Thoughts on negative reactions to live music; inspired in particular by Billy Nomates / Tor playing Glastonbury 2023 and The Who in Toronto 2016:

Don’t be one of those
Who gets a free ticket
To the greatest rock show
But only smiles at the songs
They already know

Incredible to think Billy Nomates / Tor asked the BBC to remove a clip of their Glastonbury set from social media due to the negative comments it was getting. It was a sublime set, truly magic, and so entirely baffling that anyone—let alone so many—could find fault enough with it to cause the request.

The problem, apparently, was that Billy Nomates / Tor was exactly that: alone. There were no musicians on stage and that was a big problem to some who came at it with a misogynistic lilt and no realisation of the fact the act they watched is a one person band responsible for all the instruments and composition, which actually means a name like Billy Talent might’ve been more appropriate but for being taken already by the Canadian group.  

I was in awe watching the set, spellbound, didn’t even realise the music came from backing tracks so caught up in the energy, dedication and emotion pouring from the one person occupying the stage with mesmerising movement; the idea that these online comments from misery-filled people with no interest in or knowledge of music whatsoever might lead to Billy Nomates / Tor no longer playing live is truly heartbreaking.

I too encountered some negativity during the Glastonbury weekend—though nowhere near the same level and neither was it directed as me—that reminded of an incident at a concert by The Who in Toronto 2016, that in turn had me consider aspects of what happened at Glastonbury:

The Who is a band that’s had a great impact; the film Quadrophenia, as example, not only cementing my desire to ride motorbikes and be a rocker (despite it championing mods), it also dealt with complex mental health issues that at the time the vast majority of society didn’t want to touch with a bargepole.

Despite this and loving live music, I didn’t see The Who live until that Toronto show. Something that with hindsight seems an atrocious error; I don’t know why, and in my defence did see Pete Townshend play the March For Jobs concert in Brockwell park, London, 1981. Aged eleven, I was taken by my hippy uncle and aunt who at the time and for many years after lived just round the corner.

Up until the point of seeing The Who, I wouldn’t have thought twice about the answer to the best live band ever seen. Be it grand stadium or small bar, AC/DC win the accolade hands down even if they haven’t turned out a killer album since a decade and a half into the last century (the last time I saw them was in Montreal, 2015, and live they still blew the roof off, possibly more so than ever before).

But The Who seriously challenged that title.

To try be objective, nostalgia was a big part of what made the show so good; old clips up on the screen, many from just before my time, but showing London as I knew it growing up not as it is now; added with seeing it all while living halfway round the world can make for quite a heady mix.

A quirk of fate—actually the Air Canada Centre’s policy of booking concerts there even when the date may end up being needed for the NHL play offs/final—meant The Who played a second Toronto show almost two months later.

My wife, who I’d gone with, thought like me that it’d been so good we should try to get tickets for the next concert; being from Toronto, she was immune to the same stirred memories, and so it was with much anticipation that I looked forward to the next show, wondering just how good it would seem now the imagery wouldn’t have the same impact having already been seen.

We’d also agreed it’d been so good it would be worth shelling out for more expensive seats too.

At the first show, Roger introduced the song ‘Bargain’ by explaining what it was about. I’d always been a bit indifferent to it, but in learning its meaning, started to see it in a new light that now has capacity to remind of numerous events whenever heard.

‘Bargain’ is about seeing excellent live music for free, unexpectedly or maybe the ticket has been paid for and the gig turns out to be one of the best ever seen, truly up there and elevated with the gods – that would still constitute a bargain in terms of live music as any regular gig goer will testify. There truly is no greater joy in life, and a bargain is exactly how I would’ve described that show.

‘Bargain’: a song so good even the Foo Fighters covered it!

What happened at the next gig with the more expensive tickets, then, one just couldn’t make up.

Two of the seats directly next to us were taken by two men, one of who stunk to high Heaven. Through overhearing their discussion we learned that neither had paid for their ticket; that the smelly one was a guard in a building and someone who worked there had strolled up one day and said ‘do you want these’ as no one else in the chain of who got offered corporate freebies wanted them, and so they ended up cast to lowest rung possible – the front desk.

It was like he’d come begrudgingly, the thoroughly offensive odour an intentional statement of how he didn’t want to be there and if anything was doing the venue a favour by turning up to put a bum on a seat.

Throughout the concert, the smelly slob would loudly judge the merits of each song as it finished using one simple premise and one simple premise alone: if it was a song he knew, it was good; if he’d never heard it before, he didn’t like that one.

The horrible smelly irony of it all . . .

There’s no doubt in my mind that those criticising Billy Nomates / Tor are cut from the same cloth as Mr Smelly above; a sad grey fake material like polyester that lacks empathy for others and has never attempted any form of artistic endeavour, yet feels entitled enough to cast derision on those of others nonetheless.

In what should be the wholly glorious fact of making it available to people in the comfort of their homes, even on a phone in a field of their own choice, Glastonbury and the BBC also unfortunately give out free tickets to smelly blokes aplenty.

And while at this point I’d like to say something poignant and along the lines of don’t let the smelly bastards get you down, should Billy Nomates / Tor happen to read this, the story doesn’t quite end there, never mind it not being my place to hand out unsolicited advice per se, especially when the truth is if I ever wrote something as exquisite as that performance, only for smelly blokes to trash it online, knocking it all on the head would definitely be a thought going through my mind too.  

There’s a big difference between five live feeds from Glastonbury on i-player and a free ticket to see The Who: only the latter has material value; while the former isn’t so much free, but part of the BBC licence fee package whether you want to watch it or not.

The case with Glastonbury wasn’t smelly blokes with no interest still tuning in to i-player anyway just so they could take to the internet with their inward-looking derision of others.

Instead it was because a clip shared by the BBC on social media found its way into their feeds.

While nothing justifies the criticism of Billy Nomates / Tor one iota, and I can totally understand why someone with an ear for good music working social media for the Corporation would want to share something that awesome with as many people as possible, there is also its track record when it comes to this sort of thing.

Take the introduction of Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor Who.

Realising the news was receiving much social media attention, the BBC set about sharing it via as many of its accounts as possible. It was impossible not to notice the vast majority of these comments were misogynistic in nature, but as algorithms don’t discriminate, neither did the Corporation.

Or did it? Given you can guarantee finding misogyny in any public arena, it wouldn’t being going too far to say it positively revelled in it; something punctuated when it started sharing a gif featuring drawings of all previous Doctors that finished on Jodie. In of itself, fair enough, but the BBC included in that equation its news accounts too, so even guaranteeing more than a few angry comments of ‘this isn’t news!’ to boot.

Despite the plethora of negative comments, the BBC still looked for any and everything it could to share, fully knowing the result would be for the most part negative and upsetting for many.

Perhaps most telling in all this: Billy Nomates / Tor had to ask for the clip to be taken down.

Is that what we have here: a BBC that while on one hand frequently reports on the dangerous things posted online unchecked and has an excellent Disinformation & Social Media Correspondent in Marianna Spring, simultaneously doesn’t have anyone monitoring the comments posted on its own content?

It’s that or something similar to Doctor Who above, and neither is a good look, when in every other aspect the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury is beyond measure; possibly the greatest thing the UK has at the moment, given the way the NHS is being run into the ground.

A light such as Billy Nomates / Tor will find those who appreciate; it doesn’t need sticking in front of smelly thick-headed blokes who don’t know the first thing about what they’re looking at and so try to blow it out.

The single song uploaded to YouTube by the BBC—as there is for every artist broadcast live—currently remains available; if you get the chance to check the whole set out, don’t miss it!

Check out more of the excellent Billy Nomates / Tor on bandcamp.

Header image of Roger Daltrey adapted from original by Ernst-Merck-Halle; Hamburg, August 1972 (licensing).

To receive notifications of future posts of poetry—be they happy, sarcastic or sad—music history and reviews, the odd bit of this and that plus the occasional stab at promoting my books, please enter an email address below.