Give me the Ear Plugs

Boy-oh-boy do I feel old. Old and severely short on body art and facial studs.

Why this sudden ancient-awareness? Because yesterday I was asked to chaperone three fourteen-year-old boys at the Give It A Name annual British rock concert – a hard-core, punk rock, two-day festival where barely pubescent teens covered in tattoos and body piercings bounce around and form mosh pits – and within a mere moment of stepping inside its Earls Court exhibition centre locale, I was shaking my head in disdain.

‘Bad’ doesn’t even begin to cover it – it was horrendous! Boyfriend accompanied me and along with the father of another young boy we took to some seats on the sidelines and began twiddling our thumbs. We had almost ten hours before ‘curfew’ and hadn’t thought to bring the Sunday paper or a trashy novel to pass the time. Add to the noise that was blaring from the two stages, watching these young kids made me want to cry. Girls who may have been quite pretty covering their faces in Goth makeup, teasing their hair into knotted tangles and wearing torn lingerie… did their parents really know they left the house like that?

The standard dress of the boys was tight black jeans and a tight black-T, depicting one of the various bands taking to the stage that weekend. Boyfriend was surprised at the number of effeminate boys present but it was the number of overweight kids took me aback. Seriously, these kids were chugging down Red Bulls and cans of Coke and stuffing their faces with Pizza Express – no wonder they were caking their faces in white concealer!

I sounded like my mother – although neither my mother nor my father ever had to worry about me turning my punk rock down – but how could anyone call the continuous yelling and hoarse-screams coming from the stage ‘music’? And how on earth did those singers manage to perform day after day when they were treating their voices so poorly?

Hour after hour us ‘guardians’ would share sad glances, counting the time down and rueing the day we agreed to tag along. But the worst part of it was that we were locked in. No ‘pass outs’ meant we were cooped inside for the whole nine hours, except of course if we wanted to go out for a cigarette and share three-squared metres of sunlight with a bunch of teens puffing on nicotine sticks, cause they’re Oh So Cool! Pity neither of us smoke.

But the boys had fun. In their words the day was “seriously cool” and the bands “awesome” – and when punk comes to shove, that’s what really matters…