What were you doing on Thursday 26th November 1998?

If you like, you can come and do what I did...

Over the past few years my artwork has explored our obsession with the past- but not a past celebrated akin to an 80-year-old man finding a browned, war photograph behind a cupboard - but a universal recent past discovered through boredom, banality and lack of motivation. Use whichever model you like, but in consideration of my personal interest field, and hence the inclusion of this on a 'gig collective' blog- take pop music.


With a few clicks, a half typed word - M , A , N S - WOOOOSH!  - a complete list of every Mansun gig, song, anecdote, photograph, scanned ticket, lyric and press cutting (no time to read these in the digital world though). No doubt a link to download every crappy song as a faceless mp3, no mystery, no mystique, no patience, no discussion in the pub... DRAG, DROP, MEMORY CREATED. (And I quite like Mansun...) 
Maybe this is a good thing (it has been noted that I am a miserable bastard) but I have my suspicions. I would like to believe my year old daughter will one day remember buying her first record, but I doubt it. I guess I'm all for a level of sentiment and memory- just how much needs to be remembered and do we need a level of quality control? Who decides? (Now I sound like Hitler. A Britpop Führer)


Our impenetrable daily digital lives, our creepy obsession with befriending every fucker we have ever met and our apparent inability to not have immediate access to everything, has left us in phoney nostalgic meltdown. No need for memories or collections and ownership with Youtube. When did this desire to document EVERY ASPECT of EVERYTHING. FOREVER begin? Thursday 26th November 1998?


For my Final MA project I intend to recreate the first gig I ever attended which was Pulp at Doncaster Dome on Thursday 26th November 1998.   For 14 years I had thought very little about this event- I think it was 'good'. I'm SURE they played 'Common People'. I think I had a few stollen roll-ups in a Bluetone's cassette case. Anyhow, never mind- thanks to the internet my first gig- and no doubt yours too- can be meticulously dissected until you can relive it again and again... imagine celebrating such sentiment? Anyhow, check out the video above and view the book that I have made about that drizzly (perhaps?), evening in South Yorkshire...


So I will return to this blog in a few months time with word of this exciting prospect ('DISCO 2012' perhaps?) but until then you can get one of these books. Super slick print, 36 page, hardback book documenting the above event and our collective modern obsession with turning every memory into a lasting monument...  Limited stock available at a super cheap price of £30 + postage (Paypal/Bank transfer) and I guess I could do a VELVET OWL MEMBER discount...


Sammy