I think it must be seeing all these youngsters thrashing around with their mud-splattered six-strings that inspired me. Either that, or my dodgy back is making it increasingly hard to cope with holding the very considerable weight of a Les Paul (a Tele is much lighter, as some of you may know.)
The number of music festivals these days is incredible and even us oldsters get sucked into the frenzy. last week we went to the Hop Farm do (just one day of it - can't go too mad you know) and this weekend it's a similar dabble with Lounge on the Farm. A slightly dangerous one this as it's close to home and is heavily populated by local teenagers determined to commence/continue their "experimentation" with drink/drugs/sex. As a responsible adult, does one report back to their not-entirely-unsuspecting parents or adopt a "what happens on the Farm stays on the Farm" approach? I think only if serious physical (or emotional) harm seems likely should one take the former line. We were once young too. Or so I'm told - I can't remember. And then in August we're off to Cropredy again, a slightly different kettle of fish where our presence actually reduces the average age.
In the old days, a lot of these festival things were free. How times change. You don't get much change out of £200 for a ticket for the full duration at a lot of these picnics and once there, it is very easy to get through eye-watering amounts of dosh on programmes, t-shirts, beer and organic vegeburgers (alright, not me personally on this last one but you take the point.) You could have a week on the Costas for this outlay, with cheaper beer and less mud.
In fact the whole economic model of the music business has been turned on its head in recent years. It used to be the case that the money was made out of records: playing live generally made a loss but was considered part of the marketing budget for the records. But now that recorded music is almost free, it's lucky for the music biz that they can make serious money out of live performance. This is because people are now prepared to pay huge sums for concert tickets. This is partly explained by the wider demographic of gig attendees nowadays. When I first started gig-going, you wouldn't see anyone over 21 in the audience whereas now those of us who are (much) closer to receiving our bus pass than our key to the door are a common sight, and we have more money than the kids. But then there's plenty of them too, aren't there? It's a bit strange.
No point me telling you that my first gig cost 8 shillings (that's 40p to you, spotty) as a lot of time and inflation has passed under the bridge since then. But think about this: when the Who headlined a one-day festival at Charlton in 1974, the tickets were £4. And it was a strong line-up. I can't remember exactly what an LP cost then but it was more than £2. For our one day at the Hop Farm, the tickets were £70 each and, with reasonable objectivity, I can say it was not such a strong line-up as the Charlton bash (e.g. the Who were at their peak in '74. The Hop Farm version of the Eagles are some way past theirs.) Let's say the average cost today of a CD (for those who actually still buy them) is £10. So a live:recorded ratio of less than 2:1 has become 7:1. And I bet you that this would be reflected, albeit to a lesser extent, in a comparison of concert ticket inflation vs. RPI over the period. Incredible, no?
And it's not just concerts: things like football matches have gone the same way. it seems that the nub of it is that "things" have become a lot cheaper but "people" a lot more expensive. The good news is that I can get a Telecaster for about the price of a family day out at the Hop Farm festival. The cost of a family day out to see the Who in 1974 would have paid for a couple of sets of strings and a plectrum or two. Seriously. It's a funny old world, isn't it?
See you at the beer tent and watch out for the brown acid!
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