This is a specially personal FF for me. Watching this epic video shot by an old friend brings back the taste of warm VB, the dry mouth and glorious lack of oxygen from a smoke-filled room, salty sticky bodies sliding against each other, the crush of the throng losing their shit yet at the same time trying not to encroach on the foot-high ‘stage’ that offered little in the way of a barrier between the greatest live band ever and the chaos they helped create.

Yes I was there, and I know exactly where, witnessing the mastery up close with my girl by my side while wedged in behind the PA stack stage right, doing my best to keep it from toppling over and crushing us and the band under the weight of it, constantly teetering from the wave of bodies advancing ever forward. The outside temperature of that Newcastle November night must’ve been still in the mid to high twenties, inside more like a sauna. The euphoria of having opened for them still my crowning musical glory, capped off by talking to Ian some fifteen years later and him remembering the gig vividly: “Oh yeah, the bowls club right? That was the first time we saw the Southern Cross!” That, as they say in the classics, is fucking cool.