There is also a moment in time, as Whitney once reminded us, when your love of an artist coincides with his/her art being at it's peak. I was lucky to see The Clash in '77 and U2 in '80. I paid to see The Who in '78 but missed them in '68, I danced to the Stones at the Apollo in '76 but was listening to Ed Stewpot in 1969.
Eddie Izzard I finally caught in 2009.
I laughed a lot. I still giggle at the idea of the friendly sharks. But the whole experience was the perfect marriage of consumerism and having your minimum expectation met. For £30 + booking fee and the Ticketrapist tax Eddie would do his Eddie thing, as seen on DVD, for us all. You can't really justify a complaint. He told some stories, many of them very amusing, in his surreal but today more whimsical manner and we all laughed and next day told all our friends and acquaintances that we'd seen Izzard last night.
Izzard structures his comedy along the time line of the Earth with his humour aimed at the impact religion has played and continues to play on subjugating our own humanity. He opens with the statement that 'there is no God'. We all watch the news we all know there is no god. We can all visualise the bodies across the globe dismembered by one groups belief in a different deity. So Eddies structure for his joking is from the start fairly lame. He doesn't take it any deeper either but fills the humour out with his thoughts of consciousness asides. One or either would be fine by itself. Together it don't go. He should mercilessly satirise the role of religion. These golden calves should be verbally slaughtered with a viciousness that would lay the foundation to make his surreal tangents by contrast really funny. Unfortunately, he doesn't. Playing to 10000 people in a huge barn must result in the intimacy being lost and the message being thinned out to play to the many.
Heaven knows, if I could dj to 3000 people every week-end rather than four codgers awaiting the racing results and a collie that has one leg and suffers from tinnitus then I would before you could say Pete Tong.
Similarly, if offered the hand of Mammon I would less grasp it than gnaw it's whole arm off from the shoulder.
You cannot criticise with any fervour a man who has honed his god-given talent to such an extent that nearly ten thousand good citizens will suffer the seats in the SECC, the bar queue and the parking nightmare to see him. Izzard may have talked about Moses in the desert but that prophet never had to get his camel out of the SECC car park after a sell out gig. That would sorely have tested his faith.
I sympathise. When I play to twelve folk I try to gauge what they all like and select songs that they will appreciate. I try to lead them to songs they may not know but could learn to love. I take risks. I wonder 'can I get away with this?' When I am djing to a big crowd I play the hits. It is what is expected. It is what works.
Sure I will clear the dance floor and do this quite deliberately at times. But I'll always bring it back quickly to where the punters think it should be i.e. songs folk know, dance tunes people like and no surprises. I can't blame Eddie Izzard for the same thing.
Where once in my heart he was Eddie Stardust, now he is more Eddie Starbucks.When once he was the double espresso of eye watering, sphincter loosening comedy, now he is the latte of mirth .
I wish him well and thank him for the memories. It was me who was once again just out of time.
Meanwhile, there are two old geezers in my bar talking about my djing prowess and telling their friends that they should have been here years ago when it was just the two of them nursing whisky and hangovers how good was dj alan then.
This Christmas I may buy my acquaintances Eddie's new dvd. They are sure to like it.
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