overlap

So, four hours' sleep later and it was up and off to work. Not quite up to the standards of seeing Springsteen at Wembley, getting in at 3.30 and up at 6.30, though I'd barely left school then. And indeed, amusing novelty though these sort of late nights are, I'm not sure that it's a habit I really need to carry into my 40s as they start to loom over the distant horizon. Going back through my records I see that I saw Wolfsbane five times within two hundred yards of Tottenham Court Road tube, and I think that those trips to the Marquee were among my first experiences of travelling for gigs as a matter of course rather than as an occasional novelty, and other than The Grip they were the first band you'd not expect many people to already have heard of that really caught my imagination. Wolfsbane were of a generation that made a virtue of personal accessibility, and though I have more music by other bands, it's possible that their stuff forms my most complete collection of merchandise and memorabilia. I spent some time on saturday night watching the In Bed With Wolfsbane video, and that merely cemented the monster grin on my face that's been there most of the week looking forward to last night. On the back of that, it was a little disconcerting to see Steve Danger with a shiny chrome dome, and Jase must be really bored of the rogue Magic Number comparison too by now. Jeff looks more or less the same – same bass, same bouncy shoes. Eavesdropping on someone else's conversation, the guy said he'd have crawled over broken glass to get there, but at the same time kinda wished it wasn't happening. The suggestion was that it was like running into an ex, nice to be reminded of the good stuff but one of those things that might be better left to fade away rather than confront anew if raking it all up could be avoided. While I can relate to the broken glass, from where I'm standing it's one of those things that really needed a proper send-off, and laying it to rest in the same spirit of celebration and fun that made such an impression all those years ago is really the only fitting way. Of the three complete one-off gigs I've seen this year, I'd gladly have missed seeing that version of the Mega City Four if it meant Wiz were still with us, and the Jel show was beyond all known laws of probability, so this was the one that I'm both absolutely thrilled to have made it to, and had honestly never expected or even felt it realistic to hope to see. Cheers chaps, and if there's the slightest chance of a repeat, I'll see you there. Rock on!

Labels: gigs, rock, Wolfsbane