On Saturday evening I went to see Bryan Ferry. There was some amount of concern as regards the weather, and also his recent troubles with laryngitis which lead to some earlier tour dates being cancelled. Certainly the rain was out in force mid-to-late afternoon, but it cleared up by the time I was heading out again. Having mis-judged public transport I arrived rather earlier than intended, so I had rather a long wait in line (naturally, the gates were opened about half an hour late), but this did mean that I was able to grab a spot about thirty feet from the stage and dead centre. I had about an hour or so to read my book and eat my picnic before the show started.
Before the man himself, we had a couple of warm-up acts. The first of these was Duel (a couple of prettyboys with violins), and the second was The Hot Club of Cowtown (the name says it all, really). They played for around 20-25 minutes each and were both really quite good. After half an hour to reset the stage, it was finally time for the main event. Alas, Bryan wasn’t fully recovered, so we only got one set instead of two, but it was still very good – a good selection of old favourites, a few other familiar tunes and a couple of new ones. Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Oh, and there were some nifty fireworks to round the evening off.
As to what I was doing there – I’d say that the majority of the audience was at least 5-10 years older than me, and most of the younger ones were accompanying parents – it’s all about nostalgia. Whilst I’m not really old enough to have been around when Roxy Music were hitting the charts, Mum had a greatest hits compilation which was a regular fixture on our camping holidays around France for a decade or more. Thus it was that “Our Bryan” became the soundtrack to our summers…