Growing up I was taken to plenty of concerts mostly in the Ulster Hall, Waterfront Hall and Ballymena Town Hall when a family friend was the Mayor for the town- classical music concerts. I have also been to some of the great world music venues – Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, The Concertgebouw and Sydney Opera House. My appreciation for classical music isn’t as strong as Martin’s who confesses that his general knowledge of music stops in the 19th Century or thereabouts. Eleanor isn’t a lover of classic, but she has a record player in China and also in NI, vinyls range from Pink Floyd to Lana Del Ray with a bit of ABBA thrown in for good measure, her musical genres are pop, rock, alternative and a bit of indie with a good dose of musical theatre thrown in for good measure.
Shakespeare’s apt quote for our family is perfect. E’s music may not always be to my taste, but she laps everything up and when we came back to NI, I wanted to do things with her that we didn’t/couldn’t do in China.
It started on her birthday, Westlife were playing. I got very excited and saw that someone was selling tickets for that night, so I bought them. When I told Eleanor what we were doing, her first word was “who?”. Ah… an Irish band formed in 1998, 11 No. 1 singles… blank face. When I thought about it, I couldn’t blame her for this chasm in her musical knowledge. But Westlife turned it around for her as they covered many ABBA songs. When someone of my age saw the photos – particularly of the audience she said – ah a concert for us. Eleanor wasn’t the youngest, but she was probably the only one in the sell out SSE Arena that didn’t know who they were.
I used the app TicketSwap to buy the tickets, the app doesn’t let you sell them for a ridiculously high price and we got really good seats! Westlife are playing in Macau in November, a concert seemingly not sold out despite their massive fan base in China. Eleanor declared this morning that she would not go with me, and I wouldn’t subject Martin to them, I saw enough trailing partners in December to know that they were there begrudgingly.
From Westlife, we went to see Lewis Capaldi, again in the SSE Arena. I needed to be educated on his music, but actually when Eleanor played his songs, I knew quite a few. I got these tickets, naively through Facebook, but the person selling them, sounded genuine and sure enough my faith in humanity was rewarded and the tickets came through. Eleanor and I, though, were not seated together. Two different seats in the arena, Eleanor tried out both of them before having the single seat with a near on front view. I was in a similar seat of where I had been for Westlife.
Throughout the concert, I saw that Lewis had a twitch, it was noticeable, but not that noticeable to take away from his stellar performance. In a lull (a song that I didn’t know), I googled him and sure enough found out that he had been diagnosed with Tourette’s the previous year. That made his performance all the more great, knowing that he wasn’t letting it get to him. However, as we know from his performance at Glastonbury 2023, sometimes you have to listen to your body and realise when to call it and give body and mind a rest.
I met a school friend in January and she suggested that we go to see Sam Ryder on St. Patrick’s Day. He is definitely not within my musical compass but I was aware that he had been Britain’s answer to nearly getting a win at Eurovision. My friend is a Eurovision lover so I used another app, Twickets and found tickets. Standing tickets. We went for dinner first and then joined a queue. He was playing at the Ulster Hall and the queue was super long. The reason for the queue was that he was doing a walk about before the concert giving out promotional material for his next album. Had he been walking in the street, I might have just walked past him.
I knew one of his songs, and now his most recent single I know because he spent time with the audience making us sing it back to him!
I don’t think I will be going back to see him anytime soon.
We had been recommended to go and see ABBA Voyage in London, so our next gig was going to see 4 digital avatars sing beloved ABBA songs in a purpose built venue in April. No filming or photography is allowed during the performance, but what I saw not only blew my mind, but also made me question whether or not I was actually seeing 4 real life people from 40 years ago. I spent the first many minutes questioning and reasoning with myself that they were computer generated and not real. We had seats, but getting up and dancing was encouraged – at Westlife and Lewis, if anyone had dared get up and dance while in the seated area, staff told them to sit down. Obviously for the real dance numbers the security folk did turn a blind eye. For ABBA, there were people running around the arena and motioning you to stand up. Who could refuse.
And here comes the controversial decision. I had Harry Styles tickets for Murrayfield, Edinburgh. But my lovely, gorgeous, friend gave me 9 weeks notice of his wedding to his long term partner that happened to fall on the day of Harry Styles. Eleanor was superbly supportive, and said of course we should sell the tickets. So I did. We had a fabulous time in Belfast at the wedding, and I was fortunate in getting the flights and hotels rearranged to a midweek break in July. On searching for what I could take Eleanor to, I saw tickets for The Lumineers playing on the Castle Esplanade. (One night on, and I would have been taking her to see Rod Stewart – and when I told her that – she asked “who?” again. The view is pretty epic, it is windy but dry!!! I am well aware that some of my readers will also be asking who a number of these people are!
There is something about live music. The Lumineers produced some magic tonight. From the drummer rising up into the runway, the pianist playing barefoot and doing a handstand, to the lead guitarist and singer taking 5 minutes to retune his guitar while talking to the crowd. They kept the audience engaged and musically the band played as one and got energy from each other. It was memorable.
Prior to our Edinburgh trip, and after a trip to England I also took Eleanor to Belsonic, a music festival which spans the month of June in Ormeau Park, Belfast. With a number of great artists that you could easily spend a fortune on I chose to see one artist on my own and another with Eleanor and her friend. A Welsh octogenarian has been on my list to see for a long time. And while most good things come to those who wait … 80+ year old stars aren’t quite the same as they once were. I wasn’t the youngest at Tom Jones but I was glad that Belsonic relaxed the rules for this concert. At all other concerts, chairs and umbrellas were strictly prohibited. Tom Jones’ concert actively promoted you to bring a chair. When I had the email about bringing the chair I didn’t know if this said more about the Tom Jones audience or about his music. Well – having been – it was definitely about his music. It just didn’t have that oomph that I had expected. He certainly didn’t have the showmanship of Elton John. Though Elton is 7 years younger! I left early as did a lot of other people.
Eleanor’s first open air concert was Florence + The Machine. I took her and her friend and then didn’t see them for the whole night. Florence gigged barefoot too and took a foray into the crowd. A sold out audience saw them love her and they sang along to familiar songs and not so familiar ones. Any photos that I took don’t do her justice – but for some professional ones – take a look at these .
So The Lumineers concert sees the end of our gigs. Eleanor’s favourite – Florence. My favourite – well now… that would have to be a little festival in the county of Somerset near the village of Pilton. But that story is for another time.
Crozier's China and our adventures 