don’t view the review

I appear to have got my festivals and cities wrong this year. I’m currently in Edinburgh for a few days, arriving in the lull between the end of the film festival and the start of the main festival and Fringe next month.

Yet in to day’s newpaper, there are reviews of performances in the Manchester International Festival, much closer to home. I’d tried to get a ticket for the combined Steve Reich and Kraftwerk concert, two favourites of mine, but by the time I’d heard of the concert it was sold out. The review was full of praise, describing it as the hottest ticket in town.

Over the years, I’ve seen Kraftwerk in concert three times, and although they produce relatively little new music, their constant reworking of old material is fascinating, and this unusual combination of performers would have been a rare treat.

On the opposite page of the paper is a review of It Felt Like a Kiss, by Punchdrunk. I’m going to see this on Sunday, and I wish now that I hadn’t read the ambivalent review. I’ll still go, of course, but my attitude has been tainted.