Concert Venues - Post #2 - "Sweat Box" venues

In the second of a short series of blog posts, I am going to continue to examine my thoughts on the different types of concert venues. 

Sweat Box Venues

There are several medium-sized, standing up indoor venues in the UK. A lot of these, but not all, currently come under the O2 branding - O2 Academy, O2 Institute, and so on. 

As with all the posts in this series, I am basing the opinions purely on the venues I have visited and my own experiences at these places. With just a couple of exceptions, I have found these venues to be less than ideal for taking in live music. I can't help but feel that the managers of some of these venues concentrate too much on extracting as much money as they can from their customers. This is to the detriment of actually providing a decent customer experience. 

Wildwood Kin - O2 Institute 3, Birmingham

7th November, 2019

In the depths of winter, I have been to concerts at some of these venues and it has been far too hot, even in just a t-shirt and jeans. Such is the number of people that pack into these venues, heating is rarely needed even in cold weather. The cynic in me wonders if it is just a ploy to sell more overpriced drinks - a similar tactic to pubs that provide salty peanuts on the bar. 

As someone who suffers from an undiagnosed, mild form of agoraphobia, I struggle sometimes in tightly-packed crowds of people. This doesn't result in any kind of panic attack as such, more a feeling of being distinctly uncomfortable. It's difficult to describe accurately. I'm positive that venues have capacity limits for health and safety reasons but it feels to me sometimes like not all venues abide by these rules. I remember last year at a gig at one of the O2 venues in Birmingham, I was stood right in the middle of the floor as a very large crowd anxiously awaited the arrival of the headline act. I noted the number of people in the venue, counted the number of emergency exits and concluded that it would be very difficult should the need arise to evacuate the place quickly. 

Earlier in this post I touched on the overpriced drinks. The bars inside the venues remain open throughout the entire night, including whilst the artists are performing on the stage. I'm going to write a post specifically about issues that arise from this so I don't want to go into it in too much detail here. It does cause problems though but I don't see venues changing this as it simply generates much revenue for the owners of the venues.

It's not all bad though. I have attended some splendid gigs at this type of venue. It's just that these tend to be the exception, rather than the rule. One excellent gig that comes to mind was at the Arts Club Loft in Liverpool in October 2019. I saw Striking Matches, supported by Tenille Townes, and it was superb. The crowd was really into the music of both artists and the bar was in a separate area at the back. This really cut down the extraneous noise that tends to emanate from the bar area at gigs.

Tenille Townes - Arts Club Loft, Liverpool

27th October, 2019

To sum up, these are generally not my favourite concert venues. They serve a purpose - they host live music but do not always focus on their customers. Obviously we have to go to the places where the tours visit, but I have travelled out of my way in the past to go to a nicer venue. I will continue to do this when we are able to see live music again in a safe way. Hopefully it will be soon.

Photos by myself, Chris Swinden

Concert Venues - Post #1 - Large Arenas

Concert venues come in all shapes and sizes. Here in the UK, we have several massive arenas holding many thousands of people. There are also plenty of quirky, intimate venues which provide a somewhat different concert going experience. In a short series of blog posts, I am going to explore my thoughts on the different types of settings in which we can enjoy live music.

Large arenas

The very biggest acts are able to sell out the largest arenas our country has to offer, sometimes over multiple days. These days the tickets for some of these gigs are expensive and yet it can still be so difficult getting a ticket, such is often the demand to see the most popular artists. I recall trying to get a ticket to the Queen and Adam Lambert tour back in 2017 and ended up with a ticket two rows from the back. That was achieved by doing the stereotypical frantic F5 pressing on the website ticket page as soon as they went on sale.

Almost without exception, the large arenas are multi purpose and they host a wide variety of events, only one of which might be live music. More often than not, in my experience it hasn't been great from an audio and visual point of view. Unless you're lucky enough to get a ticket close to the stage, I've quite often ended up having to squint and watch the artist on a video screen. If the arena does not have a video screen then it becomes more of a listening experience, still enjoyable but I do like to be able to see the artist performing as well as hear them.

Tedeschi Trucks Band - Wembley Arena, London

1st February, 2020

I’m no sound expert at all and I appreciate how difficult a job it must be for the engineers at a large venue, especially as each artist will have different setups, bands and equipment. It must be a very tricky job for them to get it exactly right with such a wide range of different performers. This is especially the case at a festival like County to Country at the O2 Arena in London, where there are multiple artists on the same stage in the space of a few hours. The sound quality can be very variable, but this is not just restricted to one venue. I have attended amongst others Manchester Arena, Birmingham Arena, O2 Arena and Wembley Arena and they have all had their issues.

I have made peace with the fact that if I want to see the big acts, inflated prices and less than perfect sound and sight of the artists will be something I will have to deal with. From a financial and logistical point of view, why would an artist play in a 1,000 capacity theatre when they could be performing in front of 20,000 people over several evenings?

This post may come across as somewhat negative and, as a whole, I don’t want it to come across that way. After all, my top two gigs of all time – Chris Stapleton and Ashley McBryde – were both in the O2 Arena, London.

Chris Stapleton - Country to Country Festival - O2 Arena, London

10th March, 2019

I do fear that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be some time before large arena gigs are possible.

Photos by myself, Chris Swinden

My Favourite Singing Voice Of All Time

I could talk about music for hours. I make no apologies for this. When I'm with like minded friends, now and again the obvious questions do come up for debate over a pint or two. Topics including best band, favourite ever concert, nicest live venue, and many more. There is one that requires very little thought on my part - favourite singing voice of all time.

As a child, my parents inexplicably allowed me to play with some of their records. One in particular that piqued my interest had a brown cover with gold writing on it. Using the hifi system in our house, I figured out a way to transfer what was on the record to a cassette tape. Playing this tape on my Sony Walkman kept me occupied during many 90 minute trips from Cheshire to West Yorkshire to see my grandparents in the early 1990s.

My parents and I don't share very many favourite artists but one very glorious exception to that rule is The Carpenters. I remember my Dad saying to me, "With all the great singers, you can hear every word". I think that it was a comment about music in general, but it very much applies to the voice of Karen Carpenter.

The majority of my music listening nowadays revolves around female artists and singer-songwriters. There are many that are amazingly talented but for me, none come close to the voice of Karen Carpenter. The purity, clarity and pained beauty in her voice is for me what sets her apart from so many others. She had a relatively soft voice, not powerful in volume but it was so strong in terms of conveying raw emotion. All this from someone who I suspect might have been happier being behind a drum kit, chipping in with some backing vocals now and again.

Sir Elton John described Karen as having, "one of the greatest voices of our lifetime”. British artist Rumer has been said to have a singing voice reminiscent of Karen and, having listened to several of her songs, I can definitely detect a likeness. I have been planning to buy a ticket to see Rumer live in Birmingham, a concert which has now been rescheduled for March 2021.

Karen's tragic passing at the age of just 32 came in the early part of 1983, roughly eighteen months before I was born. From a purely selfish point of view, this denied me the chance to ever see Karen singing live. Interestingly, I will never be able to see live any of my three favourite voices of all time. Elvis Presley died in 1977, Karen in 1983 and I was only 7 when Freddie Mercury passed away in 1991. Perhaps this is part of the allure? I can listen to albums and watch videos as much as I like, but to be in the presence of them performing is only ever going to be something that is in my imagination.

Karen Carpenter image:By Billboard Publications Inc (now owned by Eldridge Industries)(Life time: Published before 1978 without a copyright notice) - Original publication: Billboard MagazineImmediate source: Special Section page 24, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75073431