It is perhaps time for someone to do some rethinking when it comes to staging rock concerts on this island. Not only are many people feeling that they are being cheated in the way spaces inside venues are organised, but the prices being asked are extracting their toll. A case in point was last week’s Simply Red concert at Ta’ Qali where a disappointing attendance must have delivered the message pretty clearly.

It is a sheer affront to the very concept of rock music to introduce elitist seating and standing zones. The most memorable rock concerts, from Woodstock in 1970 right up to this day and age, were those that were open to everyone at a standard and affordable price. Rock is classless and free, but ever since the accounting profession assumed control of these mega events, the soul of the music genre has been horribly squeezed out of it and left to spirit itself out into thin air. It is of course a process that started well beyond our shores and has sadly been adopted here too.

However, there have been sporadic exceptions to this Thatcherite view of rock concerts, like when the Rome municipal authorities invited Paul McCartney to give a concert, free of charge for half a million people, smack in the middle of the Eternal City, and when Toto Cutugno and friends were brought over here for a huge – and completely free – May Day concert. Even more recent and significant was the free MTV concert on the Granaries in Floriana, though a good chunk of that was paid for with taxes you and I pay on a regular basis.

Worse than the seating and standing procedures, are the prices being charged for drinks by the bars and stalls at most rock concerts. At the Simply Red event, for example, the minimum charge for a drink was Lm5, which earned you a total of fourteen tokens. One could see people hesitating to pay that when they only felt like having a quick cup of coffee or a cold beer; and it wasn’t just the local fans. Even the barman had an apologetic look on his face. A German couple soon stopped hesitating and asked us whether we would like to share their tokens instead of forking out another fiver. I thought that was a brilliant idea. Sheer, German logic really. Accountants 100, Customers 1. Still practically a walkover, of course, but it felt good to be able to circumnavigate the vicious system.

The Simply Red concert was not only badly attended, but also badly organised. Bookings for the Lm30-per-person places in the so-called “VIP Gold” sectors certainly left much to be desired. People quite reasonably chose to either go for the cheaper tickets, or else opted for the so-called “Platinum” area which, for Lm5 more, got you a much better view of the stage and the performers than that from the side-positions of VIP Gold-diggers.

The concert ticket made it clear that doors opened at 7pm. They actually opened more than half-an-hour later, which is probably why no searches were carried out to make sure that No. 4 of the “conditions of sale” on the use of “audio, audio-visual, video and/or photographic equipment not previously authorised by the management in writing” was not infringed. Thank goodness for that. Accountants 100, Customers 2. Still a walkover.

As for the music itself, mention must be made of the Irish group – Quill – and its outstanding performance between 8 and 8.30. More will be heard of them in the future.

There was also a small Maltese contribution from Ludwig-and-partner, which sadly smacked of sheer tokenism (not of the drinking variety, of course). It was allocated a mere 15 minutes but not even a mention on the concert website. If MTV, by Zammit-Dimechian reasoning, were to be excused for skipping the Maltese part of their concert on the island, the Simply Red concert organisers cannot be.

Simply Red, on the other hand, was simply awesome. The two-hour concert delighted the crowd and good, old Mick Hucknall seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself and cheering up the crowd, which reacted perfectly, singing aloud and dancing to Hucknall and Simply Red’s greatest hits such as Money’s Too Tight to Mention, Stars, Holding Back the Years and If you don’t know me by now.

Back home, I had another good look at the concert ticket, as I knew I needed to write something about the experience. The “conditions of sale”, that small print we ignore more often than not, had one final surprise to spring on me. You see, the very last condition, No.16, carried quite a sobering warning. It gravely informed me that exposure to loud music could injure my hearing. And that the venue might be cold or hot and/or claustrophobic. It then suddenly got more ominous – flashing lights can trigger epileptic seizures. I have been to dozens of rock concerts and watched fans doing the oddest of things, but I never thought it was probably all a result of the flashing lights. Could it not have been the music? No.16 finally turned motherly and told me to “always wear clothing appropriate for the weather”. Thanks ma.

I know I should have read all that BEFORE making it to Ta’ Qali. Had anything happened, it would certainly have been Accountants 150, Customers still 2. Simply bled.