I’ve ummed and aahed about trying to write a series under this heading, but having gone to my first live concert of the year on Saturday, in Nottingham, something happened that made me decide that there might be some mileage in this.
Mrs TGG and I used to go to lots of live gigs both before and after we met in 1992. We even attended the same David Bowie and Prince concerts at Maine Road in Manchester two years prior to meeting. Gig-going came to an abrupt halt in 1998 as our first son arrived – the final show being Paul Weller in Manchester with a 6-month bump accompanying us. Our other son is almost exactly two years younger than his brother, and the two did lots of activities together as they were growing up. Particularly competitive swimming. This is a huge time commitment for swimmers and their parents with several training sessions per week and galas most weekends. Even more so when the parents get involved with coaching (Mrs TGG) and being Treasurer, Gala Manager, Announcer and Chair of two swimming leagues (me). That meant there wasn’t time to go and unwind by watching a band – not until the lads did their A Levels and retired (as many do at that age, other than the elite swimmers – and we had one of those at our Club).
Since 2017, we’ve been making up for lost time a bit. The enforced Covid break saw a massive pile-up of rearranged dates as well as some new ones we booked during that time. Somehow we avoided any clashes, and we did do three gigs in a week at one point. We have mostly been catching up with acts we know from the 80s and 90s. One exception was my lads and I going to see The Coral together – which was great. Most of the acts are well-known and so I couldn’t see what I could write about on here, but as I said something happened in Nottingham on Saturday.
I should also point out that we live in the south-east corner of Cheshire and we mostly go to see bands in Manchester, Salford, Buxton, Leek or Stoke-on-Trent. The concert we saw on Saturday, as I’ve mentioned, was in Nottingham. There had been a Manchester date on this tour, but it was at the Academy, which means standing up. This isn’t a problem when you’re 6′ 1″ like me, but Mrs TGG is at least a foot shorter and so she gets to see nothing. The days of me being able to lift her up for most of a Crowded House gig are long since gone (she’s not got any heavier, I’m just a lot more feeble these days). So Nottingham it was (with a night in a Premier Inn) at the Royal Concert Hall to see Belinda Carlisle supported by The Christians.
This one was for my my wife. She’d seen BC before, in around 1990, and we’d both seen The Christians at Rewind North a couple of years back. Before the gig, I made a comment about loving it if BC played a particular song, but that I wasn’t holding out a great deal of hope of hearing it. Oh, me of little faith.
Belinda (who I have to say was very good and had energy levels that belied her age) mentioned that she’d first played in Nottingham back in 1980 with the Go-Gos, supporting The Specials and Madness. And yes, she mentioned Terry Hall and the song he wrote with her band-mate Jane Wiedlin, a song apparently written by the two of them sending letters to each other. And then of course, she played it, to my, and clearly a lot of other people’s, delight.
The Christians were OK, rattling though their few hits, with Garry taking time between songs for a bit of banter and (so he said) to get his breath back. I correctly guessed that they’d round off with their version of Harvest For The World, which for me doesn’t really add anything to the Isley Brothers original. I did get a little concerned that they’d miss out my favourite of theirs, but when they “asked for requests”, this was the one that got shouted out by the audience.
We’ve got another concert later this week. I may write about that as well – I sort of feel I ought to now I’ve started this.
TGG
Wasting time in the study 
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