One or two songs into his set, Bob Geldof addresses the audience in Sheffield's Memorial Hall (capacity 500, but possibly not sold out) on 23 November 2002, paraphrased roughly from memory: "I don't know what you're expecting. I don't know what I'd expect. You might see a poster saying 'Tonight! Bob Geldof!', and you'd think, doing what?!"
I may have been a Boomtown Rats fan when I was thirteen, but I never liked I Don't Like Mondays and never listened beyond the radio hits from that point on, graduating to more grown-up concerns. So it was nostalgia for my youth, a bit of curiosity, and generally not having anything better to do with my evenings, that led me to the Memorial Hall that evening.
I saw my (now-ex) financial advisor there. I have to say it was a great show. Geldof really knows how to judge an audience, and how to charm them. I saw him doing a business talk a couple of years ago — and no matter how many dire gigs you've seen, you know that dire business talks are the rule rather than the exception — and he was great at that, too.
I can't do justice to the between-song chatter, but, for once, it was genuinely entertaining. A story of doing an Irish radio interview and being asked to play (I think it was) Mary of the 4th Form for old time's sake. Bob protested that he couldn't because he'd forgotten the words, only to have the producer hand him a printout of the words a minute later: "Focking Internet — I didn't think it was supposed to actually work." Of the same song, Bob explained that it was written in an attempt to get the real life Mary of the title to sleep with him. It didn't work when he was the unemployed singer of a dodgy band from Dún Laoghaire in the seventies, but he saw Mary again a decade or two later. "So now that I'm a world-famous rock-star humanitarian with an honorary knighthood and a decent fortune: any chance?" He was rebuffed again.
I found myself enjoying the songs, too. Geldof's campaigning history gives him a priceless opportunity to do an I don't believe in Beatles song, and The Great Song of Indifference exploits that opportunity very nicely, "I don't care if the Third World fries… I could watch whole nations die". He took requests, often acting as though he was dredging chords and lyrics from the depths of memory, when it seemed implausible that the Sheffield audience was the first to request Top 20 hits like Diamond Smiles and Someone's Looking at You. It was enough to remind me of the little elements of the hits that I used to like: the gradual build that starts Someone's Looking at You, the cod reggae bassline and backing vocals on Elephant's Graveyard.
So the very next day I went online and ordered this CD.
I see from his website that Bob is planning another tour this year, his first (I think) since 2002. My bet is that venues will be larger, tickets more expensive and harder to come by than back then. Live music has moved on. I'm not sure whether I have too.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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