Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

This was the second time we went ot see BBVD, and we decided to make an evenign of it by also dining at the Jazz Cafe. While the food itself was reasonable, the main advantage of dining was the excellent view of the stage. It was also rather cool staying late after the show and mixing and mingling with the band. Sadly, I had drunk rather a lot and became somewhat crude in my conversations, resultign in a rather confuzzled swing band :)

Newmarket Nights (with Jools Holland)

As a wedding present to my mum and Graham, we took them to Newmarket Racecourse on one of their "Newmarket Nights" evenings. We had grandstand access, and after having a flutter on the horses had a good ol' boogie to Jools Holland and his band. Cool.

The Rocky Horror Show

I'm a huge Rocky fan, and having bought one of the first 50 pairs of tickets to the show's 20th anniversary show at the Queen's Theatre in the West End also got invited to the aftershow birthday party. We rubbed shoulders with such A List celebrities as Nasty Nick from Big Brother and Christine Hamilton. Oooooh!

Rick Wakeman and the English Rock Ensemble

While I was working at HMV it was difficult to travel outside Cambridge to gigs. By the time I finished at HMV it was also financially impossible. However, when Rick Wakeman played at Peterborough I really had no excuse to stay away. The band played an amazing set - opening with Catherine Parr - and afterwards I (as I always do) waited around to meet Rick and the band. Lovely guys as ever, who were quite happy to sign the stuff I'd taken along - including my ticket stub. Even better, they'd ditched their rubbish singer and had Ashley Holt back with them...a true legend of Wakeman's work from the 70s. You can't beat that!

Less Than Jake

This was the second time our little band of punkers had arranged to see Less Than Jake, but in the end only myslef and Aynar ended up going! Probably the funniest thing about the evening were the sheer numbers of mini-moshers.

Feeder

Feeder aren't exactly a band I follow, but when they played at the Corn Ex it wouldnt have been daft not to bother seeing them. Although the ticket is a balcony ticket, I was actually standing: one of the probalems at the Corn Ex is that they take tickets from you at the door and then just leave piles of them for you to collect at the end of the show if you want them, meaning you never get the ticket you bought back again. From what I remember their set was pretty cool, but by this point I think I was "gigged out" and not really enjoying the event as much as I probably should. Shame really.

Dave Spikey

Dave played to less than 100 people at the Junction on his "Living the Dream Tour" but was one of the funniest guys I'd ever seen. We went as a result of loving Phoenix Nights, and were pleasantly surprised to see Young Kenny (Justin Moorhouse) walking towards the venue as we arrived. We had a chat along the lines of "Ah, it's nice of you to support Dave", "yeh, I'm supporting", "can you sign my DVD?", "okay", "thanks! see you then." It was only when the show began that we realised Justin was ACTUALLY supporting Dave - he was his opening act!