This thing of ours..

[jack white]

no, not the mafia.

i'm in the midst of an existential malady - along with a sizeable percentage of the population: i'm currently now 2hours in a queue for Adele tickets.
help me.
i won't even be going to the concerts. if i get tickets they'll be for the women in my life. not that i have anything much against Adele, mind.

it's just, what is it that causes this phenomenon? why do we rush to go listen to someone sing? why am i sat here? there's distinct lack of rationale at play.
i'm typing this in a really tiny window so i can see the ticket pages tick over on the other parts of the screen.

i guess i'm asking, is there some scientific explanation that causes this? easy to blame it on love i suppose. personally i wouldn't have any interest in it if it was just for myself (& i can imagine the race for spiritualized tickets causing the same pandemonium - more's the pity probably!).
i dunno. it's a perplexing phenomenon, no?



worse still, i really need to go to the bathroom..

[heisenberg]

Bless you. I admire your dedication to your other half for going through this. I think even at a gig of my favourite bigger bands, you wonder why you put yourself through it. The agony of trying to get a ticket, the booking fee (what even is this?), the always stressful debate of either driving to the show and trying to get somewhere to park without being scandalously ripped off, or go and having a drink but being beholden to public transport and possibly having to leave the show early. Then there's some gigs where you almost have your human rights violated by security having waited outside for ages to get in, just to get shafted for an overpriced watered down drink or two in another massive queue. At some gigs you look around the crowds and see people standing talking all the way through the show or acting like total inconsiderate idiots. But then of course the music kicks in, and you remember why it was all worth it.

Within reason I go to certain lengths to get tickets/ buy a limited edition record/bid on eBay for something rare. I always have a cut-off point, though. I don't go crazy over any artist, and I don't think I'd queue outside for hours in the December rain for 99% of artists, let alone Adele. I honestly believe that after the agony of waiting so long and paying a fortune for Adele tickets, a large percentage of people who go to these shows will turn up absolutely shit-faced, act like clowns talking all the way through the performance (ie the new album), then will make a total show of them self when Someone Like You kicks in, standing up to join in every word with that drunken off-key karaoke sincerity, with added weepiness over the bastard who dumped them years ago, whilst the poor other half who they're with now (and who drove them to the concert) remains seated, sober and perfectly gentlemanly, musing on how much football games he could have went to for the cost of one concert.

Like yourself, I've nothing against Adele. But I really don't understand the hype either. Has the world gotten so safe and bland that people are embracing this kind of thing as the biggest musical release of all time? I kind of don't get it.

Sometimes I'm so grateful that Spiritualized aren't huge.