In Praise Of Being A Girl Who Loves Music

There are many thoughts and feelings about the bomb at the Ariana Grande show in Manchester. I'm not going to attempt to improve on or dispute them... and I started writing this just after it happened and purposely set it aside for a while.

This is not about terrorism or even about that show specifically. Wiser people have already said a great deal about those things. This is about music.

The attack on the Grande show is an unquestionable tragedy, sharpened by the simple truth that a gig is a special, even sacred space. It is an experience outside the everyday concerns we all have.

For young girls going to one of their first gigs - if not the first - it is beyond exciting, more than just an evening out. It is a glimpse into a world they might only have glimpsed before. One where you get to feel amazing and alive.

Some of my most magical moments are from live music experiences. Like many a rock geek and music dork, I plot the course of my life by them and they take on near mythic status with the passage of time. I share these stories with other fans as currency, credibility and worthiness; a way to connect with others; a way to outdo others.

I have a few stories of musical magnificence that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

• Robert Plant singing an Arabic-flavoured version of That's The Way at Somerset House as the flaming red sun set behind him.
• Scott Gorham playing Roisin Dubh from about three feet away at the Hammersmith Apollo.
• The Dubliners remembering Ronnie Drew and Luke Kelly in front of a Dublin home crowd.
• Bob Dylan at the Roundhouse in Camden, where I got to be near the front, standing amongst a few thousand rather than the vastness of the O2. The seven hours waiting in line were worth it, man.
• Ray Manzarek ripping into the opening of Light My Fire. Live. Right There. Even if it was the soulless Wembley Arena in 2003 rather than the Whiskey in '67.
• Jack Bruce and Joe Bonamassa tearing it up in the usually refined Royal Festival Hall
• Chas n Dave bringing working class rockney to the serious Royal Albert Hall.

All of those gigs happened when I was - nominally, at least - a grown-up. They have their special magic and undeniable rock geek credibility (possibly not the Dubliners but I don't care)...but they are the experiences of someone already used to the rituals and experiences of gig-going.

The rituals that are second-nature now were once strange. mystical traditions. It was not always so.

There are few groups within music who get more mockery, flak and lack of respect than tween and teenage girls. Ever twas thus, despite the fact that they bring in the dough. There's nobody more dedicated than a young girl in the first flush of her first musical love. Maybe it's fickle, but it's real enough. And it's not always fickle. Ask a David Cassidy fan now... for all the eye-rolling, they (anecdotally) still kinda love it.

These girl-fans get flak for being too enthusiastic, for having bad taste, for caring about things beyond the music... and I think there's some fair criticism to be levelled at the people who foist rubbish music on this fan subset, but not to throw it at the fans.

Since when has enthusiasm been a bad thing? Is 12 Year Old Molly less a fan for screaming and buying all the records, or ss she more stupidly obsessed than 40 Year Old Nigel who drones for two hours and bought all the records on at least three formats and who has bloody label numbers memorised? Or 25 Year Old Chet who liked that band before they were popular and was totally at that now-legendary gig blah blah blah...?

Are those girls less fans than I am because they like cheerful, uplifting music instead of the 19 ad a half minute live version of "In Your Town" from the special edition of Rory Gallagher's Irish Tour album. You know the one I mean, right? You must do!

Even if you or I think it's terrible music performed by idiots, well, it isn't for us. Those girls need and want something that they can hang their dreams on, whether it's empowerment or belief or their future lives, or a cute boy they want to fall in love with, to find out what that feels like.

None of those things are actually bad, you know. We're just so used to thinking that Things For Girls are by their very definition, less than Things For Boys or Things For Grown Ups. That being a teenage girl is somehow shorthand for 'so uncool' and 'worthless'. Screw that.

Tell me: is pop music for tweens any better or worse than 1980s hair metal, the most indulgent prog or the very worst punk? Come on, be honest. Are you going to tell me that Jimmy Pursey and Sham 69 are better than the Backstreet Boys? Or the Bay City Rollers are less authentic than Motley Crue?

My first ever gig was Suzi Quatro. I was seven, on holiday with my Granny and staying with Great-Aunt Tishy. My mum bought the tickets half for my benefit and half to troll her mum. I loved it, though Suzi was not in the first flush of fame or youth. Perhaps I liked it because of that. It was, coincidentally or not, a safe way for a seven-year-old devotee of electric guitars, to get inducted into the Great Audience.

And yet... the first time I remember being allowed to attend A Concert without parental chaperonage, I was 14/15 and went with my friend Louise to the Royal Albert Hall to see, of all the possible acts, Ant & Dec. That is an actual thing that occurred. I remember seeing them on a newspaper advert in a list of other bands (I dread to think who else was on the list that I missed out on through ignorance) and suggesting it, probably with the understanding that it was an act my parents would actually let me go and see.

It was a balance of cost, age-appropriate act and audience, venue and that I had a friend who was OK to come with me. That would not have happened for any other group I wanted to see - I did not love pop music by then and my tastes had diverged rather from those of my friends.

Anyway, I don't remember much of the show other than it being pleasantly not-crap and trying to stand on my seat in the back of the stalls, and then buying a crap bootleg poster outside before Louise's dad picked us up and drove us all the way home from the Albert Hall to Hertfordshire, because he is an actual legend.

We were, for an hour or two, a little closer to being grown ups. Had I know how much adulthood sucks, I might not have bothered. But for a few hours in my otherwise pretty horrendo teenage life, I felt like part of a group, I was a little bit more free and I had a dance in my step. What a bright moment that was.

There is nothing - nothing - wrong with being a girl who likes pop music. There's nothing evil about it, not even in the unnerving devotion fans sometimes display.

It's for girls! shouldn't an insult. And can we possibly stop mocking girls for everything and anything they do, think or feel? Like they won't get enough of that 'heads we win, tails you lose' nonsense as grown women?

Not all gigs are life-changingly wonderful. I've seen some bloody terrible music. But, for all that, the worst thing that should happen to anyone at a music event/gig/concert/show is that they get overcharged at the bar.

Love all the people.