Lightning Seeds at the Forum

In contrast to my gig the night before, this one had a sold out crowd of over 2000 and the act was far from a youthful indie band. Here were the Lightning Seeds celebrating 35 years in the business.

No support was advertised, but after about an hour an old bloke wandered on the the stage and unannounced. Perhaps he thought we should have recognised him, or that he simply didn't care. When someone made a request from the crowd he replied along the lines of " I reckon I can play whatever I like. Its only 30 minutes of your lives." As it happens I did recognise him as Wreckless Eric. A friend of mine at school liked him, back in the day - which is over 40 years ago.

I did feel this was wasted opportunity for some young indie band to be able to set out their stall before a larger crowd, albeit a distinctly older crowd. Clearly the Lightning Seeds haven't been picking up much of a youthful following to add to us old folk.

Anyway, I can't say I was impressed by his set.

By contrast the Lightning Seeds were everything I could have asked for. Great set of songs spanning their career, Ian Broudie totally affable and relaxed. Confident witty banter with his crowd

Half way into the set Ian called on Wreckless Eric and together they played the only Wreckless Eric song people might know, Whole Wide World.

On the far side of the stage from where I was stood, and so generally no more than a murky blur in the dry ice, was the youthful presence of Ian Broudie's son, Riley.

The show took in all their many fine tunes - Lightning Seeds have a lot of very distinctive songs that are much pillaged for background music and so may be familiar to people in bite size pieces, like Pure, Lucky You, You Showed Me. Plus the odd cover version like Be My Baby. They ended their set, to my surprise, with by far their best known track - Three Lions. I just felt that is such a worn football anthem they might have omitted it.

Then back for an encore, culminating in the brilliant Life of Riley, possibly most recognised as background loop for Match of the Day's Goal of the Month competition. Famously this was inspired by Ian's baby son Riley. Who now was playing guitar next to his dad on the song written about him as a babe, but now a young man his twenties. Sweet