Maybe it's my sheltered life, maybe it's the natural result of spending my formative years a) On the breadline and b) hooked up with a social regressive, but I found myself shamefully unable to tick off one match on Mark's list of bands whose gigs I might have been to.

So here's my own list, which may not reach thirty artists, and which relies heavily on the Phoenix Festival, 1996:

1) Peter Gabriel
2) Sex Pistols
3) Wet Wet Wet
4) Kylie Minogue
5) The Fall
6) Dodgy
7) Sinead Lohan (there's a story to this one)
8) Heather Nova
9) David Bowie
10) Bjork
11) Cypress Hill
12) Massive Attack
13) Skunk Anansie
14) The Specials (OK, I listened from outside, but it was a tent, y'know. Slight lack of walls to muffle the sound)
15) Stereolab
16) Alanis Morissette
17) Foo Fighters
18) The Wildhearts
19) Fun Lovin Criminals
20) Frank Black
21) Placebo
22) Gene
23) Strangelove
24) Scheer
25) Holy Barbarians
26) Terrorvision
27) Echobelly
28) Glenn Miller's Big Band (VE Day 50th anniversary)
29) King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys
30) Stan Tracy's Big Band

Christ, that was a push.

Anyway, Sinead Lohan is an Irish folk singer and in 1996 she was playing to a tent with all of twenty people in it. It was probably the most intimate gig I could ever go to I have to admit to finding her rather attractive. It may have been the lovely green eyes and dreadlocks, or maybe it was that she stared directly at me for three songs straight. Yes, definitely a gig that's indelibly etched on my memory. I don't remember a single song.