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!

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Alice had conspired with Norf and Aynar to keep my birthday present a secret from me, and I was absolutely thrilled to fidn that it was a trip to see the stage show of Chitty. It's probably one of the greatest kids films of all times, and the stage show was no less spectacular. Now that the show is about to close in the West End I'm tempted to go and see its "final flight"...

Madness

Myself and Big Dan are big ska and two-tone fans, and so decided to go to Madness' annual Christmas tour at the London Arena. We were standing a little too-close-for-comfort to the skinheads at the front, and so moved back as the gig progressed, but it must be said that the show was excellent. I'm not normally a fan of stadium gigs, but this one was worth it.

Badly Drawn Boy

Cor, this was a show. A good 2 and a half hours of performance, presided over by the inimitable Boy. He was just so charismatic and, um, brilliant that the night itself was...brilliant. Typically, though, a girl passed out in front of us and it fell to us to cart her off to the side.