Fear And Loving In Heaton Park

Last night, along with most of Britain I was hunkering down for the evening, burdened by a combination of post-Christmas blues, my domestic situation (Mrs B, 3 kids etc) and polar weather. Even so, the prospect of lounging on the sofa in front of a roaring fire and crap Saturday night telly left me feeling distinctly cold. Then, quite unusually, I started wistfully thinking about some of the mind-boggling experiences I've had over the years and the yawning gap between those and the Saturday night in front of me.

One such experience occurred 19 years ago when the band I was in, The Adventure Babies stepped out onto to the stage at the Cities In The Park Festival in front of 10-15,000 people. Bearing in mind, we had only been signed to Factory Records for 6 weeks after an audition in our manager's lounge, had performed our debut gig at the Hacienda in front of 100 friends, family and Manchester music mafia 3 days before - it did in the vernacular of the day 'twist my melon man'.

We were playing on the second day of the fesitval so had camped out and enjoyed the first night's festivities until we were rounded up at dawn and transferred to our dressing room (nee Portakabin). A heady mixture of bravado, nerves, testosterone, lack of sleep, no food, and an early back stage bar started to ferment. There were 8 of us in the band and at no point up to going onto stage were we all in the dressing room at the same time. There's a photo somewhere of us all waiting at the steps to the stage prior to our performance, such abject fear and trepidation etched on all our faces, you wouldn't have been surprised to see a guillotine on stage.

Our name was announced and we strode jelly-legged onto the stage and looked out at the vast writhing sea of humanity before us, the sun was shining and this was our day. We kicked into the first song and actually started to enjoy ourselves, we smiled and laughed, the crowd reacted and started to take note, smiles as far as we could see beamed back. Song after song we grew in confidence, the melody, rythmn and rhyme of the music powered us along to the final song - once described as a gospel song that lost it's way on the East Lancs Road, the crowd loved it and sang along. Our hearts and minds soaring we left the stage to rapturous applause grinning like Cheshire Cats.

Now that beats any Saturday night in front of the telly - wouldn't you agree?