Blondie

This concert was very much of a disappointment, but to be fair to Blondie, I put the majority of the blame on the venue, not the group. There is a long history behind this concert, I would have been more than happy to go to the Apollo as ever, but as this is a Gut favourite group, it was agreed for some reason to go to Preston Guildhall, which is kind of half way, even though this meant I would have to stay overnight on the Fylde Coast. A sign of things to come occurred immediately on booking the tickets when I found to my horror that I had booked for PORTSMOUTH Guildhall. An easy enough mistake to make, especially as both concerts were on Sundays in November! A lot of sweating was done before I finally got the tickets exchanged. It was worth going, to see one of the great icons of late seventies pop, but circumstances on the night conspired against me too. Preston Guildhall itself is a "monstrous carbuncle,” a very unlovely, Eastern Bloc style late sixties plastic horror that reminds me unerringly of Polytechnic days. Even before the concert started I was therefore plunged into gloom. I was initially quite pleased that the tickets were standing, but this also gave way to disappointment as, unlike at the Apollo, it was flat, not "terraced" and thus although we weren't far from the front, it was my poorest viewing concert ever. The biggest disappointment though was reserved for the atrociously bad acoustics. The fact that it was much too quiet was a crime in itself, but the sound was muddy, flat, and totally lacking in any definition. I think the main blame for this must fall on the venue, but Blondie are a major group and should have done better, what with charging £27.50 per ticket. Anyway, there go my gripes - or the main ones! On the good side, it was a reasonable night out with some pints with Mr Gut. Also, Blondie played some, but not all, of their hits. Conspicuously missing were "Union City Blue" and "Picture This,” although to be fair they were still playing their encore when we had to leave to get the last train. There's not much to say about the rest of the tracks, they were adequately played but ruined by the acoustics. There was a fair amount of stuff I didn't know, but I've no idea whether this was old or new stuff as I only know "the hits.” The demographic of the audience was also not quite what I expected. I did expect it to be generally older, but this really was middle aged pop with a vengeance. Mark and I were easily within the younger half of the age range, and it was obvious that Debbie Harry had admirers older than herself in the seventies, not just schoolboys like me and Mark, and many of those older admirers were here tonight. As a consequence there were virtually no littil beauties to look at (apart from the one on stage), indeed it was often quite sad to see the many forty something women trying without success to look twenty years younger. All those minor points aside, there was only ever one fundamental reason for going to this concert and that was to see the lovely Debbie Harry, the afore mentioned late seventies icon, and this part of the concert didn't disappoint. Of course, one has to accept that she is now 58 years old, and technically old enough to be even my mother, but she looked very good for it, certainly good enough to remember when Blondie were in their prime and she was every schoolboy's favourite, including mine. I had a wry smile to myself mid way through the concert when I realised that every single bloke in the concert hall must have spent hours in their younger days fantasising about her. Just to think of all the hours and energies completely wasted. This concert was therefore very definitely well within my mission statement of seeing some of my childhood heroes in the flesh before they and I start pushing up the daisies. From this point of view it was an undoubted success, it's just a shame that we had to endure such a load of shit to achieve it! (24.11.03)