02 July 2014

On fame...

It's been a while since I've seen any live music and I broke my famine 2 weeks ago by going to watch Gary Numan at the Cambridge Junction. One of the things that struck me, despite the obvious volume and wonderfully evocative light show, was the fact that Gary basically came on, said 'hello', played for 105 minutes, said 'thank you and goodnight' and then went off. No witty repartee or chatter between songs, just 105 solid and sweaty minutes of intense music. A direct result of well-publicised shyness or a conscious desire to stay detached and let the music be the star of the show? Either way, this was incredibly refreshing.

We now live in a world where musicians/artists/pop-tarts want you to buy the album, then the branded fragrance, then the duvet cover, then the breakfast cereal. It's not enough that you like the music, you have to buy into the personality. The camera crew waits at the bottom of the bed as the waters break, and celebrities hawk pictures of their babies around the tabloids and glossies before the surgeon has even finished with the stitches. There's no mystique, no distance, no boundary. In such a culture, what a breath of fresh air to find an artist who so clearly wants his work to stand above everything else and seems to view public interest in his personality and opinions as lying somewhere between curious and totally baffling. I've seen him interviewed and he is always courteous, honest and open but every question is greeted with an expression that seems to say "why on earth are you asking me that?"

Gary claims not to be a particularly great keyboard player or guitarist but to me he epitomises the definition of the word 'musician'. I for one pplaud him for his approach and wish there were more like him.