I live in the sleepy south west and usually see live bands in concert halls/venues, which hold several thousand people at most. I love small intimate concerts in pubs and town halls best, where there can be just a small/medium crowd.
Last year, I saw AC/DC at Wembley, with a friend, who knows London well. This meant us getting an overnight stay in a hotel before coming back the next morning.
Although pricey, I did not mind the expense, but found it a lot of travel/faff just for a couple of hours’ music.
Does anyone else find travelling to large venues a lot of work?
I’ve been to my fair share, both alone and with others, at different places. I agree it is a great atmosphere and show, but for some reason I’m a lot less peoply than I used to be. The thought of being in amongst that many people trying to get in and out gives me stress and anxiety.
The logistics are fine as long as I have a plan, and when the show is on and there aren’t crowds of people, I’m okay.
Fortunately i live near lots of venues of varying size, from small clubs to football stadiums and saw Bon Jovi at The Molyneux a 20 minute bus ride away. Been to lots of festivals like Donington Monsters of Rock and never minded the crowds. Have travelled to cities/towns like Manchester, Hanley , Birmingham etc to see bands i really like a couple of times on the same tour as well as seeing them locally. It’s never been a problem to me if i love the band. nearly always trevelled there and back the same day, but nowadays i stay overnight cos i’m old!
A group of us booked to see Foo Fighters at Wembley back in 2015… Unfortuately Dave grohl broke his leg shortly before thus postphoning the show!
When it was rescheduled at the MK Bowl i was quite relieved because i don’t really like London… The thing is even though further to travel it worked out cheaper to drive and pay for parking… Tickets were £75 each which i was happy to pay because i was a big fan at the time…
Had a girl’s night a couple months ago and went to go see glass animals at the O2 Arena in London. Getting there was alright for the most part, just ended up taking the train.
Getting back was a whole other issue.
Partially my fault because I refused to leave early (long time fan and GA are my all time favourite band) but we ended up having to get the underground, which was packed. What’s worse than a packed underground? An underground packed full of drunk people
It was worth it though, the show was fabulous, the singer was fabulous and we all had a fabulous night out. No where near as good as when we saw them at a small venue before they were big
We go to Bournemouth quite a lot. Only about an hour and fifteen minutes for us we stay over for the night. Going to see Cliff Richard next month then ABC the following month and hoping to see Kraftwork in June next year.
Was talking to a maintenance engineer at work this morning, and we had similar experiences of the same gigs in the 80’s. He’d been to Deeside leisure centre in Wales a lot. It occurred to me that I live in a sweetspot for venues, from small clubs, theatre sized, a couple of arena sized one’s and football stadium’s all within 10 minutes to an hour away.
If only they were as cheap as they were in the 80’s!
The stories you must have from doing that and going to so many different venues in that line of work!
I/we were on business in Milwaukee for a long stretch when the music festival took place so it was a happy accident that I/we were able to go to it as we were in town for the better part of 4 straight months there on business.
At first they flew us up and back each week but my company grew tired of paying for all those flights so they began making us stay for two weeks in a row.
Before that I’d never heard of that music festival there. It was a blast though.
It’d be interesting to go and enjoy. We spent so much time prepping and doing shows there wasn’t really time to get around. But for events like that they did a good job.
