Moonmadness

I was at The Royal Albert Hall last week and no, it was not to see Beethoven's 9th (that was this week). I went to see one of my childhood great bands, in concert - Camel. Now if you've never heard of these incredible musicians, then that's OK. Not many people have, although the hall was packed to the rafters with people of my generation. There was even a specially enlarged wheelchair section and a worrying number of fans trundling into the auditorium on zimmer frames sporting threadbare and over-washed Stones and Pink Floyd t-shirts. Almost everyone else had a stick (some two) or a pronounced limp.

I felt old. Not horribly old, just disturbingly old. Even the band looked like relics from a bygone age. The flautist (yes, there really was a man with a flute) looked like my great grandfather (and he's dead).

Concerts nowadays, for the likes of me, are like jumping into a time machine and visiting a far nicer age with a group of blokes who should know better and watching bands which are shadows of their illustrious pasts.

I went to see a Genesis tribute band (young blokes trying to sound like the real thing) with my brother a year ago in Leamington Spa. The music was great, of course, but that isn't what lives in the memory. It was the tatty state of the auditorium that does. The tired gilded pillars, the drab scarlet curtain at the back of the stage and best of all, the sticky, lagered floor. Marvellous. The best. The old days. How wonderful that it's not just the people that age.

Then there was a Fish concert (I won't even try to explain who he is) in Islington. He walked onto the stage at the start, sighed deeply and said in a low, sad voice: "I used to play Wembley... and now I'm here." We all cheered of course, a sea of bald heads all pretending we were twenty again and shouting at a cruel world that this is what real music is. We happily waved two fingers at boy bands, the X Factor and all that rubbish. Even Ed Sheeran got the finger that night.

There have been other concerts. 'Yes' at the London Palladium (ridiculous, I know) and even Australian Pink Floyd, for those of us who can't get enough of singing along to Wish You Were Here, as loudly as we can. The worrying moment of that concert was seeing at least five ambulances outside the Hammersmith Apollo with their crews inside watching us critically, while fingering defibrillators in tight, shoulder bags.

So yes, Camel was great at the Royal Albert Hall. Their rendering of Moonmadness was impeccable and the 25 minute track, Lunar Sea (get it?) sublime.

I walked out of the hall at the end and passed the ambulance crews sharing jokes and giggling at the general state of the audience (and band). I marched by, shunning taxies, buses and the Tube, so I could walk the long mile back to Victoria in the pouring rain, singing 'Lady Fantasy' under my breath. I felt I had something to prove to an unfeeling world.