I'm Still Standing

Thirty-One Years After My First Gig

The first gig I ever went to was Radiohead at Northampton's Roadmender on 23rd March, 1995.

At least, that’s what I tell people.

Technically, I’d been to the Cambridge Folk Festival with my parents the year before, but that doesn’t sound nearly as cool, so I conveniently forget about it.

Radiohead’s seminal album The Bends had been released just ten days earlier to widespread critical acclaim, making them one of the hottest bands in the country.

The Roadmender only held about 800 people. It was dark and dingy. Sweat dripped off the ceiling and if you stayed still for too long, your trainers became permanently welded to the sticky floor.

I’d loved music for many years, but that night, seeing my favourite band perform live only a few metres away, sparked a whole new obsession with live music.

Thirty-one years and hundreds of gigs later, it remains one of the very best concerts I’ve ever been to.

For a small venue in a fairly unremarkable Midlands town, the Roadmender punched well above its weight. Northampton sat conveniently between Birmingham and London, making it a regular stop on the circuit for touring bands.

And I went to as many of them as I could.

Over the next couple of years, I spent a ridiculous amount of time in that sticky-floored venue. I saw Kula Shaker, Travis, Ugly Kid Joe, The Bluetones (twice), Cast, Reef, Dodgy (twice), Sleeper and Supergrass, plus many others.

Mark (from Not Tonight, Josephine fame) was my regular gig-going partner, but my two other good friends Graeme and Damo (who claims his grandma invented banoffee pie) came to lots of them too, and we realised that watching live music was how we wanted to spend as much of our time as possible.

Once we discovered there were other venues beyond Northampton, we started spreading our wings.

In July 1995, we travelled all the way to Milton Keynes – a journey of almost 30 minutes – to see R.E.M. Their support act was Blur. This was peak Britpop. Blur versus Oasis. The two biggest bands in the country. Just how big were R.E.M. to have Blur as their support act?

A few months later, in November 1995, I saw Blur again, now headlining Birmingham’s NEC. That same month I saw Radiohead again, this time with my dad at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.

The following year, our horizons expanded even further. Graeme’s mum gave us a lift to Manchester to watch Oasis at Maine Road. Then I went to my first London gig to see The Cure. And then Wembley Stadium for U2.

The summer of 1996 was my first ever music festival (again, I’m discounting the Cambridge Folk Festival because we only visited for a few hours) – the Phoenix Festival.

It took place over a blisteringly hot July weekend on an airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon. There was virtually no shade, the site ran out of water, the portable toilets overflowed from day one, the food was overpriced, and there were regular clashes between festival-goers and security.

And we loved every minute of it.

Because for four days, all we did was watch live music. We saw Neil Young, David Bowie, Placebo, Alanis Morissette, Manic Street Preachers, Foo Fighters, Beck, Björk, Sex Pistols, The Cardigans, Coolio, The Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Grant Lee Buffalo and lots more.

There was also a comedy tent, which was my first time watching live stand-up. Like with many of the challenges I take on now, those few days at Phoenix Festival taught me that experiences can be both horrendous and incredible at the same time.

The following year, we up-levelled and went to Glastonbury.

After weeks of heavy rain, the site was already waterlogged before the festival had even begun. We arrived late after a post-A-level holiday with friends and pitched our tent on the only patch of ground we could find, directly in front of a row of portable toilets.

Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t the best idea we’d ever had.

The 1997 festival was one of the wettest and muddiest in Glastonbury’s history. Conditions were so bad that one of the main stages – The Other Stage – began sinking into the mud and several acts had to cancel.

It was so muddy that I couldn’t take my shoes off for four days. Instead, I left them poking out the end of the tent at night.

Again, we absolutely loved it.

We saw Radiohead (again), The Prodigy, Smashing Pumpkins, Sting, Van Morrison plus plenty more.

Far from putting us off, we returned two years later in 1999 to find Glastonbury basking in glorious sunshine for the entire weekend.

There were some slightly random gigs thrown in there too in those early years. In 1999, Mark and I went to see Glen Campbell twice in one evening at Northampton Derngate. I told this story in Not Tonight, Josephine. We went to the early evening show, then went to play snooker, then I decided I wanted to buy a souvenir programme, so returned to the theatre, and while looking for an usher, went through a door and found ourselves sitting in an empty box watching his show again.

Rachel and I have an almost identical taste in music, so it was inevitable that gigs would become part of our relationship too.

We saw Counting Crows at Birmingham’s NEC in 1997 and then again at the Royal Albert Hall in 2000. We’d actually been to the Royal Albert Hall the year before to see Kenny Rogers. Unfortunately, during the support act the building was evacuated because of a bomb scare. Kenny returned home, the concert was never rescheduled… and then he died. So I have a Kenny Rogers ticket in my scrapbook, but never actually got to see him.

Throughout all these years, I kept every ticket stub. Concert tickets, cinema tickets, anything. Rachel and I went to the cinema several times a week and regularly travelled around the country to see gigs, and the collection steadily grew. Looking through them now is like flipping through a photo album of my teens and twenties.

And then we had children.

And the gigs stopped. Nights out became rare, and we had no time, money or desire to travel around the country watching our favourite bands.

And that’s how it stayed for about 15 years.

Then Layla became obsessed with music, just as I had when I was her age.

Layla and Rachel went to see Sam Fender in 2019 when she was 12. And then Covid arrived a few months later and live music ground to a halt for the best part of two years.

In 2022, I took all three children to watch Australian pop-rock band Five Seconds of Summer. They were pretty good, but Layla and I preferred their Nashville support act COIN. So much so, that we travelled to Bristol later that year to see COIN headline a show.

That gig marked the beginning of a new chapter. Over the last four years, Layla and I have made countless trips to Bristol and beyond to watch live music.

Rachel and Kitty have been along to a few of them too. Leo, however, has yet to discover a band worth leaving the house for.

Last year, we finally got to see Bright Eyes, probably our favourite band of the past 20 years. Layla had become a big fan too, but none of us had ever seen them live.

The timing of the gig could not have been much worse. It was 48 hours after Rachel and I ran 100 miles along the South Downs Way (see Did Not Sleep). The prospect of driving a five-hour round trip and then standing in the crowded venue for three hours did not appeal, and, despite it being a dream of ours, neither Rachel nor I were particularly excited about the gig.

We arrived at Bristol’s O2 Academy in plenty of time and joined the sizeable queue outside.

‘Any O2 Priority members?’ called a member of staff.

The man standing behind us raised his hand.

It turned out his pass covered four people, and as he was on his own, he generously invited Rachel, Layla and me to join him in the priority queue. A few moments later, we were being escorted to the very front.

Barry was a thoroughly lovely bloke from Taunton. His wife and daughter weren’t interested in gigs, so he attended most of them on his own. We compared notes on bands we’d seen and quickly established that our music tastes were almost identical.

When the doors opened, we were first into the venue. Layla, Rachel and I secured a spot right at the barrier and, joining us, was our new best friend Barry from Taunton. Not only did we get the best view in the house, but we also had something to lean against to support our exhausted legs.

After twenty years of listening to Bright Eyes, we finally got to see them from the front row. The night was topped off by Layla being given the band’s setlist from the bass player at the end of the night.

From a gig we could barely be bothered to attend, it somehow became one of the best live music experiences I’ve ever had.

The support act that night was a Cornish folk-rock band called William the Conqueror. A couple of months ago, we went to see them headline their own show in a nearby town, continuing a tradition of following support acts that stretches all the way back to Blur opening for R.E.M. in Milton Keynes in 1995.

Going to gigs with Layla has introduced me to some very strange bands over the last few years. We’ve seen acts with names like The Front Bottoms, Slaughter Beach Dog, Pigeon Pit, Slimy Girls, Nasty Fishmonger and Cheap Dirty Horse.

Not one of them sounded promising on paper.

Yet every single one turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable.

Towards the end of last year, Rachel got quite into a singer-songwriter called Holly Humberstone. She’s a bit like Taylor Swift, only British and significantly easier to get tickets for.

I don’t mind her music, but when we discovered she was playing in Bristol, I wasn’t really interested. Touring artists seem to treat Bristol as their token south-west date, despite it still being several hours from deepest darkest Devon and Cornwall. Having already driven to Bristol and back multiple times for gigs recently, I decided this one wasn’t for me.

And I figured if Rachel was such a fan, then she could drive to this one.

Layla bought two tickets for her and Rachel as a Christmas present, knowing that I didn’t want to go.

Then Rachel’s sister, who lives in Northampton, bought a ticket too, and the three of them planned a girls’ night out in Bristol. Perfect.

Days before the gig, Rachel’s sister had to pull out due to a family commitment.

Rachel immediately bought her ticket.

And gave it to me.

It felt suspiciously like this had perhaps been the plan all along. Rachel is not a huge fan of driving long distances, particularly into cities at night, and now she conveniently had a chauffeur who had been roped into driving a round trip of five hours to a gig he didn’t even want to go to.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm, Holly Humberstone was fantastic and I really enjoyed the night.

I even managed to suppress most of my resentment when Rachel slept for almost the entire journey home.

This is the same woman who, a few weeks later, somehow ended up with a comfy seat on the balcony while Kitty and I were standing in the mosh pit at a Big Thief gig at London’s Brixton Academy (admittedly Rachel had just run two back-to-back marathons).

If I thought being tricked into attending a Holly Humberstone gig was bad, what happened last Saturday was even worse.

Kitty and her friend had tickets to see a band called Los Campesinos! in Exeter. They were going to get the train there and back and my services were not required. We then discovered that children aged 14 and under had to be accompanied by an adult. So I reluctantly bought myself a ticket too, on the condition that I could watch the Champions League final in a pub in Exeter beforehand.

A few hours before we were due to leave, Kitty announced that she’d got a better offer. Her group of friends were all meeting up for the evening, and she wasn’t going to go to the Los Campesinos! gig after all.

So not only had I bought a ticket for a gig I didn’t want to go to, but I didn’t even get to go to it.

In the end, this was something of a relief. Instead, I watched the Champions League final at home on the sofa with Leo. We were looking after our friend’s dog Rufus (of Lads on Tor fame), and Tan (the Dog Next Door) came round to watch the second half too.

Thirty-one years after that first Radiohead gig at Northampton Roadmender, I’m still regularly standing in dark, dingy rooms watching live music and getting exactly the same buzz.

The difference is that 15-year-old me would have travelled anywhere to see a band he loved. Forty-seven-year-old me would much rather stay at home on the sofa.

Yet despite now being roped into driving hundreds of miles to see bands I’ve never even heard of, I seem to come away from every single gig feeling glad I went.

And just as I’ve spent the last three decades telling anyone who’ll listen that I saw Radiohead at Northampton Roadmender, perhaps one day Layla and Kitty will be boring their own children with stories about seeing Cheap Dirty Horse at Plymouth Leadworks or Big Thief at Brixton Academy.

Kitty will probably claim she went to that Los Campesinos! gig. She even has the ticket to prove it.

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