Tom Dunne: I missed seeing Nirvana because I went for a pint instead
Kurt Cobain performing at MTV Unplugged in 1993. Picture: Getty Images
FOMO: the Fear Of Missing Out. It was an irritation in the pre-smartphone era, but these days, in the valley of a million screens, it is an existential crisis.
You are here, but elsewhere, someone you know is living it large, laughing, seeing something transcendental, one off, amazing. And don’t they just let you know.
This week alone I have missed Fontaines DC, Lankum and CMAT. All in Dublin, all within a hop, skip and a jump from my home, but yet all tantalisingly out of reach.
Luckily my friends on social media were there for me. One described the Fontaines DC gig as “the best performance by an Irish band I have ever seen.”
Meanwhile, Lankum were, “in touch with something as old as stone”, and “levelled the place with emotion”.
CMAT fans weren’t quite as eloquent.
“If you missed it last night, you really missed it,” said one. The others just ranged from, “brilliant” to “wild ” to “steals the show”. Not as many of my poet friends, PR acquaintances or music journalists at her show then.
My excuses were valid. One night I was attending my children’s charity bake sale, well it was more ferrying over the cakes.
On another I was on a GAA Cuala run - we takes turns with them. Another I was at home because, between bake sales and GAA runs, I needed a night in.
None of this is very Rock and Roll but it beats not being allowed to go to see The Clash in TCD because my mother said I’d fail the Junior Cert. It amounts to the same thing though.
Something amazing is happening and you aren’t at it. I console myself with the knowledge that I have missed better.
In 1990, for instance, I journeyed to the Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire to see Sonic Youth. We decided to stop for a very civilised pint in the Purty Loft next door and, “give the support act a miss.” When we went in, however, people seemed dazed.
We had missed Nirvana.
Years after that I attended as little as I could of the MTV Music awards in The Point. All that glitz and glam, it just wasn’t our world. Rumour had it that Prince was going to do a private show later and I had an invite. But it seemed ludicrous. The venue was TINY!
I met RTÉ’s John Kelly the next day. “You didn’t go, Tom?” he asked. I made a weak excuse.
“Did he play long?” I wondered. “About four hours,” said John, helpfully.
“Hits?” I asked nervously, hoping he had taken this chance to play obscure stuff.
“Almost all of them,” said John, as I sat on the kerb and cried.
But I’ve done worse.
In LA once we met a band in the lift of our hotel.
“You guys in a band too?” they asked, “we’re having a few beers, join us.”
We did, but it was monastic. “Few” was the operative word in the beer department. We decided to cut our losses and get an early night. They later became Jayne’s Addiction.
Not being in the right place at the right time, or worse, leaving the right place just before it all kicks off, is part and parcel of the fan’s life. You have to balance the dream with the reality.
See one more from Bob Dylan or slip out and avoid the traffic? Get a sneaky pint?
I left a Van gig once just as he was joined onstage by U2 and Paul Brady. But others have left a Dylan gig just as he was joined onstage by Elvis Costello, Morrison and Carole King to sing ‘Rainy Day Women’. Hell hath no fury like a baby sitter delayed.
I know people who: went to see Ride instead of Oasis in the Tivoli, eschewed the Pixies at the National Stadium (1990) to go to a debs in Tamango’s, skipped Oasis in the Limelight to go to a rave in Armagh’s Drumsill hotel, another who didn’t hang back for a private show by Robin Williams!
Social media amplifies the pain and frequency of these missed occasions. You now know what you’re missing as you are missing it.
As you raise a glass of wine with friends over a nice dinner you are secretly scrolling and thinking, “Balls! He’s doing my favourite B-side.”
So now you are missing two things. The gig you didn’t go to AND your actual life now. This is not progress.
