Reflecting over the past decade, as one does in these situations, it struck me as particularly notable how the general atmosphere and conduct at gigs has changed quite dramatically over the past ten years. Once upon a time in the early noughties, when I was a little wee teenager embarking on my own independent musical life, gigs were generally pretty horrible places to be. They were smelly, sweaty, aggressive, heavy places, in which only the strongest and stubbornest of girlfriends could prevail. Gigs were a serious boy zone, with most of the girls present only being there in order to impress (or keep happy) some current beau.
Spin the clock forward ten years, and gigs are certainly becoming softer places to frequent. When I recall my most recent gigging experience (Passion Pit at the O2 in Oxford last month), the venue was of a far more female friendly orientation. I would say a good third of the audience was female, and a particular thing that got me was how very lovely they were all turned out, with these gorgeously pretty dresses and heels and what not. My exact thoughts before leaving were ‘don’t wanna dress too nice; it is a gig after all. T-shirt and jeans, me thinks’. How very archaic of me. The girls were not the only difference however; the venue too was dramatically different to early gigging experiences. The drink was not just warm lager, and the toilets - my god they had soap and paper and locks and cubicle doors and everything. They were actually nice - even my most girly friends would have found them acceptable. Conversely, at my first gig (the Inner City Sumo Tour featuring A and Goldfinger at Brixton Academy) only one toilet had a door and the walls were nearly black with graffiti. This wasn’t necessarily a problem for me, but for most ladies such an environment is a definite no-no.
So what exactly has changed in the gigging arena over the past ten years to make live music consumption more universal accessible? It cannot simply be that my tastes have changed; whilst there still certainly remains some of the more unappetising gigging experience out there, music venues and the people who go to them have to a notable extent cleaned up their act. Much of this change could certainly be equated with money. Gigging is a seriously big business these days, much bigger than a decade ago. With the massive germination of festival culture in the noughties, through which new festivals spring up every year, live music consumption is no longer a realm purely for musos and teenagers. And because the gigging demographic has changed, the venues and the general atmosphere has too.
But capital cannot take all the credit for this change. In my opinion, the revision of the general etiquette of gigging has in fact derived ultimately from a change in the style of the music itself, which has gone on to affect everything from general accessibility to toilet cleaning rotas. At the beginning of the decade “gigs” were for the most part confined to the rock genre. Obviously big acts and pop stars did tours of giant venues, just like they do today, but popular music was generally dance or garage orientated, which was mostly restricted to clubs and did not typically venture into the live genre but at all. If you liked guitar music, you had to look across the pond to America, which produced an array of masculine orientated, guitar centric rock. This was essentially men’s/boy’s music, and you were specifically branded as a rock-chick/tom-boy if you were a female oriented towards this type of music. Today, whilst there are still influxes of American “rock” which typically takes a masculine stance (albeit often through the well beaten track that is emo, which for all its vulnerability still essentially has a masculine bias), a lot of today’s music has a more multifaceted approach, taking on aspects of indie, pop and electro amongst others. This new wave of popular rock (if you can really classify it as “rock”) is incredibly popular, and as it is diverse in its complexities, from the very poppy Little Boots to the super-electro Max Tundra, there is usually something for all tastes. This diversification and amalgamation of genres inclines towards a softening of rock, which (stereotypically, perhaps) indicates a feminisation of rock. The hard, phallic edge of the rock guitar has been quashed by the more polyphonic, rhythmic, physical nature of electro and pop, therefore making it more female. The most popular gigging music now is our new wave, which is a more balanced, dynamic creature that harbours both masculine and feminine qualities. And clearly, the rise of femininity with music has not been lost by women, who are now flocking to gigs like it’s the new clubbing.
