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As a footballing show it left a bit to be desired – but as a dramatic spectacle the World Cup of Schillaci, Milla, Gazza, Pavarotti and the rest was nothing short of immense
A frequent refrain of the tedious muso is that “it’s all about the music”. In reality, it’s often anything but. Most iconic gigs are such because they capture a moment and a mood, whether personal or societal: that first yes-it-really-really-really-could-happen bit of eye contact with the future Mr or Mrs You, or, as Mani said of Spike Island, the chance to “get as many like minds in a field, get ‘em off their tits, give ‘em a bit of music and see what happens”.
Take perhaps the last defining concert in this country, Blur at Hyde Park in 2009. Technical niceties weren’t really a consideration; most people would have been more interested in the colour of Damon Albarn’s Fred Perry than the range of his falsetto. And do you really think Ian Brown’s voice hit the heights at Spike Island? At Hyde Park, Albarn could have Mockneyed his way through Daisy Bell on loop for two hours in his 1995 Kappa mac and it would not have changed the fact that this was a Culturally Important Moment. When Blur reunited at Glastonbury earlier that summer, even this paper said that it was “not just about the music”. Continue reading...