The tickets cost 150 pounds from a stranger, while the piano cost less than that and arrived with a free mouse.
LONDON, England – The piano is on the pavement and the removal men are on a cigarette break, which means that for eleven minutes I am the only person standing between a forty-year-old upright and the 9.40 to Lewisham.
It cost me less than a Stevie Wonder ticket would have cost me in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want that sentence on the record before anything else happens today.
Morning: A Joanna Comes Home
The piano came from a man called Desmond, who was clearing his late aunt’s flat and said, with some feeling, “It needs a good home or a good skip.” I looked at it, saw the chipped ivory and the sticker that says PROPERTY OF 1987, and chose the good home. The skip looked relieved.
In Cockney rhyming slang a piano is a Joanna, and I have been saying it all week to anyone who will stand still. The best account I know of how that sort of language works is the rhyming slang explainer on The London Prat, which proves it was not dreamed up by a man in a pub to avoid paying for a round, though he undoubtedly tried.
The removal men carry it up three flights with the calm of people who have seen worse. One of them tells me that the thing about stairs is that they always win. By half past ten the Joanna is against my living room wall, middle C is sticking, and a small grey mouse has been found in the bottom of the lid and escorted to a bush.
My pupil at noon is cancelled, because her bus is also in a ditch of its own making. I spend the gap tuning, which on an instrument of this age is less a task than a negotiation. Every string agrees to a note and then reconsiders it as soon as I put the wrench down.
Midday: The Numbers on the Screen
I open my laptop to look up the Stevie Wonder shows, because a piano in the room does that to you. He played two nights at the O2, on a Tuesday and a Thursday, performing Songs in the Key of Life in full for its fiftieth anniversary. Time Out’s guide to the second night says the main face-value sale was sold out, and that the resale sites were offering seats from 150 pounds on Viagogo and from 200 pounds on StubHub.
I read that twice. I then looked at the piano, which cost less than the cheapest of those, and which has never once asked me to join a virtual queue.
Afternoon: A List of Grievances
I have been keeping a running list, and this seems like the moment to publish it.
- A seat to watch a man play a landmark album should not cost the same as a fortnight’s gas.
- The word “resale” now means “sale”, and the word “sale” means “a thing you have already missed”.
- My streaming service has raised its price twice this year and has not added a single new song I wanted.
- My own pupils, who are retired plumbers and nurses and one very serious dentist, are all being charged a monthly fee to listen to music they could have borrowed from a friend in 1994.
- Every app now wants to be a subscription. I would not be surprised to find my kettle asks for a standing order.
That last one reminds me of a farm.fm story about ranchers discovering that their fences now come with a subscription. I do not know a thing about fences, but I know the feeling. It is the feeling of owning something and learning that you are only renting the permission.
Evening: What You Get for the Money
The same guide reports that the first night’s set ran close to three hours, with the O2’s 11pm curfew looming over the end of it. It lists twenty-six songs, including “Sir Duke”, “Isn’t She Lovely” and “Superstition”, and a version of “Billie Jean” thrown in for good measure. It adds that the Guardian gave the Birmingham leg of the tour five stars.
For scale, the same publication’s rundown of seventeen London gigs this month includes Kelela in Brixton and Black Country, New Road at the London Coliseum. I have priced none of them, out of respect for my own blood pressure.
All of which sounds magnificent and worth a fortune, and I want to be fair about it. A man who has been writing songs since before most of the audience was born is entitled to charge what the market will bear. My quarrel is with the market, which has all the manners of a pigeon at a picnic.
My editors at The London Prat are always saying the thing that is true and funny is usually the thing about prices. If you want to see how the humour pages tell the story of London with a straight face, the London news page is a good start.
Late: The Only Ticket I Could Afford
At ten I sit down at the Joanna with a cup of tea and nobody watching. Middle C sticks, so I avoid it. I work out the first four bars of “Isn’t She Lovely” using only the notes that work, which turns out to be most of them. The mouse’s former residence hums in sympathy.
It is nowhere near three hours. It is a bit over four minutes, and it contains eleven wrong notes. I leave them in. The neighbours knock on the wall, twice, in what I decide to interpret as rhythm.
That is the whole concert, and I paid for it in cash.
If you fancy more of this, there are more of my daily notes at The London Prat, and they come with no booking fee.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/