Trollheart

Although I very much enjoyed Peter Gabriel's "Secret World Tour" in 1987/88, I'd be the first to admit that it relied pretty heavily on effects, multimedia and a superb lightshow, not that any of that is bad. But for pure, simple rock music it was hard to beat Rory Gallagher at the SFX Centre (a converted school hall I believe) back in probably around 1983; just one man and his guitar with his backing band, rocking the house down. I also enjoyed Steve Earle and BB King at the National Stadium, another smaller venue.

As for worst? You'd probably be surprised if I said Hawkwind, but yeah. I was visiting London for about four or five days and had booked tickets for Marillion and Manowar, 1984. Marillion's new album was back in my hotel room, not even listened to yet (and this was when the only way you could listen to an album was by playing the record or buying a cassette tape; no previews on YouTube, no downloads, blah blah when I were a lad etc etc) so although I enjoyed the gig I didn't know the new songs, and of course most of the material was from the new album.

The only other band playing within that timeframe that I was even vaguely interested in was, yeah, Hawkwind. Now, I had listened to about three of their albums, some of them compilations, so I knew very little of their material. But that wasn't really the issue. As I'm sure you all know (but I did not at the time) probably about 99.99% of attendees at Hawkwind concerts are high, and boy did that smoke make me sick! I've never liked the smell of cannabis, and it was everywhere. It's even possible I got high on secondhand smoke, as I kind of don't remember much of the gig, other than I think Nik Turner flying around on a wire playing his sax.

So, what stories ya got about best or worst gigs?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018