The first time I noticed the Treatment was on 29 April 1984. The Birmingham Odeon present opened with a set from rural Worcestershire’s pre-Raphaelite goths And Additionally the Bushes, whose early albums stay a responsible pleasure, and about whom I as soon as despatched a self-aggrandising letter to ZigZag journal. The Treatment’s set drew closely on the darkish post-punk fundamentalism of Seventeen Seconds, Religion and Pornography, however previewed eight songs from the unreleased The High, evidencing a worrying drift in direction of melody, not what the 15-year-old me wished in any respect.
The ticket price £4.50 and I purchased it earlier than Andy Anderson, who was black, was introduced as the brand new drummer. This was fortunate, as my household discouraged me seeing bands with black members. I bear in mind making the case for Massive Nation, regardless of them having a black bassist, due to their reliance on a bagpipes-styled guitar sound. I feel UB40 slipped beneath the online as a result of even gran cherished that Neil Diamond cowl. Completely different instances!
The final time I noticed the all of a sudden a lot larger Treatment was 18 months later, alone, on the Nationwide Exhibition Centre, for £5.50. It was a tremendous 25-song, career-spanning set. Apparently. I used to be within the first tier of raised seating and, emboldened by my success on the Military Cadets’ assault course, because the lights dipped when the assist act Onerous Corps got here on, I made a decision to understand the barrier on the entrance with each fingers to do a ahead roll 20ft or so down into the principle stalls under. However I fell on my head owing to not being a member of the SAS, so the remainder of the night time is a clean. It says on the web that the Treatment encored with Gary Glitter’s Do You Wanna Contact Me?, however I don’t bear in mind. Completely different instances.
After that I parted firm with the Treatment – I don’t know why – till my youngsters began listening to them, astonished that I’d seen their early incarnation twice. Having realised what I’d been lacking, I dutifully pulled over in a layby by the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire the Thursday earlier than final to attempt to safe us tickets to their solely present of this 12 months, at London’s Troxy cinema this week. After all they had been all gone in a single second. However, due to the moral bloody-mindedness of frontman Robert Smith, just about all of them appear to have bought for the value they had been imagined to. Out of the blue, the 65-year-old post-punk panda is a beacon of hope towards the seemingly insurmountable super-monetisation of each facet of recent life. Right here’s why.
For 14 years, the Tory mindset didn’t see tradition as a non secular or mental profit to the citizen, merely as one thing that was failing to generate as a lot cash because it might. The tradition battle they stoked was partly about stopping any of us from experiencing any tradition. Reasonably priced tickets weren’t a superb factor, enabling extraordinary individuals to profit from tradition, however a horrible failure to maximise earnings potential. Being allowed to pay £850 to see Oasis in a soccer stadium is likely one of the issues that tells us that we reside in a free society.
I’ve stated it earlier than, right here, solely final month, however in 2015, when the then Tory tradition secretary Sajid Javid was requested to deal with secondary market ticket costs he stated that ticket touts had been “basic entrepreneurs” and their detractors had been the “chattering center courses and champagne socialists, who’ve no real interest in serving to the frequent working man earn a good residing by performing as a intermediary”. However even then the “touts” had been bots run by organised criminals, or tacitly authorized ticketing loopholes created by the ticket businesses themselves. Live performance and theatre-going audiences weren’t residents in the hunt for self-improvement or the elegant expertise of non permanent transcendence, however pigs to be farmed by massive enterprise for the financial worth of their pathetic enthusiasms.
Trying to set ticket costs on the degree the artist wished was regarded by the final authorities as a socialist intervention within the market, even when the ticket worth had already been subsidised by authorities arts funding. This shouldn’t be a shock on condition that their complete ethos was primarily based round promoting massive enterprise the infrastructure we’d already paid for. However enable a ticket to truly promote for face worth and the following factor we’ll all be lining up within the city sq., waving our hoes, and singing The Crimson Flag, as a result of we might now see Oasis for the value of a month’s, reasonably than a 12 months’s, wages.
In opposition, the Tories are livid about Starmer accepting two Taylor Swift tickets. In authorities, they allowed it to turn into unimaginable for most individuals to attend something remotely standard until they’d connections or LOADSAMONEY! Viagogo’s subsidiary StubHub, which wouldn’t reply any of my emails, stopped promoting my tickets at a 500% mark-up after I spent a day hanging round its Oxford Circus outlet, shouting and consuming all of the free sweets on the counter whereas horrifying the shoppers, because the bloke behind the desk recited a ready script about how what it was doing was authorized. Liam Gallagher will choose a battle with a post-box, however not with a ticket company.
However for subsequent week’s Treatment present, all the things went by way of the Cube ticketing app at £45, with no extras, and the one or two touts pushing tickets at £831 on Viagogo are presently being hunted down by Robert Smith’s educated vampire bats. It may be finished! And perhaps this precedent means when the Treatment embark on that closing tour, followers pays what the band wished them to. Robert Smith is the Mr Bates of ticketing, certainly due an OBE and an ITV drama staring a black-wigged Toby Jones in eyeliner as its reluctant hero. Mr Smith Versus Viagogo. I volunteer to play an fool falling out of a balcony on to his head.
Supply hyperlink
