everyone's feeling a bit sunday night as its sunday night but we're kind of kind to the guys on stage from newcastle who I have no idea about although they shout nicely and we all cheer when the bass player jumps down from the stage to confront an annoying troglodite from swaffham who's been heckling throughout but we don't get a fight although we do get a pointy finger in the face and a look of thunder and then he gets back on stage and starts playing again and the whole band crack up and he grins for the rest of the set which is funny but no sooner have they gone than the snake trail to the dance pit begins as we're making early territorial claims on bits of floor that will be covered in plastic and beer in an hour anyway but if you don't make a move now the only way to do it later is to get ubersweaty and take your shirt off so you slime past people and they clear a path to the front which is particularly effective if you smell real bad and look like you're stoned past the point of coherence and probably uncontrollably violent but I haven't done that for years and before you know it there's a band called brakes on who look like they met in a youth hostel in the brecons via quebec and do 30 seconds songs about picking up the phone blair blair blair and cheney stop being such a dick and a few slightly longer ones about having a life and love and after a good 40 minutes we all think they're marvellous and when the lights come on we take a quick look at the posters on the pillars about their album which we ignored before

and then said flashlight occurs and suddenly its the 1980s and I'm watching echo and the bunnymen at the ipswich gaumont and u2 at the uea and a whole bunch of 4ad artists who like to play guitars using only 1 string but really loud except that actually its editors and fancy that, someone's come to the uea and put on a proper show like what they used to with projectors and backlit hanging sheets and those white lights that look like stars and shine in your face and a healthy collection of strobe lights that nearly go for a full unbroken 10 seconds at one point while we're all catatonic down the front shouting "as the FIN-GERS-BLEED in the FAC-TO-RIES" and "youdon'tneedthisdiseaseyoudon'tyoudon'tyouDON'T" and "I still love the LIGHT on BABY" in a really horrible high-pitched squeal but we're loving it and even though tom's guitar is mixed so far down you can bearly hear it and a significant amount of the stage lights point toward the crowd meaning we're lit up for a lot of the time which means we can actually see each other which is quite off-putting and really kills the atmosphere we have a rather nice time. aah, there's nothing like a healthy nostalgia trip and if you're old enough to have been there the first time but can still do it 25 years later without looking like you just there to do some kind of sociology study or something then its bonus time. did someone say big country? ooh, that's a bit harsh... editors live music

© Tim Caynes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Disclaimer: I work for Sun Microsystems, but this is nothing to do with them and it's all my fault, even though I might sometimes mention Solaris or something.