When is Bob ever gonna come and play in London?

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

When is Bob ever gonna come and play in London?

Ian MD · The Elephant's Graveyard

Anywhere in the UK would be nice!

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

he tried and failed, hope it hasn't put him off.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Jules wrote:

he tried and failed, hope it hasn't put him off.

I always find that live gigs can go in a haze ( sometimes induced by alcohol ) but we'll always have the recorded album- like in Casablanca they'd always have Paris!

PS Mudslide by BG is on my current playlist and sounds really good.

musicmania · A Hold of Me

Anywhere in Ireland would be nice too. I know he doesn't like when he has to return to Dublin but plenty of other places he could play here.

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

JULES - what do you mean he failed?????

LOL

DO tell us, go on, I'll buy ya a drink or some flowers promise ;0))

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

btw Jules why is my rather fabulous pic only teeny weeny??

ta for your response in advance

:))

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

Cancelled due to poor ticket sales

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

You are KIDDING??!!!!!

Why can't he play to a few then?

LOL I'm quite shocked to think he has not had many ticket sales.......but surely he oughta think quality of audience rather than quantity.

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

I mean I would bring my army of about 2 friends and Jules I'm sure you would bring your gang and everyone else on here and their mates - we could fill a nice-sized venue easily i reckon. And it would be nice sized cos who wants to be in places where you just feel worth as much as the cost of your ticket?

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

JoanOfArc wrote:
You are KIDDING??!!!!!

Why can't he play to a few then?

LOL I'm quite shocked to think he has not had many ticket sales.......but surely he oughta think quality of audience rather than quantity.

Going over old ground, but it is simply a matter of money. It costs money to stage a gig and if you aren't getting enough people in the door, then you lose money. No point playing a gig for a couple of hundred people if what they pay on the door doesn't cover your expenses. I believe the gig in Dubai is a guaranteed pay day, so that wouldn't be cancelled.

Geldof has had a lot of gigs cancelled on him in the last ten years or so. Likewise the Rats have had a few cancelled in the last couple of years. Quite simply, there aren't enough people out there who are prepared to pay to see either of them.

Maybe Geldof should play smaller venues and set ticket prices accordingly, but I suspect that's not the case as bigger venues and higher prices are needed to make some profit. If he can earn $50,000 for an hour's speaking why bother doing gigs that make peanuts.

The gigs he does probably make nothing, but I suspect the line is drawn on gigs that lose money.

Quantity matters more than quality as far as an audience goes.

As for playing in London, he might, but it can be easier to sell a gig in a provincial town where nothing else is happening. Would advise him to avoid the run up to Christmas this time.

http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=48603&p=3&topicID=4836044

http://theboomtownrats.blogspot.com/2005/12/geldof-live-london-postponed.html

-- Edited by ArrGee on Saturday 4th of September 2010 11:06:51 AM

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

yeh I spose....(she says reluctantly still bent on finding a way round this obstacle to seeing bob live...)

only.....does it have to be worth thousands of pounds?

I mean....what about just covering costs and doing it for the LOVE?

Hehe, you know the Rolling Stones played for free in Hyde Park once?

Anyways, you gotta start somewhere, the Beatles started off playing in little dives in Liverpool and look where that got them!!!

LOL, ok promise I'm not taking the michael here and I guess Bob is a long way off playing in little dives these days :(

Mind you.......these famous lovable people don't all just do the massive concert venues, for example there was I one evening in a teeny weeny lil comedy pub in Leicester Square one night where it cost a fiver to get in.....when....guess who takes the mic?.........only the one and only Lenny Henry...(completely unadvertised)....so there you go.....hmmm maybe Bob will turn up somewhere one evening where least expected LOL. (Just asked my mum the name of the guy who married Dawn French cos couldn't remember - she said his name is Lenny Bruse LMAO, ah well at least it triggered my memory and made me laugh! ;0))

BTR · Tonight

What was Lenny Henry doing at the comedy club?

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

telling jokes biggrin

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

Anyway Argee, going back to your point about a gig having to at least cover costs, surely this would be possible no?

Failing that what about just Bob and a kareoke machine???

He wouldn't even need any musicians.

I don't mean just any old kareoke machine, i mean a really good one. Once hes bought it he can use the same machine anywhere in the country and should cover the cost of that with enough left over to make a nice little profit, not to mention all the drinks people would buy him after the gig. biggrin

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

JoanOfArc wrote:

only.....does it have to be worth thousands of pounds?

I mean....what about just covering costs and doing it for the LOVE?

Hehe, you know the Rolling Stones played for free in Hyde Park once?

Anyways, you gotta start somewhere, the Beatles started off playing in little dives in Liverpool and look where that got them!!!

Geldof has played to small audiences and probably lost money playing live. Some gigs have been cancelled because the audience has been pityfully low for the venue. Most famously, the 45 in a 12,000 seater venue in Italy.

Now I think he should have played that night for the 45, but I can also understand how soul destroying it must be to have such a small audience in such a massive venue.

He won't play London, as the sales were so low last time that there would only have been people in the first six rows at Shepherd's Bush.

I think Geldof would play for free if an audience turned up, but the facts are they may not turn up if tickets were given away. Some of it is people don't like Geldof as a musician. Some of it they don't like him. But whatever the reasons, there is no need for him to play to small audiences at a high price.

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

Yeh thats so weird that noone wants to see bob live.

u know what?....i don't reckon they've heard much of his stuff......oh i dunno.....really cant understand it myself, dont reckon he gets promoted enough music-wise, i mean its bob that does the promoting for other people innit? I mean who promotes him??? himself??? cant see him doing that somehow at the moment, dunno why, just a feeling.

As for me well i got a boomtown rats cd plus 4 of bob's own alblums and personally think theyre great. bobs own stuff is so easy listening and so damn professional too, perrrrrrfect for someone like me that is just soooooooo fed up and quite depressed from listening to the absolute bollocks, crap and **** in teh charts today.

What happend to punk eh? apparently the young of today are happy people and are not frustrated or needing to let their hair down, dream or express themselves in any way at all other than that is to get extremely drunk, have fights and puke up in the gutter!!! all this WITHOUT any decent sounds, NIGHTMARE!!

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

and another thing!!!............LYRICS are just soooooooo RUBBISH with the young of today, I mean how SHALLOW are the lyrics of today, ffs.!!!

Sad people!

No wonder they have to get so drunk just to drown out the awful sounds that supposedly is meant to be cool :-S

Weird, weird, weird.

Ian MD · The Elephant's Graveyard

I think Bob should stick to playing cathedrals. He packed out Chichester cathedral when he did the festival there a few years ago!

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

Sounds cool.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

JoanOfArc wrote:
u know what?....i don't reckon they've heard much of his stuff......oh i dunno.....really cant understand it myself, dont reckon he gets promoted enough music-wise...

Alternatively they have heard a lot of his stuff and don't really want to see him. I'd go and see him if all he did was Boomtown Rats material, but I'm not a fan of his solo work, so I wouldn't go.

I did read once that someone who had gone to see him would prefer if he didn't play as they enjoyed the stories and the talk between the songs more than the songs themselves.

Ultimately though he hasn't made many records (2 since 1993), and people born after 1970 don't even think of him as a performer.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/07/24/post_116.html#more

-- Edited by ArrGee on Sunday 12th of September 2010 12:17:06 AM

musicmania · A Hold of Me

ArrGee wrote:

JoanOfArc wrote:
u know what?....i don't reckon they've heard much of his stuff......oh i dunno.....really cant understand it myself, dont reckon he gets promoted enough music-wise...

Alternatively they have heard a lot of his stuff and don't really want to see him. I'd go and see him if all he did was Boomtown Rats material, but I'm not a fan of his solo work, so I wouldn't go.

I did read once that someone who had gone to see him would prefer if he didn't play as they enjoyed the stories and the talk between the songs more than the songs themselves.

Ultimately though he hasn't made many records (2 since 1993), and people born after 1970 don't even think of him as a performer.

I was born after 1970 biggrin

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

musicmania wrote:
I was born after 1970

I'm gonna have a new rule round here. Only adults over 40. No kids allowed.

Doubtless there are a few youngsters who know of Geldof singing, but bar his performances of Mondays in the last 30 years or so, there hasn't been much that people are generally aware of. My wife, on seeing him on TV recently, said "Did he do anything after I Don't Like Mondays?" She was very sorry she asked that three hours later ....

You were probably corrupted by an older brother. My sister, a hairdresser, recently sang her way faultlessly through Rat Trap in her salon to the amazement of all gathered. Of course having heard my efforts at learning the song night after night on my new guitar when I was 14, how could she not know every word smile

noelindublin · Loudmouth

HI EVERYONE- Its plain sad that Geldof cant pack 'em in playing live and either can he sell many records- sad for someone who primarily seen himself as a musician. When I saw him play at Vicar Street in Dublin a few years ago some drunken musical ignoramus called out for him to sing something by Christy Moore oblivious to Bob trying to perform the more intimate tracks from SAD. Geldof doesn't need the money from playing live but I'd like to think that anyone who cared about the Boomtown rats in the past could see that musically he's an interesting character - the line "if you want me/I'll be here / true blue/ deep in the heart of nowhere " always resonates with me- Geldof is in a musical nowhere in terms of public acclaim and recognition but what do the public know?

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Maybe a comedy/ musical double act of Geldof and Russell brand - I hear they get on like a house on fire. They could slag each other off for charity! Or have a fight on stage I'm sure Bob is in better health . That would pack the crowds in.

ArrGee1991 · Dave

noelindublin wrote:
HI EVERYONE- Its plain sad that Geldof cant pack 'em in playing live and either can he sell many records- sad for someone who primarily seen himself as a musician.

I don't think many people see him as a musician as he makes so few records. I don't think it helps that Geldof is not particularly known for his prowess with any instrument (Midge Ure has a very low opinion of him in that respect).

I believe he was a good singer/songwriter who from 1977-1980 wrote a number of great songs. These tailed off a little, but there were some masterful efforts on In The Long Grass that hinted that he could still write very good songs (A Hold of Me and Dave in particular). The trouble is that pretty much everyone stopped considering him as a a singer/songwriter at that point (I don't really see him as a musician for similar reasons to Midge Ure).

Ure stated in his autobiography that he was constantly battling with Geldof, the song's lyricist but not renowned for his melody skills, and telling him to leave when he would come into the production booth and wrongly tell the artist behind the mic what to sing.

His first solo album was the most disappointing album I have ever heard, and I think the problem was that no one would tell him he was wrong. The follow up was better as he sought advice and had a theme and one truly great song, but the third was like the cast offs of the second. Sex, Age & Death was the first time Geldof seemed to find a true voice again, but then he did nothing for 8 years.

A musician would be more involved and look to expand and extend themselves. Paul Weller & Elvis Costello are seen as musicians as they have frequent releases and it is their primary activity. Elvis Costello has made 32 studio albums, and Weller more than 20 with Jam, Style Council and solo. Both have made very diverse records. Even Sting has made 10 solo records.

The numerous cancellations down the years have alienated a number of potential fans. There are more hardy souls around here, but if you were less than 100% committed, it's safe to say once bitten twice shy.

I agree he is an interesting character, but I'm still stuck in my nostalgia trip and haven't moved forward. Things have moved on for Geldof.

Given all that, I think it is little wonder he doesn't have an audience.

-- Edited by ArrGee on Sunday 12th of September 2010 10:05:01 PM

JoanOfArc · The Fine Art of Surfacing

I was born 1967. :)

Just for your information.........cos u wanted to know that of course :))

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

JoanOfArc wrote:
I was born 1967. :)

Just for your information.........cos u wanted to know that of course :))

s'alright Mrs Robinson smile

Still makes you one of the younger ones round here. Odlly there were a few teens around here 4 or 5 years ago, but they've all grown up now and have lives so don't come here.