The Stranglers – Bradford St Georges Hall 2nd March 1990

This is where I check in.   My first gig of many.  14 years old. I had no fecking idea what I was getting myself into.

Even then I’d been a Stranglers fan for a few years – They were due to play this in Oct 1989 but they pushed back due to recording issues.  Bradford was part of the UK 10 Tour and it was pretty serious.  By today’s standards this was a mammoth UK tour which saw bomb scares and mass stage invasions (just fan love really).

It was winter.  I had to go with my mother. I was 14. Here’s what I wrote for Robert Endecott’s excellent Peaches book.

Setlist:  Shah Shah a Go Go, I Feel Like a Wog, Straighten Out, Shakin’ Like a Leaf, 96 Tears, Someone Like You, Sweet Smell of Success, Always the Sun, Ships That Pass in the Night, Peaches, Where I Live, School Mam, Let’s Celebrate, Tank, Uptown, Was It You?/Down in the Sewer

Although I would see many more gigs in my lifetime this one will always resonate.  Not just because it was my first but because a Hugh Cornwell fronted Stranglers was quite simply the best live band in the world.