Normally you can rely on the JJB/Puma Arena. This year The Beautiful South are here. We’ve come across the Beautiful South a couple of times (in supporting roles of course). The last time was also at the V Festival (V99). Then they were on the the main stage, just before the Manic Street Preachers. Now they’re well down the bill; third on the the stage normally reserved for class dance acts and the latest pop; what’s going on?.

But the first time we saw them they’d been called in late to replace Oasis as support to REM (July 1995). We just had to sit through it. This was the Beautiful South’s first gig to a large audience and they were way out of their depth. Most people sat down, some bottled the stage. At one point lead singer Paul Heaton (now a near neighbour of mine) lost the thread completely. He started reading out girls’ names at random… Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue… while complaining that he’d forgotten the name (of his own song?).
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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