Prostate concerts

Went to see Dave Gilmour strut his stuff last night at the cinema and splendid he was too! I can't fault the concert or the musicianship on show but there were a couple of aspects of showing this kind of thing at the cinema that caught my eye and (I think) are worthy of exploration.

The cinema itself was full for this showing, not an empty seat in the house, a good start you might think and with a quick gaze around the audience before the lights dimmed, I noticed that the average age must have been around 55-60 which I suppose made sense bearing in mind the sweet-spot of Pink Floyd was the 70s and early 80s. The problem with the audience demographic became apparent after a few minutes into the 2nd or 3rd song, and then every minute or so after that. Literally every sixty or so seconds the silhouette of a balding fat man waddled across the screen toward the exit and then a minute or two later would reappear crossing paths with the next one on their way out! I wouldn't want to be sexist here either, there were a quite few women in the mix too, and many of them took what seemed like eternity to crab their way through the sea of legs in their row to get to an exit, casting a similarly significant silhouette as they went.

This continual tidal migration was somewhat distracting, I began to wonder what might be causing it? Several hypothesis came to mind. I pondered the faint whiff of mulled wine and real-ale in the air and thought that perhaps many of these good people had had a few cheeky snifters before coming into the show and now needed to release the obvious tension accrued? Then I thought about prostate glands, could this be an omen for my future? Is this lack of bladder control an unavoidable attribute of getting older, an unpleasant thought. Then there was the observation that the silhouettes seemed so large (and so bald)? Was this a weird optical effect of the new 4K projection technology or simply one too many dominoes pizzas and discount haircuts for bus-pass owners?

Luckily, whatever the reasons, this seemingly constant back and forth did only slightly mar my enjoyment of the concert. I suppose that along with people continually checking their mobile phones, this demographic has habits that don't sit too well (or too long) with a 2 hour cinema show. Maybe there's a demand for some kind of new drug that makes you forget about twitter, stem the urge to pee and sit still for a couple of hours, you could even market it to the over 50s as the little blue "comfortably numb" pill.