If there's one theme to the concerts which have taken place in Regina's Mosaic Stadium, it's that the acts are all pretty old. The youngest act that has played in the stadium, Bon Jovi, has been around longer than I have, and the latest rumors are now involving Paul McCartney. I like McCartney, but he is 70, so it's another fairly aged act coming to the stage.
This isn't really a complaint, just an observation. Considering who could fill 30,000 seats in Saskatchewan, every name that immediately comes to my mind is similarly old. U2 could pull it off, and they've been active since the early '80s. Bruce Springsteen would be another contender, and he's 61. Good acts, sure, but they've been around for decades.
Of course, I'm forgetting huge swaths of the current music scene. I'm sure Lady Gaga could also sell out Mosaic fairly quickly, for example. But I went immediately for the older acts partially due to my own personal preference. Who would I be willing to get tickets for? Well, there are a large number of bands, some young, some old. How many of them would also be popular enough to sell out in this province? The number decreases dramatically, and we're left with the older acts.
Part of this might be just that if a group can manage to stick around for over 20 years and still draw a crowd, they must be doing something right. There's a reason people still queue up to see U2, but Bananarama has been largely forgotten outside of '80s theme nights at some bars. But that's not the whole story.
The issue is mostly that, with the way many people find music today, it is very easy to remain in a bit of a musical bubble, and unaware of large acts that are getting big in other bubbles. Music websites often cater to specific genres and subcultures, and the sites that sell music also have services to recommend based on previous purchases. As a result, it's relatively easy to avoid the radio, how most people used to find their music, and it's also very easy to avoid trends. Justin Bieber is a popular recording artist selling in the millions, I have never heard one of his songs in its entirety. Not because I'm better than it - far as I know they're great songs - but instead because it's so easy to avoid.
This trend was made very obvious in this year's Grammy Awards, where every act was met with an online chorus of "Who is this person?" Considering that most of these acts had topped Billboard charts at one point, and were nominated for a major award, that's astonishing. It's possible to be one of the biggest acts in the world, and still cause confusion. The wide variety of stuff out there and the ease of accessing it allows that to happen.
When these older acts got started, you couldn't be a chart topper and simultaneously ignored. Since then, all of the original fans have stuck around, some trying to get their own kids and family members into that artist. That's great, and I really do appreciate the music of acts that came well before my time. However, I wonder what the stadium shows will be like twenty years from now, when McCartney is 90 and there haven't been very many artists with universal appeal since.
