The (mis)Adventures of ArtySandp - Queen 1978

So work has started on the misadventures book and I need to work out how I'm going to record progress. I'm producing the rough write ups for each adventure (remarkably similar to how they're written up on this blog) and then when I have a batch I'll being revisiting them, adding further information and reworking them to make sure that they work in a book format. Progress is therefore going to look erratic, some days the total may jump significantly other days hardly at all - you'll just have to rely on the fact that I am actually working away in the background! No word count at the moment but I promise it will be included in the next post (I believe it's around the 7k mark at the moment).

---

The first time I encountered proper live music I was 10. It was just before Christmas and the traditional evening’s entertainment for parents was being given by the school. As always various groups of children were to be wheeled out in front of the assembled parents in order to perform and prove that the school was delivering some culture into the lives of all us little darlings.

There was the guitar class, they were going to strum along to a tune - I’d been in the guitar group but left when I realised I’d have to practice.

There was the recorder class, they were playing some jolly French piece - I’d been in the recorder class but left because “London Bridge is Falling Down” was just too difficult.

There was the drama group performing a scene from, I believe, Stig of the Dump - I’d never even thought about joining the drama group, I had my standards.

And then finally there was a group of ne’er-do-wells dressed up as minstrels and singing Silent Night in German - surprise, surprise, this was the group I was in.

Before any of the audience turned up I was in the hall feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t want to be a minstrel (to be a minstrel you had to wear black tights instead of trousers, even at the age of 10 it just felt wrong). Whilst I was moping around the backing band set up, this was a band made up of boys from 'big school' (they must have been all of 14), and they took pity on me. The drummer called out “Hey Kid, Watch this!” as the they launched into some rock number, they managed to play for a minute before the headmaster ran into the hall, screamed at them to shut up and cut the power to the amps. It was only a minute but what a minute! It was my first taste of live music and I loved it!

The first concert I went to left a similar impression on me but to watch that concert I had to undergo what was, and still is if I think about it, the most embarrassing night of my life.

It was 1978 and me and some mates had tickets to see Queen play the final gig of the “News of the World” tour at the Empire Pool, Wembley. I was only 14 but I was a massive Queen fan, my first ‘proper’ LP had been “A Night at the Opera” and since then I had bought everything they’d recorded and read everything written about them from cash-in biographies (George Tremlett, Larry Pryce, etc) to criticism of them in Melody Maker and Sounds.

The concert was amazing, as my first ever concert it was doubling amazing. I’d never had such a rush of adrenalin - Freddie played his singing games with us, we cheered, he slagged off the British press, we cheered, he threw his tambourine into the crowd nearly taking someone’s head off, we cheered, he wore a sparkly leotard for the encore, to be honest we were less certain about that but we cheered anyway.

And yet there was a bit of me that wasn’t comfortable, a bit of me that didn’t want to be there, a bit of me that wanted to be somewhere quiet and private.

To understand my discomfort you need to rewind a week. My parents were as excited as I was about me going to the concert and they promised me a denim jacket! I’d never had any type of jacket before (duffle coat yes, jacket no) and now I was getting a denim one - I just knew I was going to look so cool, I had visions of me looking like some kind of tough guy as I turned up at the concert. If truth be told I was a bit concerned that it might look a bit too new but I figured I’d have a couple of days to rough it up and make it look lived in. Then things got even better, my parents said I could have some new jeans as well! I couldn’t believe my luck, jeans I knew I could easily wear in and now I knew I was going to look seriously cool.

Unfortunately that’s when the generational thing kicked in, the type of jeans my parents wanted to buy and the type I wanted to wear were at opposite ends of the sartorial scale and when I saw my parents’ definition of a denim jacket I just wanted to lay down and die. We had a blazing row in the shop but they had the money so I lost, we had a blazing row at home but it was their house so they won, we even had a blazing row just minutes before I left for the concert but they refused to let me go unless I wore my ‘new outfit’. “After all”, mum said, “this is your first concert you’ve got to look smart.”

If it had been any other group I wouldn’t have gone but it was Queen and I was crazy about them. And so I went to the concert, I put up with the laughter of my denim clad mates, I put up with the smirks from those standing around us, I even put up with the knowing smile from my mate’s dad who gave us a lift to the concert. And I enjoyed myself, even if I was wearing a freshly pressed, baby blue, brushed denim, safari jacket with matching jeans!

It was still a damn good concert and fortunately no photos exist of me in that outfit!

To make ArtySandp -
1) Take outfit on the left
2) Change colour to match trousers on right
3) Get a lanky 14 year old to wear it