Just back from Norwich Arts Centre, where I witnessed a storming set from James Hunter. What a singer : it's as if Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson somehow had a child who plays stinging lead guitar into the bargain. A very friendly and approachable chap too - I bumped into him a few hours before the gig, and had a brief chat. Great band, too. (And the sax players look like a pair of gangland debt collectors, which only added to my enjoyment. I had visions of them screwing to a cake stand the pelvis of any promoter who tried to renegotiate their fee.) I'd urge anyone who's up for a healthy dose of sweaty rhythm & blues to try and see them - they play Newcastle on 26th, Brighton on 30th and Cranleigh on 31st. NAC was sold out, but you might be lucky.

Anyway, I owe the good people at The Word a vote of thanks. I discovered James's music when 'People Gonna Talk' was on one of the covermount CDs - I went and bought the eponymous album the next day, and loved it. But live.... bloody hell! How his voice holds out over the course of a tour I can't imagine. Here's a taste :

August Bank Holiday weekend 1975, Reading Festival - the Friday evening. There I was, a callow 17 year old, at my first major music event. I'd travelled down with my mate Wal - we hadn't yet met up with Mark, who'd arrived separately. Penultimate act that night : the mighty Dr Feelgood. Wal and I got as close to the front of the stage as we could - about 40 yards away, with some of that distance occupied by what I think was a photographers' pit. Packed shoulder to shoulder with our fellow revellers, it was as if we were in a football crowd (terraces in those days, of course), with added dancing. One of the best sets I've ever witnessed.

We were young, enthused, thoroughly entertained : it was good to be alive.

Next on was Hawkwind. (Sorry, can't bring myself to find a vid for them. You'll soon understand why.) While waiting for them to set up everyone sat down. And, of course, stayed sitting once they started. (Bloody hippies.) Now you take up a lot more room when sitting than when packed in like frantically bopping upright sardines. Several people were sitting on my legs. Several more were so close behind me that superglue might have been involved. Moving was impossible. Imagine my dismay when I realised (it only took a splt second) that a comfortable distance from which to be witnessing the headliners would have been about half a mile. And I couldn't move an inch. Hawkwind went so far beyond uncomfortably loud, and went on for so long, that it wasn't so much that I wished it were possible to gouge out one's own ears, more that I wanted to die and wondered A) why dying had to take so long; and B) why the band had to be so sodding literal in their rendition of Sonic Attack ( "Do not waste time blocking your ears... do not attempt to use your own limbs...there will be bleeding from orifices...think only of yourself..."). The horror, the horror. Thirty three years on and the memory of that experience still chills my blood.

So, fellow Wordies, has anyone else a similar tale to tell of how, in the space of a few minutes, a peak musical experience has changed into the stuff of nightmares?

Seeing Wilco Johnson scurrying around in the background while Ian Dury performed Sweet Gene Vincent (Songs by Artists About Other Artists blog - paul beard's entry 13/8/08), led me down the You Tube after Dr Feelgood.

On investigating Roxette I heard Mr Hepworth describe Wilco's moves thus : "...like a clockwork mouse on rails, rattling back and forth." Instantly, I was reminded (funny how the mind works) of my favourite ever line from Word - Julian Cope, writing about some Scandinavian metal track (a form of music I'd not listen to if my life depended on it) : "...slow and brooding, like compost with a grudge."

What similarly well-wrought phrases have stuck in the minds of my fellow members of the massive?