A tale of four tossers

On Wednesday night I went to see Jethro Tull in concert. Not because I’m a fan, but because my wife is and one of my favourite things to do is go to live concerts. Another is to keep my wife happy, so this worked all round.

In fact, even saying I’m not a big fan of theirs is a bit disingenuous. I’m a complete non-fan who would have been hard pressed to hum a single Tull tune. I don’t actively dislike them; they have just never featured on my radar. I dimly recall my parents owning an album, and I think I saw a video of theirs on Pop Shop in the early 1980s, but that’s the extent of my contact with the band.

So off we went to the new Grandwest Arena. (Good job on the venue, by the way. It’s about time Cape Town had somewhere other than a disused velodrome in the middle of nowhere to stage concerts.) And there I encountered tosser number one — a big, burly biker guy wearing one of those black T-shirts with the old South African flag on it, and the words “100% Boer” printed underneath. It occurred to me that he had almost got it right. Substituting the “B” and the “r” with a “P” and an “s” respectively would have been more accurate, but I wasn’t going to let half-brain ruin my evening.

That was the job of others — three more tossers, two in the form of MCs and the fourth the lead singer of Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson. Let’s start with the MCs.

Tasked with warming us up for a good evening out were Barney Simon (he of former radio glory and stalwart of South African music; not to be confused with Barney the Dinosaur, although apart from the purple thing, is an easy confusion to make) and some dolt who introduced himself as being a DJ on 94.7 in Johannesburg. This then caused him and Barney to embark on a Johannesburg love-fest — they decided it would be a hoot to tell everyone how rubbish Western Province rugby is, how crap the mountain is, and how their planes were delayed at the airport. Hilarious stuff. They then went on to introduce the opening band — an OK outfit called Voodoo Child — hyping them as the biggest band in Johannesburg [insert impressed audience noises here].

Now I used to live in Johannesburg, and still love the place, but how dumb do you have to be to come to Cape Town, act as if Jo’burg is the centre of the universe, tell us that because a band are big in Johannesburg we have to love them, and then proceed to trash Cape Town? Very dumb. And just to prove how dumb they were, Barney and friend embarked on this little bit of banter:

Barney: So Jethro Tull have been around for a very long time
Dolt #2: Yes, they have — although I don’t remember their early years like you can, Barney, haw haw haw.
Barney: No, Dolt, in fact can you name any Jethro Tull songs?
Dolt #2: Um, err, no, Barney, you’ve got me there.

Stunned silence. Here was this jerk who has walked on stage at a Jethro Tull concert, dissed the city’s rugby team, told us how fabulous everything from Johannesburg is, and then admits — in front of 6 000 paying Jethro Tull addicts — that he can’t name a single song by the band. 100% Boer looked like he wanted to rip him apart with a koeksister twister.

That’s how dumb he was. Clearly DJs at 94.7 aren’t coached on how to use the internet. It would have taken him five minutes to pop along to Wikipedia and brush up on the band when he accepted the job — after all, he probably got paid something in the region of R10 000 to fly to Cape Town, have a few beers and spend five minutes on stage. If I had been the promoter, I would have sent him back to Jo’burg with a swift kick in the arse and no cheque. Tosser.

And then we get to the last tosser of the evening: Ian Anderson, lead singer of Jethro Tull. The band are great. They are the Real Thing … genuine rockers from an era when quality musicianship still counted. Even as someone who knew little of their music I enjoyed the show. Until the end, which shouldn’t have been the end.

During an intricate guitar solo, someone in the audience whistled. It’s what people at concerts do from time to time. It’s called “getting into the spirit of things”. Ian Anderson stopped playing and berated the audience, complaining that the whistling put him off his playing. Except no one was sure whether he was joking or not. So, the moment he began to play again, more people whistled. So Ian threw a strop, and stalked off to the back of the stage to sulk.

There is of course a delicious irony in the fact that one of the band’s biggest albums was called The Whistler, but that was lost in the blue haze of petulant huff. Anderson then came back, indicated to his band that they should wrap it all up. After the song, they did, and they walked off stage and into the Cape night without so much as a nod and a smile, leaving behind 6 000 slightly confused fans.

I suppose we can hope that they bumped into MC Tosser backstage and had to endure his company for the time it took for their cab to arrive. It’s called justice. As for the audience, well, having paid R400 and upwards for our tickets, I reckon that we were entitled to a little more courtesy. Even a forced “Good night, we’re old and tired and extremely grateful that you bothered to come along tonight, but now we must sleep” would have been nice. Tosser.