Gigs
Genesis at Wembley, 1987
Muse 
Elbow
November 27th 2003 - Wembley Arena, London
"And the balconies did thunder to the rapturous feet of the crowd". Quite simply, an incredible gig, albeit let down slightly by the sound system, which seemed to have been pushed slightly too far into territories that the speakers couldn't quite handle. Elbow provided first-class support (with apologies to the previous band, which I missed on account of an unintentional detour around the Wembley roadworks), playing numbers such as "Grace Under Pressure", "Fallen Angel" and "Newborn". Muse belted in with the first (OK, technically second) track from their recent album Absolution, "Apocalypse Please", and built up from there, playing a good range from all three albums to-date. Personal favourites included "Sunburn", "Space Dementia", "Butterflies and Hurricanes" (with Matt Bellamy demonstrating his piano mastery during its Rachmaninov-esque interlude) and the beautiful "Blackout" - counterpointed with hundreds of lighters waving in the air and some gorgeous fluid lighting reminiscent of the hull of a Vorlon ship in Babylon 5 (oops, geek moment :-). Whilst use was made of some additional pre-recorded backing, it was still amazing how complete the sound was from just piano/guitar, bass and drums.
My vantage point up in the balcony gave not only a superb, clear view of the stage but of the whole venue - a scene poles apart from sleepy Teignmouth where Muse hail from. Matt Bellamy's keyboard is also worth a mention, having been built into a industrial-style steel surround with lights on the front straight out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (the bit near the end when the US and French military-types trade keyboard solos with the visiting spaceship) which lit up dependent upon the notes being played - cool! Excellent, end-of-the-world, apocalyptic, bleak-but-beautiful music performed to an generous, supportive crowd.
Regenesis
October 26th 2003 - "The Stables", Milton Keynes
A second outing to see this fantastic Genesis tribute-band. A completely different setting this: an acoustically good auditorium with seating all round (aparently built and owned by Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine) giving an experience more like a classical concert. It certainly enabled an appreciation of the music to a whole new level, given the lack of crowd noise. A nice mix of "new" material too, especially "The Lamia" and "The Chamber of 32 doors" (from "The Lamb") and Afterglow.
Once again, a few of the costume changes made famous by Peter Gabriel appeared, for example the "flower" from "Supper's Ready" and the old man from "The Musical Box". ReGenesis seem to create perfectly the sound of the original Genesis - right down to the prog-rock specialism of the flute solo, a great rendition of the Steve Hackett guitar piece "Horizon's" by their new guitarist, and the crunchy, looped sound of 70's analogue synthesizers.
V2003
August 16th 2003 - Hylands Park, Chelmsford, Essex
Great weather, a bunch of mates and some excellent music. Highlights included Athlete, The Foo Fighters and the headlining Coldplay. More photos can be found here.
Longview
Cord / Blank Space
June 30th 2003 - Norwich Arts Centre
Longview are an up-and-coming band that I had first come across when they supported Easyworld on a previous gig, so it was great to come back and see them again. The support was really good too, especially "Cord" who played some great-sounding stuff. The difference, for Longview, was perhaps mostly that this time round the audience knew the words and were belting them out along to awesome songs like "Further" and "Still".
The Arts Centre certainly do some great-value gigs: 3 bands of this quality for a fiver can't be bad, and certainly beats the near-£50 paid by some of my mates who saw Bon Jovi recently in Hyde Park (from about 2 miles away from the stage...)
Shed 7
May 23rd 2003 - University of East Anglia
MC Marcey-Marc was "volunteered" into going with me to this Shed gig, once more at the UEA, after my gig-buddy Anne had to bomb out. It was a good set, and the crowd was unusually rumbustuous. Marc said afterwards that "he was getting too old for [that] type of thing" :-)
Turin Brakes
I Am Kloot
March 2003 - University of East Anglia
Another pleasant discovery - "I am Kloot" were excellent, as indeed were the Brakes: they managed to present their minimalist, almost-repressed slightly-gloomy acoustic material with a quite different stage energy and sound compared to the studio albums, giving their music a more energetic kind of rocky feel. My favourite: Future Boy. Excellent.
Easyworld
Little Nikita / Longview
February 2003 - Norwich Arts Centre
Little Nikita opened the evening with a range of hard punk-edged numbers. Their drummer has perhaps the most interesting action I've ever seen, with such energy. Longview was a new and pleasurable discovery (especially as you could make up nearly an entire album by getting all three of the CD singles they released a few weeks later). They did some gorgeous stuff. Easyworld were pretty good too, finishing with Dav Ford stripping the strings from his guitar in a rock'n'roll style, although I have a feeling that they played a bit better when supporting Toploader previously at Milton Keynes (maybe because they had something to prove, at least that Toploader aren't the only band to come out of Eastbourne). In common with a few bands I've now seen first as support and then as the headline, the crowd were theirs this time round: being surrounded by like-minded fans always makes for a better gig.
Kemopetrol
February 2003 - Jimmy'z, Cannes, France
Not often you get to see a Finnish rock band. Let alone in a nightclub in Cannes. They were good fun though, and the girl lead singer was sooo cute...
A day or two afterwards, at the geek "beach camp" was at on at the time, I met the guitarist for another Finnish rock band, "Downfall", who rather coolly gave me an autographed CD.
Toploader
Easyworld
January 2003 - Centerpoint, Milton Keynes
For me, "Onka's Big Moka" still beats "Magic Hotel", but it was good to hear a decent selection from both the new and the old album. However, Toploader were almost eclipsed by their fellow Eastbourners Easyworld, who I hadn't realised were on support (until they took to the stage), but who were responsible for my favourite album of 2002 - "This is Where I Stand". Topload were pretty "big" at this point, so it was very strange (in a cool-getting-close-up-to-the-stage way) being able to see them at such a small, odd venue (The Point, in an industrial estate, in MK) in what was a re-scheduled gig where there were only around 300-400 people.
Regenesis
25th October 2002 - London Astoria
Fantastic. An early/mid-period Genesis fan could not want more from a tribute band. Costume changes and even flute playing. You really could close your eyes and be unable to tell the difference between this and '74-'75 Genesis.
Radio 1 - One Big Sunday
August 2002 - Ipswich
A free gig, and therefore automatically a good day out (apart from the queues to get there, and 1,000 people rushing to get on the one bus that turned up to take everyone away again). Highlight was probably Kosheen.
Bon Jovi
July 2002 - Milton Keynes Bowl
I'd really liked the album "Keep the Faith", but had generally moved on a bit from this kind of soft, almost-AOR rock. That said, this was still an enjoyable concert, and it was pretty easy to get swept up in classics like "Livin' on a Prayer". Less could be said for the traffic control in Milton Keynes, which meant that despite leaving like 4 hours before the gig (and MK is only 1.5 - 2 hours away) we still only made it in 15 minutes before BJ took to the stage.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Peter Donohoe (piano)
Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia
After doing the guided tour around the opera house, I managed to get a late-cancellation ticket to the evening's classical concert, and got to see, in what has to be one of the places to see such works: Tchaikovsky "Piano Concerto No. 2", Kancheli "à la Duduki" and Sibelius "Symphony No. 5". I've been to a few other classical gigs (such as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra doing Saint-Saens Organ Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Evelyn Glennie in Norwich and The Brodsky String Quartet in Plymouth), but I just had to drop this one in to this list for the sheer pose value :-).
Travis
The Clint Boon Experience
17th December 1999 - Brixton Academy, London
During the support band, Hannah, one of the gang I went with from the Council, kept saying that she thought she knew the bass player and even wandered off to get a closer look. Travis were excellent, even though Fran Healey stuffed up the harmonica solo on "Luv", which being my favourite track, was a minor disapointment...
V99
Kula Shaker, Afro-Celt Sound System , Beautiful South, Faithless, Manic Street Preachers
August 1999 - Chelmsford
Lots of good music in the sun, although there's always something slightly down about gigs like this if you're driving. It's nice to have a few beers so that it's easier to ignore all the other tossers around who are whacked out of their trees on Tennents Export or dope. Faithless totally ruled this particular day, whereas the Manics were kind of doing "music-by-numbers". The Beautiful South were surprisingly good live too.
Shed 7
Puressence
1998 - University of Essex
Shed 7 as good as ever, and my first exposure to Puressence. I didn't come across them again for a few years, and bought the album that they had released when this gig was on, listened to it a few times and then forgot about it. Picked it up again even later, and rediscovered it as something that would become a truly favourite album (especially "It doesn't matter anymore"). If, like me, you like other people to recommend stuff, then I'd recommend Puressence - "Only Forever" :-)
The Carlsberg Concert
The Mutton Birds, Steve Winwood, Seal, Jon Bon Jovi and a ton of other stuff
16th August 1997 - Wembley Stadium
My mate DH won a pair of tickets to this by consuming a pint of Adnams^H^H^H^H^H^HCarlsberg in my local. Result! A free gig, and all I had to do was drive my trusty old Astra Mk.1 down to the old Smoke. OK, so it wasn't packed with tons of the sort of Indy bands I was getting into, but it was pretty good for a freebie gig - a fantastically hot day, and a whole load of things I would never get to see. The hightlight for me was probably Steve Winwood (who I was a long-time fan of for the superb album "Arc of a Diver") playing "Gimme Some Lovin'" on a real Hammond B3. Cool.
Shed 7
11th November 1996 - - University of East Anglia
Pretty good "Shed" gig at the UEA, which I don't actually remember too much about!
Suede
Geneva
13th October 1996 - University of East Anglia
If there were ever two more gorgeously conjoined tracks, I've yet to hear them: "The Chemistry Between Us" and "Saturday Night" segue together perfectly on the album "Coming Up". So they might have had a bit more edge on "Dog Man Star", but for me this was their overall finest, and this gig captured it perfectly. "Class A, Class B. Is that the only chemistry between us?" (secret geek admission: when I first heard this track, I though it was to do with HiFi amplifiers. As in "Class A MOSFETs". Meh.)
Space
10th October 1996 - Norwich Waterfront
Packed into the Waterfront for a fine, fun, gig with Liverpool's band-du-jour. I can't remember who the support band was, but they (or was it Space?) did a great spoof of Firestarer by Prodigy. Everyone was shouting along to "Neighbourhood" :-)
Oasis
Kula Shaker, Manic Street Preachers, Charlatans, Bootleg Beatles
August 1996 - Knebworth
What can one say - even ignoring the hype, this was the biggest gig of the 90s, and I was there with another carful of teenage girlies!! - Rainey and the two Helens, I think it was. I was just one of the things to have done, and to have been at - it was pretty immersive, even though all I can really remember about the tunes was Oasis finishing with "Hey Jude". Sublime.
Pulp
Denim / Edwyn Collins
1995 - Earls Court
This still rates as one of my favourite gigs. A fantastic band at the height of their powers following the album "Different Class" (I loved the follow-up too, although it was a lot darker). Me, and a carfull of teenage girlies (I was 28, they 16). Once at the gig, half of me was thinking lascivious thoughts, the other fretting like I was their dad or something. Meanwhile, support-wise at the gig, I'd also got the Edwyn Collins album "Gorgeous George", which I liked as well - so that was a bonus - although most of the audience only really lit up when he did "A Girl Like You". Pulp were fantastic, the atmosphere was great, and just when I didn't think it could get any better, they finished with "Bar Italia", my favourite track from the album. A few years later, I walked past the real Bar Italia, near Frith Street in London, and recalled the night fondly. The journey home was fun as well - driving up the A1 with the girlies leering out of the back window at various Escorts full of teenage boys (as I was overtaking them, of course).
Genesis
November 1992 - Earls Court
Wembley was perhaps better for "old stuff", but this remains the best way I've seen Genesis - Earls Court is big enough for "crowd" atmosphere, but small enough to be intimate - plus the lighting is so much better than an outdoor "middle-of-a-field" gig. I can only begin to imagine how cool it would have been being at the Seconds Out gigs in Paris in 1976/77...
Genesis
Saw Doctors, Lisa Stansfield
August 1992 - Knebworth Park
Apparently, this still holds the record as the longest time taken, ever, to get out of the carpark (I think it was 2am before I really got moving). Nevertheless, a pretty good gig, even though there was something comical about Lisa Stansfield shouting "Hello, Knebworth!" to the crowds.
Clannad
May 1989, Venue unremembered, Glasgow Mayfest
More something to do than being a die-hard fan, but nevertheless Clannad were pretty impressive live, at least doing all the stuff that I recognised...
Genesis
2nd July 1987 - Wembley Stadium
My first real gig (big stuff, at least). At this time, Genesis were still playing a lot of the older stuff I loved ('73 - '83). I smuggled an SLR camera in too (camera body strapped around my waist, lenses distributed about me and the mates who went with me. The camera was loaded with 1600ISO film and I managed to get a few good pix out of it). The highlight was "The Cage" and "Afterglow". Somewhat implausibly, I recently (Dec 2003) re-discovered the original ticket (right) whilst rummaging in the loft for something completely different. It's survived countless house-moves and student life, plus years in an attic.
There's now a DVD available of this gig (I'm still looking out to see if I can see myself in the crowd). Although it doesn't feature much of the older stuff I seem to remember them doing (for example, "Afterglow"), it is neverthelessa fantastically-engineered widescreen/5.1-audio reminder of the night - the video is remarkably sharp (given the vintage) and the audio is pretty faultless, with some incredible bass moments. It's worth getting just for "Los Endos" alone...