I have to say, I think that Ramones t-shirts look pretty good, and judging by the number of people I see wearing them, I'm not alone;
likewise, Guns N' Roses and Rolling Stones, whose t-shirts are a common sight.
But you won't see me wearing a shirt emblazoned with any of those bands' logos.
Not that I have anything against them, it's just that the band t-shirt is an
item of clothing that falls squarely into one of my quirkier thought processes.
We all have our foibles, quirks and eccentricities and mine
are as arbitrary and random as anyone else's: when it comes to music, and
especially music related apparel, my idiosyncrasies go into over-drive. At one
time I would not countenance wearing a band's t-shirt unless I had seen them
live: that has become relaxed a bit, but I still wouldn't wear one unless I
owned one of their records or had seen
them live. This is one reason why I don't own a Ramones, Guns N' Roses or Stones
t-shirt. Even now I would not wear a tour t-shirt unless I had seen the band on
that particular tour.
The flip side of these quirks is that when I go to a gig, I
like to get a souvenir, which invariably is a t-shirt. I don't buy programmes
or brochures, as these tend -in my experience - to be just an over-priced
collection of photos that I would take home and put in a cupboard, never to see
the light of day again. I wouldn't buy a badge as I rarely - if ever - wear them,
which just leaves the t-shirt. So I hover at the merchandise stand, dithering
over which design to chose, wondering if £20 isn't a bit steep, before deciding
that if I don't buy one, I'm going to wish I had by the time I get home. So I
buy one...in large, since experience shows that despite the fact that in most
things I am a medium, when it comes to t-shirts at concerts, the medium is too
snug and unlike buying a shirt in a shop, there's not much chance of exchanging
the item if it doesn't fit.
When you go to a gig you always see people in band related
clothes, and if I thought about it rationally, I'd expect an extension of my
eccentricity about what t-shirts I wear and when to be that I would only wear a
t-shirt related to the band I'd gone to see - assuming I had one. This only occurred to me when my daughter questioned why I wore a Big Big Train t-shirt to
a Frost* concert - answer, I didn't have a Frost* t-shirt (I do now).
But my quirks don't end at tour t-shirts. When it comes to
concerts, I've got some both about the gig itself and about live albums. I've
got a bit of a 'thing' about seeing a band if I'm not familiar with their
music. I went to see Marillion many years ago, just about the time they
released Fugazi and can remember
fretting that I wouldn't know the songs from that album as it had just been
released. I'm not quite as fretful now, although as I am going to see Anderson,
Rabin and Wakeman soon, I've been scrutinising the set lists from the gigs they
have already played to check that I'm familiar with what they are likely to
perform. The same goes for the Steve Hackett tour - I'm seeing him at the London
Palladium in May. Fans tend to be divided about the content of live shows: some
like to see bands play stuff they are familiar with, and I tend to fall into
that category, while others prefer newer material.
Then there are live albums. I don't actually own many - less
than a dozen of my 350 odd CD's are recordings of live shows - and as rule I
don't buy live albums by bands I haven't seen (yes, I know it's silly, but
that's how I am), the only exception being Simple Minds for some reason that I
cannot explain. But when a band release a live album from a tour that I saw,
then I am likely to buy it.
 |
| I was there. |
I'm not sure if this sort of behaviour of mine is harmlessly
eccentric or borderline obsessive (you decide), but it extends to needing to
get a programme at football matches I go to if one is available - although I'm
not as obsessive as someone I have heard of who went to a game, found that all
of the programmes had been sold, so went home without watching the match - even
if a great deal of time I just flick through them and store them away without
reading them properly.
In the days before it was possible to record TV programmes,
I would often avoid starting to watch a series if I thought there was even a
remote possibility that I might not be able to watch every episode. Even today,
with HDD recorders, catch-up services and the like, I pass up on some shows
because I expect them to disappear from terrestrial TV and transfer to a
channel I don't subscribe to after a season or two, meaning that I may not be
able to see every episode[1].
Sometimes I have a bit of a completer compulsion; I dislike starting something
and not being able to finish it, although sometimes that it unavoidable, such
as when a show is cancelled at the end of a season, having been left on a
cliff-hanger, leaving me - and the rest of the audience - high and dry.[2]
But, despite the quirks and eccentricities that I realise
that I have, there are a lot of people whose compulsions, obsessions and idiosyncrasies
are way, way more extreme. And for many people these quirks - which may begin
harmlessly enough, but end up escalating - are debilitating conditions that result
from 'rules' that they set themselves in how they live, be it where they sit,
what they eat and how they eat it, about how their home or their office is
organised - the list is endless, and so I must be grateful that my quirks are
(mostly) harmless.
I'm still not buying a Ramones t-shirt, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment