summer breaks

Coming from someone who is convinced they suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder during the darker months of the year it is worrying that this summer is shaping up to be just like the last, and by that I mean highly stressful.

Fortunately escape is always at hand and allows for the temporary replacement of my anxieties with an overflowing sense of elation. I find some of the best summer escapes come in the form of concerts. Gigs where thousands of wildly optimistic and arrogant middle class teenagers don their finest black eye liner and baggy jeans in order to descend upon muddy fields to drink, shout and occasionally listen to their favourite bands play music.

I get a crushing sense of anti-climax at the beginning of these events. It stems from a sense of loathing for my fellow middle class white man. Something about this rebellious lot smacks of conformity, especially when they all eagerly line up outside the main sponsors tent to download the most recent ring tones to their Sony Ericsson’s. When did rock concerts become corporate trade shows?

However, this disillusionment swiftly falls away and is replaced by an overpowering sense of hope. Now, this might be the drink talking, but I doubt it – I rarely drink at such events since I always feel that after having paid over £100 for the privilege of being there it might not be best to then scramble my short term memory functions of what actually took place. But that’s not to say I don’t indulge in the odd branded larger or two.

But I am losing myself here, what is important is that these gigs always make me feel pretty damn incredible and a lot happier about both my future, and that of the collective. I soon start to ask myself how such an overly educated, tolerant and sexy looking bunch of people could possibly lead the world to ruin?

Once you get them all bouncing up and down, shouting in chorus and embracing strangers in a strange explosion of ecstasy, there does seem to be this aura of pure energy that is hard not to appreciate.

About the actual music itself two things are worth nothing. One, an upcoming band called ‘Scouting for girls’, with a brilliantly charismatic front man, are well worth looking out for. Secondly, Muse confirmed what I already knew, and that is that they are by far the most entertaining band to see live in Britain today. (Even without the extra funding their stage crew clearly had when planning what was in fact New Wembley’s first ever sell-out gig).

All in all these gigs have once again proven to be excellent save points in a summer full of potential pitfalls.