I definitely believe in karma. Since the beginning of the year, I’d had a list of work that I had to get through, and yesterday was the day that I finally got round to doing it all. So as it was getting later on a Friday night, I realised that I wanted to go out, but where? This is where Twitter came in. Winner of the Orange Unsigned Act, Tommy Reilly, is a friend of mine, and when one of his roadies tweeted that they were in Nottingham, I asked why. Oh, only because he’s helping out Hip Parade, the support band for Stereophonics tonight. Oh, and do I want guestlist?

HELL YES! I’d been waiting since the beginning of senior school to see the Stereophonics live, and boy did they not let me down. Admittedly, after the successes of ‘Just Enough Education to Perform’, ‘You Gotta Go There To Come Back’ and a brief dabble in ‘Sex. Language. Violence. Other’, I’d put the Stereophonics to rest for a bit. They definitely treated their fans with a two hour set full of both new and old songs, but the old songs were the highlight for me.

Singalongs during ‘Have a Nice Day’, where Kelly simply lifted his arm and the whole crowd stood up, the acoustic ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ and atmospheric ‘Mr. Writer’ with a Welsh flag draped on the microphone, all came before the encore, when they graced the stage again to storm through first song on the new album ‘She’s Alright’ and classic ‘Bartender and the Thief’, to finish raucously with ‘Dakota’. The crowd were all 30- somethings, and after losing their energy during the middle of the set, I’ll give them their due, they found the energy out of the bands electric presence, to sing along. Confetti cannons and champagne marked the end of the set, and guitarist Adams’ birthday. Kelly signed off with a gracious goodbye, before introducing the walk out song of Marvin Gayes’ ‘Lets Get It On’. Kelly Jones is the man.

Jaye x