see him checking the football scores and I'm all like 'Oh, he's checking the football scores.'
Anyway, after he'd checked the football scores, I leaned over and asked him to see what had happened in the third leaders' debate, so he started loading up the news site, and this tall guy in his forties leaned over to me and shouted, "He needs to get a life." I shouted back, "It's my fault, actually - I asked him to check the news," and he said, "Well, you both need to get a life then." And I was, like, GROWL, but in real life I did nothing. And it really gave me a bad taste in my mouth. Don't get me wrong, I do understand, it's amazing when you're at a gig and you feel like everyone around you is as 100% into it as you are, and you lose yourself and it's heavenly. And your parade can definitely feel rained upon when people nearby are talking, or reading Marx, or snogging or constructing flat-pack furniture, because you want everyone to be loving it as much as you are, and a huge part of the beauty of modern music as opposed to classical is that, live, it is such an intensely emotional, shared experience between the band and the crowd. But really. At a concert where the music is deafening and every other person is holding a camera aloft, filming the whole thing for future YouTube infamy, making it easier to watch the proceedings on their tiny screen than twist your head and see the stage itself, one person looking down at their phone screen for five minutes is hardly a deathly buzzkill, is it? And what's sad is that tall-forty-something's comment to me was a bit. I found it hard to get back on my high after I'd been criticised by a complete stranger. So, 20 hours too late, I say to him, "Meh, shuddup." It's not a great put-down, I'll admit. Suggestions welcome.Right. I'm off for more illness-related moaning and grumpiness. Wishing you all bonne weekend.
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