Welcome To Karma! Magazine

Written by Sarah Murnane

There are few times in your life that you feel the true excitement of going to a secret gig. I feel that one of the few joys left in music is an artist’s ability to circumvent the expectations of the audience, perfectly achieved with a surprise intimate gig. Foggy Notions, the promoter for My Bloody Valentine’s headline gig in Ireland, posted the album artwork for ‘loveless’ and sold tickets for an event simply titled “A Live Event”. The event sold out in seconds with the obvious rumour that the band would play a small off the cuff intimate gig ahead of their show that weekend. 

Cut to me standing outside the venue queueing, freezing cold, but bouncing off the excitement of the event and audience. The gig was in The National Stadium, a small boxing venue which holds around 4,000 people and that is occasionally used for concerts. It took a lengthy hour to make it inside, but the pre-gig jitters kept me warm and as the audience got in position, it was pretty exciting. The band came onstage and I soon realised what this gig was: I paid forty euro to watch one of Ireland’s greatest bands rehearse. 

The gig was absolutely, unfortunately, average. Multiple songs were plagued by interruptions due to gear failing or the band miscalculating their timing. The band were tight on stage, once they managed to get a song going at least. There were repeated and frequent interruptions to songs as Kevin Shields, the guitarist and vocalist, had issues with his in-ears and hearing the track. Every time he stopped a song I observed an increasingly panicked sound engineer pressing buttons, running up and down the sound board looking like he wanted the floor to swallow him. While this was initially entertaining, it did grow tiresome. 

I was in the privileged position to be quite close to the front of the stage on Shield’s side. Where I counted a total of twenty-five different guitars. That is nearly a different guitar for every song. I will not sit on my high horse and claim to be more knowledgeable about music than a clearly exceptionally nerdy musician, but this just seems excessive. It appears that My Bloody Valentine have departed from their humble beginnings as loud, grungy twenty year olds and graduated to nerdy, fussy, middle-aged Gen-Xer’s. Despite this, the setlist was excellent, a classic comeback setlist of old and new, with a deep cut thrown in at the opportune moment. 

I think the issue with these reunion gigs is the reasons why people are doing them. As I walked home from the gig I mulled over one thought: why are the band playing these shows? The gig was poorly rehearsed, no one particularly looked like they were having a good time and the interaction with the audience was minimal to zero. 

Some artists have fully embraced their place as a legacy act; take Green Day for example. They tour regularly but never play their newer songs despite continuously producing new albums every couple of years. Green Day knows that no one wants to hear their new music when they come to a concert, the audience wants to hear the radio hits, jump around and leave feeling satisfied. The band maintains a steady income and it seems obvious that the band enjoys the experience also. 

My Bloody Valentine do not appear interested in this status, and want to be seen as any other band or a band still actively producing music; yet they never release any or play together. From a cynical point of view these new run of gigs could be seen as a way to capitalise on their legacy success and make some extra money through touring; as we all know record sales do not stretch as far as they used to. 

Personally, my optimistic side always wins. Despite the issues with the performance, when you watch a group of people who have been playing and working together creatively for so long, it does create something special. There is a comfort in the thought that although this group produced extremely influential and groundbreaking work, they are still a band, just like all other bands. The guitar is out of tune, someone has to count out loud while looking at each other to stay in time, and the drummer has to make up the ending to a song after everyone forgot how long the outro of a song was. There is a beauty in the ordinary and haphazardness of a group with such anticipation messing it up a bit. The moral of the story is: never trust your sound engineer and twenty five guitars is effete even for Kevin Shields.