Oct 8: When is a World Tour not a World Tour?

What do you imagine is meant by the term "world tour" when a band decides to undertake one...

Some only visit a couple of continents. Few cover more than three, and some only visit one...

Some people are on permanent tour, such as Bob Dylan's Never Ending tour.

Who has played the most concerts? Here's a REDDIT list... I wonder what the real answer is...

Sep 25: Still potty and spotty - and award winning

Back in May, I posted about the Canadian band Angine de Poitrine.

Their Vol 2 album has been winning prizes, and they have been wowing crowds at festivals across the USA all summer.

They are coming to the UK in October for a string of sold out shows.

Here they are on Jimmy Fallon.

Sep 20: Coming Home

Bruce Dickinson has had a life well lived, with plenty of lows as well as highs. He has beaten throat cancer - a gruelling treatment, and fences internationally.

He is also a trained/qualified airline pilot 

On some Iron Maiden tours, the band used a jumbo jet which was piloted by Dickinson, called 'Ed Force One'.

In this song from 2010 he describes the experience of piloting his plane and looking down at the Earth below:

Credited songwriters: Stephen Percy Harris / Bruce Dickinson / Adrian Frederick Smith

Curving on the edge of daylight
'Til it slips into the void
Waited in the long night dreaming
'Til the Sun is born again
Stretch the fingers of my hand
Cover countries with my span
Just a lonely satellite
A speck of dust in cosmic sand

Warning: A rude word occasionally...

Sep 17: Politics and music

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Desmond Tutu

There has been quite a bit of coverage of Ed Sheeran's upcoming tour and political issues because of statements made by a support act called Macklemore, and decisions made by other acts to pull out of the tour.

This piece explores the issue of keeping silence over political causes as a musician.

Quite a few musicians are very open about their political views of course. A Roger Waters live show is very political in nature, and not without controversy...

Jun 17: Ticket Stub #10: Rush

This was the last concert I attended by Rush.... I thought for ever... and certainly the last one with Neil Peart.

It was the Time Machine tour. They played the whole of 'Moving Pictures' including the Camera Eye, which they had rarely played live. They repeated that in one of their shows at the Kia Forum with Annika Nilles on drums.

Half way through the concert I decided to relocate to a new place at the back of the arena which had spare seats as my view was affected by other people. I saw several other people then having the same ideas as the concert progressed. 

This was one of the final concerts that I also parked at a pub in the Sheffield area of Attercliffe called the Cocked Hat. This was a super pub in an area which had quite a few dodgy ones. It no longer exists...

To the left of the entrance was a bar billiards table - you don't see those in pubs very often... I loved having a few games of this with a nice pint of Landlord. Through the back were lots of small boothed seating areas - a great place to sit. From there, you would walk past the stadium built for the World Student Games, where I saw U2, and which was visited by bands such as the Rolling Stones.

Similarly, it no longer exists. Using Street View you can go back to 2008 when it was still there...

After that it was past hotels and restaurants to get to the Arena and the Don Valley Bowl, where cricket was played.

Across the car park from the arena - now called the Utilita Arena - is a pub called the Noose and Gibbet Inn, with an interesting pub sign.

The man hanging outside, looking down at passersby with a mournful expression on his pale, lifeless face, is the notorious highwayman Spence Broughton. He was sentenced to death in 1792 after robbing a mail boy delivering the post to Sheffield and Rotherham. A judge, wishing to make an example of him, ordered that his body be hanged on a gibbet on Attercliffe Common and left on display there as a macabre warning to others. His corpse was left to decompose within a cage and it became a ghoulish visitor attraction, reportedly drawing 40,000 people within the first few days of its appearance close to the road between Sheffield and Rotherham.

Source

My friend Rob Hindle has written a poem-sequence about the incident - details from Longbarrow Press here.

Apr 4: Guest blogger John Medd #1: Lost Venues

If you have been following the development of the blog - thank you - you will have seen that I've been welcoming guest posts from people sharing their own musical memories. Carl Lee has already provided me with a wide range of posts and more are scheduled in for the months ahead. Several other people have also promised me a post.

This is the first guest post by John Medd, who has kindly sent me some thoughts on some of the music venues we have lost over the years (and continue to lose on a monthly basis).

Imagine a time when there were no arena gigs. Imagine a time when the only way to buy a ticket for a gig was to go to the box office. And imagine a time when town halls, ‘the college circuit’ and Top Rank ballrooms accounted for almost half the country’s music venues. Welcome to the 70s (& 80s).

When a band went on tour 50 years ago they jumped in the van, got the road atlas out and set off in the direction of the nearest transport caff. Or, more latterly, a Little Chef. They would then traverse Blighty’s highways and byways – maybe picking up the odd hitchhiker on the way – and, in no particular order, hope and pray the van wouldn’t break down, that there’d be more than one man and a dog turn up to see them and, at the end of the night, the promoter would pay them. Actually, in respect of those last three bullet points I don’t think an awful lot has changed between then and now.

But all of the above was contingent on the band finding both a venue that wanted to put them on in the first place and also had a budget to pay them. 

One group of venues that provided bookings were the Student Unions in Universities and Polytechnics around the country.

However, that’s another story for another day.

Today’s blog post is all about the venues that were once the backbone of any tour but have since withered on the vine: venues that got repurposed, reimagined or, most likely, razed to the ground. 

As my point of reference, I dug out one of my old scrapbooks (remember them?) and found some bygone tour dates for an up and coming band called Girl. 

They were managed by Don Arden (infamous father of Sharon Osbourne) and signed to the Jet record label. 

In 1980 the glam five piece had put out a couple of singles and just released their debut album 'Sheer Greed'. 

They’d already supported some big hitters and in April/May were embarking on their first serious UK jaunt as headliners. (Within two years they’d split up; their guitarist Phil Collen jumped ship to Def Leppard - where he remains to this day. Phil Lewis their flamboyant singer – who at the time was dating Britt Eckland – is now the frontman with LA Guns.) 

But let’s go back and see where they went in that Spring of 1980. and what has happened to those venues since.

The Marquee Club, Soho – for a London band the Marquee would have made a great homecoming/end of tour gig, but Girl decided to kick things off there. The club, which had moved from Oxford Street in 1964 to the location most people remember on Wardour Street, shut its doors for the last time in 1988 after it was deemed unsafe (they blamed a quarter of a century of noise vibration!). It’s now prime West London real estate in the guise of Soho Lofts and a poncy restaurant. I knew the club well and still miss it dearly.

Then off to Wales and the Troubadour Club in Port Talbot - a basement dive under the Aberafan Shopping Centre. In 2024 after being frozen in time for more than 30 years, they fumigated it and opened it again very briefly for a photographic exhibition featuring many images of the club taken in its heyday.

Malvern Winter Gardens – shut in 1990

St. Albans City Hall – now the Alban Arena.

Leeds Fforde Grene – A pub gig! Alas, it closed in 2004 and is now an ethnic supermarket.

Middlesborough's Rock Garden – in a four-year window it was an intimate little rock club home to punks and rockers alike. It closed later the same year.

Retford Porterhouse – I was there! Home of AC/DC’s first UK gig in 1976 – the owners shut up shop in 1980 and went on to open Rock City in Nottingham – a club I still frequent.

Cheltenham Town Hall – still open.

Blackpool Norbreck Castle Hotel – still open.

Sheffield Top Rank – now the O2 Academy albeit it’s been closed for the last couple of years due to the RAAC concrete scare.

The Boat Club, Nottingham – still open. Led Zeppelin played there. My son’s band Trippin’ Over Wah played there!

Bristol Locarno – from 1961-1998 it was a hotbed for live music. People still talk about Bowie’s gig there in ’72 with The Spiders. Owned by Mecca it was demolished in the late 90s with the O2 now sitting on part of the old site.

Cardiff Top Rank - from 1963-1982 it played host to everyone from The Beatles to U2. Demolished in 2005.

High Wycombe Town Hall – still open.

Newcastle Mayfair – a 1500 capacity ballroom built in 1961. All the great and good played here (The Who, Pink Floyd, The Clash). It was demolished in 1999.

Bradford University – still open.

Exeter Routes – now a Pentecostal Church.

Gravesend Woodville Hall – still open.

Manchester Polytechnic – the campus at Cavendish House was closed in 1982.

Glasgow College of Technology – now Glasgow Caledonian University – no longer a live music venue.

Aberdeen University – the Gallowgate campus was demolished in 2002.

Dundee University – no longer a live music venue.

St Andrew’s University – still open.

Cleethorpes Winter Gardens – a venue whose name alone conjures up a period in time that’s long gone. Roxy Music, Free, the Sex Pistols; they all trod the boards there. It was also a renowned Northern Soul meet up. But the wrecking ball came a callin’ in 2007.

Wakefield Unity Hall – still open.

Abertillery Metropol Theatre - still open.

Folkstone Leas Cliff Hall - still open.

Rickmansworth Civic Hall – still open.

Dunstable Queensway – demolished in 2000.

West Runton Pavilion - a legendary coastal venue. I know Alan wants to say a few words about this place but I feel honoured to have been there before it was razed to the ground in 1986. 

So, of the 30 venues that Girl played on that tour, only 12 remain. 

60% of the venues have gone.

Forever. 

And with the odd exception (I’m thinking of The Marquee), you won’t even find a blue plaque where these proud clubs once stood. 

As someone who is passionate about live music and psychogeography this is a double blow. The erosion of culture and architecture is something we should all be worried about, not just musicians. With pubs too closing at an alarming rate, the number of venues available to up-and-coming bands is forever dwindling. 

The message couldn’t be clearer – support live music!

John Medd

John Medd is a blogger and photographer with an unhealthy obsession with the 1970s. When not writing about The Sweet over at Are We There Yet? he can be found taking photographs of puddles.

Thanks very much to John. 

I shall indeed be saying something about West Runton Club and am going to pay a visit to the site in a few week's time as there's an event I'm speaking at in the neighbourhood.... then I'll finish my piece on the venue.

Mar 20: Kebu - Urban Skies

Here's the title track of the new album from Finland's Kebu (Sebastian Teir) an electronic musician who uses analogue synths and produces engaging and melodic music. 

It was released today.

I have a signed copy of the CD on its way to me - posted by the artist themselves a few days ago. 

They have a major new tour coming up, but sadly the logistics of getting into the UK to perform were too great. Thanks Brexit...

There's some great tracks on the album, which can be previewed and ordered from the Bandcamp page here.

Update 21st March

My copy of the CD arrived from Finland this morning, carefully wrapped and signed by Kebu. It looks great and I will be listening to that today...

I like the details on which synthesisers and other equipment were used on each track, and I also love the cover art by Leo Nuutinen.

Mar 14: Taylor Swift's ERAS tour

In 2025, Taylor Swift brought her record-breaking ERAS tour to an end, having visited most of the world - with a few large geographical exceptions.... you can perhaps guess which they were.

 The ERAS tour visited the UK, and there's plenty of geography to be had in exploring the economic and environmental impact of the tour and associated music as well as the interesting cultural implications of the event: the demographics of a typical crowd etc. 

The tour was said to have a major impact on an entire country's economy when it comes into town.

Liverpool rebranded itself as Taylor Town.

The University of Liverpool hosted Tay Day, which was described as a "symposium for fans, students and academics to engage with the cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift".

Here's a resource I created at the time, and which may still be of interest...

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There were some other stories that made it into the news as well, including a perceived issue with homeless people in Edinburgh.

Now the tour is over, the legacy is worth exploring perhaps.

What will be the next big tour?

Mar 8: Heima

One of the finest concert films ever made was created by Sigur Rós in 2006 and released in 2007.

Heima means "at home". 

And home for the band, is Iceland.

This was a homecoming tour after a lengthy world tour.

The music was stripped back, and there were acoustic performances in a number of unusual venues.

The band undertook a series of free, unannounced concerts in iceland. they hauled 40-plus people round 15 locations to the furthest flung corners of their homeland for their debut venture into live film, to create something inspirational.

On their way they went to ghost towns, outsider art shrines, national parks, small community halls and the absolute middle-of-nowhere-ness of the highland wilderness, as well as playing the largest gig of their career (and in icelandic history) at their homecoming Reykjavik show.

‘Heima’ (icelandic for “at home” or “homeland”), truly, shows Sigur Rós as never before. whereas seeing the group live is normally a large-scale and sometimes overwhelming experience, making full use of lights and mesmeric visuals, ‘Heima’ was always intended to reveal more of what was actually going on on stage. it does this via long-held close-ups and a rare intimate proximity, without ever once breaking the spell.

Loosely based on a documentary format – and including personal reflections from the band – ‘Heima’ also serves as an alternative primer for Iceland the country, which is revealed as less stag destination-du-jour and more desolate, magical place where human beings have little right to trespass.

'Heima’ was directed by Dean Deblois, a long-time fan of the band and director of the Oscar-nominated animated feature ‘Lilo & Stitch’, using an Icelandic crew.

Watch a version of it here:

Where was the film made? 

This website lists where they say the filmed performances took place.

• MIKLATUN, REYKJAVIK: The largest of the concerts in question took place in this small park in Reykjavik city. Miklatun is better known locally as Klambratun and is also location of Kjarvalsstadir Art Museum. 
• ASBYRGI, HUSAVIK: A fantastic arena for a concert and everything else for that matter. Asbyrgi sits in a very peculiar depression in the landscape and offer excellent shelter from winds from particular directions. Surrounded by a half-moon shaped cliffs up to hundred meters in height this is one of the absolute must-stops in the country. 
• DJUPAVIK, HOLMAVIK: This was perhaps the most intimate of the concerts in question. Population of Djupavik is zilch, nill and not much there but an abandoned fish factory which has been partly turned into a summer hotel. This is very much off the beaten track of most travelers but that might appeal to many too.
• OLAFSVIK, OLAFSVIK: The tiny village of Olafsvik may not look or offer much but this was the location of one of Sigur Rósar concerts. The routes into town are very scenic and the magnificent, if disappearing, Snaefellsjokull glacier towers above.
• ISAFJORDUR, ISAFJORDUR: Isafjordur town is the largest place found in the Westfjords of Iceland and as such pretty lively. Straight across from the bay is the nature preserve Hornstrandir which is one of the very finest places in the country.
• SEYDISFJORDUR, SEYDISFJORDUR: A tiny village in the East of Iceland with majestic mountains formed all around it. This is the current summer stop of the only passenger ferry sailing regularly to Iceland.
• KARAHNJUKAR, EGILSSTADIR: This is way up in the highland close to where the huge Karahnjukar dam stands. Protesting the dam was one reason why they played here and funnily enough, next to a dam, totally without electricity.
• OXNADALUR, AKUREYRI: Oxnadalur valley is a spectacular valley you drive through on your way to or from Akureyri in the North of Iceland. Some of Iceland´s most jagged peaks join any traveler here for and below a river runs through it. This is also the birthplace of one of Iceland´s most famous poets.

Feb 23: OK, so... what do I do now?

OK, so Rush are expanding their 50 something tour to the UK.

I first saw them play live almost 45 years ago...

How much are the tickets?

Do I really want to go when Neil is not on the drum riser?

Will they fill in some of those gaps if these dates sell out and perhaps go to some better venues? Hmmm....

Answer to my conundrum...

You go onto the Rush pre-sale (code R50) and get yourself a ticket for the O2 at a 'reasonable' price - comparable with other tickets I've paid for this year, such as David Byrne in 2 weeks' time... more on that to come....

“We are thrilled to support the ‘Fifty Something‘ tour, celebrating a band whose music has resonated and inspired fans for generations, and to honor Neil’s extraordinary legacy as both a drummer and lyricist. Neil’s musicianship was singular. Compositions of intricacy and power that expanded what rhythm itself could express. As both drummer and lyricist, he was irreplaceable. Inimitable in his artistry, and unmatched in the depth and imagination he brought to the lyrics that inspired and moved so many, he profoundly shaped how fans connected with him and the band, giving voice and meaning to their own lives. As the band enters this new chapter, it promises to be truly unforgettable. We are excited to see how their new vision unfolds, and to hear this legendary music played live once again.”

Carrie Nuttall-Peart and Olivia Peart, Neil‘s widow and daughter.

And here's my ticket from when I saw them in 1983....

I had to pay more than £6 this time round...