The Prodigy – Big Events are Dead

By fletch Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Went to see The Prodigy last night at Wembley Arena which was good stuff. Despite a hundred little annoyances I have with the public transport system here it’s still quite cool that almost anywhere you’d want to go is just a 5 minute walk from a tube station so it was just straight up the jubilee line for us to go and meet everyone and dish out tickets.

Couple of people bailed at the last minute (Jen was nearly one of them due to her tonsilitis!) so we had a couple spare but there didn’t seem to be much demand for them and they ended up going to a tout for a little less than half price – but that’s the game I suppose – turned out to be quite handy because I used the cash to pay for beers since as usual I had none on me and I couldn’t find a cash machine.

The queue to get into the standing section was huge, it went up one side of the building, curved and came back down the same side so it meant you were queuing past people who’d already been in your position, a bit like at Alton Towers. Although it moved pretty regularly it still took over an hour to get through the doors which meant we missed Dizzee Rascal who was supporting which was quite annoying because we could hear him from outside. Boo!

Once we were in, had queued again to be searched and had queued for a beer, we then had to queue up AGAIN in order to get from the main concourse level down into the standing section so after arriving at about 7.30 it must have been 9.15 before we finally got to see the stage.

The gig was great and The Prodigy are a brilliant band and it’s a good fucking job because despite the ease of getting to Wembley Park Station from Waterloo the amount of hassle you had to go through to get into the venue very nearly makes it not worth it.

All the queues, security searches, sky high beer prices, deals with ticket touts and some traipsing in the rain, perhaps I should have just gone to the local for a pint or two then bought it on DVD in a month. The sound would be similar in my small flat with the kit that we’ve got and if there were one or two of us there, the atmosphere could perhaps be decent too?

The speed with which information travels today is phenomenal. So is the speed with which you can transfer large amounts of data. I mean with sites like twitter and brightkite, you can instantly get lots of individual reports about something from anywhere in the world and even make an assumption about how accurate the information you’re receiving is based on the sheer numbers of unconnected individuals stating the same facts.

Five years ago I couldn’t have sent a message any greater than 160 characters to someone describing how enjoyable a gig was. Today I can send them a 160 second video live from the event itself and simultaneously embed it on fletch.cx for the world to see immediately and here’s my thought for today: I wonder at what point the information and data about an event will reach a good enough quality that people stop having the desire to attend the event itself.

Glastonbury Festival is a good personal example. I love watching the highlights on the BBC in the evening, you get absolutely prime seats and can watch every act in HD from the comfort of your sofa.

The biggest example must be MP3′s. They’re nowhere near as good as CDs. You don’t get any physical product, they don’t even sound as good but because they’re “good enough” and because we can get hold of them at our leisure, like “right now” not “next time we go to HMV” we put up with the inferior quality – now they’re the norm.

I think it’s getting that way with big gigs such as this one. Watch my video fullscreen with the volume up after a few beers and tell me you don’t feel a bit like you’ve seen 90% of what the rest of us spent four hours and at least £60 to see.

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Hello! Fletch.cx has been going since 1999 in one form or another, yep incredible, when will it end? For more of my bullshit see last.fm, lluckj.com, facebook and if you really want a constant avalanche of musings, observations and lies then follow me on twitter..