A house

To the Music And Film Arena, for The Fairey Band, a traditional brass band who appear to have been sucked into a conceptual art project by Jeremy Deller. The gist is that the band play acid house tunes, with euphoniums and tubas filling in the bass frequencies.

The Doors legend remembered by his LA contemporary

The singer is caught on camera in an altercation with a fan

'Rehab' singer likely to play festival after Nelson Mandela gig

Back in 1996, the last time I saw Lou Reed, I remember making a mental note at the end of the show, to remember to never go and see him again. It wasn’t so much his legendary tetchiness, although that was well to the fore, as a glowering Lou shot irritated, grouchy-headmaster daggers at the band around him while they played, and maintained a stony silence between songs, cracked only for a brief tirade about something a journalist had said to annoy him earlier.

I was just picking up my ticket and earplugs when Patti Smith was ushered through the crowd in front of me. I would have said hello, but the last time I spoke to her she threw a plate of sandwiches at me after I described her then-boyfriend, Allen Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult, as a ‘certifiable midget’.

“Class of ’88 reunion,” announces Sonic Boom. He has just played “Transparent Radiation” and is about to launch – launch may not be the right word, exactly; slope, perhaps? – into an excellent “When Tomorrow Hits”. In front of me, someone is wearing a “Goo” t-shirt. On the way to the Roundhouse, someone randomly proffered an open bottle of amyl. Only Sonic Boom’s haircut appears to have changed, slightly, in the intervening 20 years.

“Class of ’88 reunion,” announces Sonic Boom. He has just played “Transparent Radiation” and is about to launch – launch may not be the right word, exactly; slope, perhaps? – into an excellent “When Tomorrow Hits”. In front of me, someone is wearing a “Goo” t-shirt. On the way to the Roundhouse, someone randomly proffered an open bottle of amyl. Only Sonic Boom’s haircut appears to have changed, slightly, in the intervening 20 years.

The other day in the Uncut office, we were examining an old copy of the Creation comp, “Doing It For The Kids”, from 1988. It provided a reminder of what “indie” used to be: often skewed, a little fey, self-consciously adversarial to the rock mainstream. But nestling among the excellent tracks was a song which heralded a new wave of ultra-ambitious indie bands, keen to aim for a bigger stage.

Exclusive outdoor London show