ISSUE #2

Why do gigs start so late anyway?
Suppose you'd decided to see a lm or a
play or some sports event tonight, and it
didn't start till 10pm. If you nished work
at 6pm, that would give you four hours to
kill, which is a big chunk of time even if
you did get some food rst and then spent
the remaining couple of hours in the pub.
Or, if you were in London over October,
you might have lled the hours by
visiting one of the galleries that stayed
open late as part of a programme called
Lates. But most people don't want to have
to hang around killing time, which is why
lms, plays and matches start at 7pm or
8pm.
Gigs, though, are a whole other thing; it
has become accepted that they begin late.
And "late" has been getting ever later in
the last couple of years. The support act
might wander onstage at 8.30pm - 9pm is
more common - and if the main band
show their faces by 9.30pm, you're lucky.
Chances are, though, it won't be 9.30pm;
it'll be 10pm or later. At one show I
attended Brian Molko of Placebo was still
soundchecking at 10:45pm by my watch,
and when Guns N' Roses made a
comeback of sorts in 2006, their
Hammersmith Apollo gig began at 11pm,
and ended two hours later, well after the
last tube, leaving their immensely longsuffering
fans with a choice of the night
bus that didn’t exist or an astronomically
expensive taxi ride. And I don't even need
to mention (but will anyway) the
tardiness of rappers, which results in
performances that don't kick off till the
milkman has started his round.
even start till 2am. Go to bed before
dawn? What do you take him for? Chris
Martin? Purple haze must have been about
the colour of the bags under his eyes. It’s
probably what nished him off. No
autopsy needed here thank you very
much.
But what about the punters who've been
shufing around a venue for three hours,
waiting to see whoever they've forked out
£20+ for? Obviously, it suits venues when
shows run late, because the bar spend
increases proportionately. But it wouldn't
have been the venue's fault that Mr Molko
didn't get it together to do a soundcheck
till 10:45pm, or that Axl Rose lives in a
parallel universe where factors like
getting home afterward don't gure. I was
once at a Damien Rice show - at
Wolverhampton’s civic hall, no less -
where Rice, whose audience is made up of
once-a-year suburban gig-goers who rely
on trains that nish at 11.30pm or
thereabouts, didn't show himself till after
10pm. How I chuckled to myself during
the performance that all these good
looking young people would be stranded
in Wolverhampton of all places, God help
them. And how lucky I was to have a short
walk home. How annoyed was I later, I got
home to discover I’d left my front door
key in my jacket at the venue and was
locked out. I remember thinking as I
scurried back to the civic and found it
shut. Thanks Mr Rice, couldn’t you have
at least played a longer set, nob.
In the mind of somebody, somewhere, it's
edgy to start late and nish later. Kiss,
after all, wanted to rock'n'roll all night
(and party every day, which raises the
logistical question of how they ever found
time to write songs or, in Gene Simmons'
case, meet the 3,000 women he claims to
have notched up) [head scratch].
Prince's notorious after-show gigs don't
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