Well Jonathan Richman provided he usual mixture of the poignant and the playfully absurd to entertain the capacity crowd at The Fleece. Now The Fleece always had a bit of a reputation for being very uncomfortable at sold out gigs, recently however things seemed to have improved, sadly this weekends gig was a return to the bad old days, very overcrowded.

Then again is it the fault of the venue? It’s fair to say that Jonathan Richman attracts fans of a certain age (which includes us!), some of the more recent sold out shows, such as The Bees have attracted a younger crowd. Now we all know that as people advance in years, we tend to add the odd pound or two of padding, when this is multiplied by a factor of 400 that must decrease the amount of space, which is available in the venue. A couple of years ago a similar thing happened at the Elvis Costello gig at The Academy. Although the capacity had been greatly reduced from nights such as Blowpop, the place received many complaints from fans that they could not see the gig because the place was oversold.

Maybe someone needs to work out a formula, to calculate the average size of a prospective gig goer for every performer. This could then be factored into the ticket sales for each standing venue.

The next gig for us is Lambchop at Bath Pavilion, now we saw Belle & Sebastian play a sold out, but very comfortable gig there before Xmas. My guess is that that the average Lambchop fan is somewhat more substantial than those indie kids, so let’s see how we get on with that one!