Concert seats

[Philly Q]

Seating for me...

I used to enjoy standing when I was younger - but only when I was leaning on the stage itself :lol:

The people I grew up with, we always wanted to get to the front to see the fingers on the frets, see how they controlled their gear, how they interracted with their crew, the band dynamic, etc. We wanted to see the whites of their eyes. We wanted to be "part of the gig" but most important we wanted to watch everything as well as hear it.

I stood at Andy Powell's feet, Alvin Lee, Glenn Tipton, Rory Gallagher (x4), Ted Nugent, some drunken w@nker in UFO (post Schenker), Noddy Holder, etc, etc. I learnt an awful lot from watching them that close.

And then (this is how I experienced it) in the early 80's it suddenly became fashionable for the area just behind the front row to become some sort of 200-mile-an-hour rugby scrum. I hated and loathed it and pretty much stopped wanting to go to gigs then.

Not counting pub gigs I've probably been to all of about 10 gigs since 1986. I won't go within 20 yards of the stage now, and I feel most uncomfortable and insecure if I don't have a seat or one of those "crowd control" bars to lean on.

 :D That's exactly how I feel, and almost exactly mirrors my own experience.  I can't claim to have stood at the feet of quite such legends, but I got some good ones - Vernon Reid, Ty Tabor, Frank Hannon, Mick Box, Dweezil Zappa (and missed Jake E Lee by standing at the wrong end of the stage  :roll: ).  Probably some others I've forgotten.  Oh, and I once spent 40 minutes staring up at the late Kelly Johnson from Girlschool's crotch (I was very young at the time). 

(I'm guessing the drunken w@nker in UFO was the immortal Tonka Chapman  :lol: ).

[AndyR]

That was his name :lol:

To be fair though - they were all sloshed. They came on 2 hours late because they'd been filming TOTP, and freely admitted that they'd been drinking on the flight down to Exeter, as if it was all a bit of a larff...

They didn't get much response from us apart from the odd boo at the end of each song! :lol:

Girlschool - forgotten them!! YES - I was at the front twice. Kelly didn't grab me so much, Kim was much nicer in scary sort of way (she gave me her bottle of Special Brew, sigh...)

Let's not mention Steve Harris of Iron Maiden sweating all over me (same gig as Glenn Tipton) because it was a pile of old poo compared to the Priest that night :lol:

And Ricky Medlocke! What a dude he was (one of the reasons I bought an Explorer earlier this year - still got to get the denim preacher's coat yet)