Boat on the Horizon

And a return to the fifty-fifty theme.
Later we went to see Billy Bragg at the Queen's Hall. Ticketing left something to be desired - not to mention the way that a £20 ticket gets bumped up by a few pounds with a 'booking fee' - partly down to buying online with a credit card (but isn't that cheaper for them than having to pay ticket selling staff? Oh right, it is just a gouge and nothing to do with costs...) But also at least partly for any means of purchase. Quite how you are supposed to buy the product I'm not sure! Anyway all it said on the ticket was when the doors opened - no mention of when the main act would start, or even the fact that there was a support act before the main man. Like turning up at Tannadice to watch United except Forfar play the first twenty minutes. Maybe not the best analogy at the moment, given how rubbish United currently are, but you get the idea. I assume it's to try and get people to buy more drink while they are waiting. And perhaps if you are in the know you turn up at the right time. The support guy - Duke Special - was okay, although his stance at the keyboard bugged me - hunched over his mike to sing. Posed an unwanted active question in my mind - why didn't he have the mike higher up or sit down? When Mr Bragg finally appeared (after an inexplicably long changeover for what appeared to be a simple set-up on stage) he was also 'not bad'. It became clear to me that I am most familiar with his eighties stuff and Mermaid Avenue so a wider selection is always going to leave me missing some of my favourites. There was a fair degree of political chat and answering heckling from apparently pro-SNP-anti-Labour audience members and Billy seemed to lose his cool more than once. Obviously some audience members wanted to sing along with the songs - also mildly irritating when you've paid to hear the man himself and not some bloke further along the row. Is this just par for the course these days at live performances - a lot more selfish behaviour? I'm sounding like an old fuddy-duddy! Perhaps the Queen's Hall was just a little too big a room and it would have been better in a more intimate space? Almost certainly not a fair comparison but while the FM concert earlier in the year was four times as expensive I think it was certainly more than four times better.