Usher

The best gig I ever saw was the all-dayer Festival Of The Tenth Summer shebang at Gmex, Manchester on Saturday 19th July 1986 when I was 17. It featured a whole host of bands including The Fall, The Smiths, New Order, A Certain Ratio, John Cooper Clarke, Pete Shelley and more. As well as Orchestral Maneoeuvres In The Dark, or OMD if you prefer. They came on mid-afternoon after having being introduced onstage by Derek Hatton which went down really badly with the Manc crowd. The fact that OMD were from Liverpool rather than Manchester also seemed to go down really badly with the aforementioned Manc crowd. And then, when Andy McCluskey started doing his signature 'dancing' this riled the crowd up even further. So much so that one lad down the front who'd obviously just come back from the bar with a load of pints for him and his mates, jumped over the barrier and clambered onstage with his beer tray where he proceeded to batter the OMD lead singer with it until the bouncers intervened. That got the biggest cheer of their set obviously. (Incidentally - this anecdote featured in The Guardian some time ago in a piece by Alexis Petridis after I'd told it to him but that's by the by).

I saw OMD again tonight, 35 years later and they put on a pretty good show I have to say. And nobody attacked the lead singe this time either.

Morality