The morning after the Underworld gig at the Bristol Colston Hall and I am still amazed at what I heard and saw. That’s what you get when you expect too much, or something completely different from what you actually get.
I thought the audience would be young but it was far from young. I anticipated looking completely out of place, surrounded by Da Yoof, but I was surrounded by a sea of bald heads doing what appeared to be a version of dad dancing.
As per tradition, the lights went down before the show began and then they stayed down as we were treated to an evening of their album ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’. I say treated in only the most general sense given that I don’t know many of the tunes, such as they were tunes. I know I am beginning to sound like my late grandfather but what we really had were two blokes, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, in late middle age, one diddling around on a computer belting out pre recorded music and the other singing and carrying out low level dancing of the gently hip-swaying variety.
I was alone, it must be said, in the 1800 at the Colston Hall in being bored rigid. All around us, and we were in the balcony, people were dancing, some frantically, others swaying like Karl Hyde. Many of them appeared to be in various states of intoxication but they were only drinking water. Very strange.
I think I was with the Ibiza generation, albeit an Ibiza generation that went to San Antonio back in the 1980s. It was a strange kind of nostalgia show in many ways, taking people back to the time when they paid £50 just to get in a ‘foam party’ on the white island.
I felt very old, to be honest, but in comparison to much of the audience in motion, I was somewhere in the middle. I am not going to pretend I stayed to the end.
This morning, I have decided to check whether it is an age thing and to make judgements as to whether I should now purchase some carpet slippers, a nice button-up cardigan and sign up to some SAGA holidays. But first, I played my favourite Underworld album, Beaucoup Fish, and, thank god, I still love it. Where the live show came across to me (and me only) as dull and repetitive, the album still sounds wonderfully fresh and vibrant.
