The other day I bought myself tickets for Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets concert at the Convention Centre in Dublin next April.
For those who don’t know Nick Mason was the drummer in Pink Floyd and Saucerful of Secrets was one of the group’s early albums a few years before they found global fame with Dark Side of the Moon. Mason now tours with a very talented group of mainly session musicians and the band also includes Gary Kemp, formally of Spandau Ballet and the composer of all that group’s big hits from the Eighties (Gold, True etc).
Of course Pink Floyd were very much my generation of musical heroes and last year I went to see another past member of the band, Roger Waters, in concert at the Three Arena — brilliant stuff. But I’ve also been contemplating how many of today’s musical stars will still be able to sell tickets and do concert tours in fifty years’ time?
Now, don’t get me wrong; I am not going down the route of ‘it was all better in my day’. But the truth of it is, as we all know, records don’t sell any more and if there are no sales there’s no competition and therefore no proper benchmark for people to judge their musical endeavours by.