The Lightning Seeds, The Astoria, London

The show was part of the NME Brats, a week long series of shows all held at the wonderful Astoria in the heart of London, they were all designed to highlight up and coming bands.

We headed up after school I think, mainly to see The Lightning Seeds who the previous year were everywhere due to their Euro 96 song 3 Lions. I was already well into them at the time, well before football fever took over, in fact their Jollification album was the first ever CD I purchased for myself. Not the first album, that was Definitely Maybe by Oasis.

The band which I personally came away thinking really had something good about them were the Stereophonics. They should have been much higher on the bill than they were, it’s interesting to see how many bands I saw back at the end of the 90’s who either disappeared off the map or just exploded. Luckily Stereophonics were one of the ones that made it. Their performance tonight proved that they had something other bands didn’t.