Catfish and the Bottlemen & Stereophonics played live in Wales today and thanks to some huge amounts of kindness and generosity, Clare and I were on the guest list! I've been big fans of both bands since each first started out - I first saw the Stereophonics with a few hundred people in a club Liverpool on my 21st Birthday and more recently Catfish and the Bottlemen in the school hall before they even had a record deal! Today they'd packed a huge 20,000+ fans into a stadium in Wrexham - tickets were only on sale for ten minutes before it sold out!
Having raced over, after a particularly busy day, Tim the vicar got us into a priority parking zone right outside the stadium. His earlier 'sermon' had asked if we were 'all fired and ready to go'? I certainly was! Instead of having to join the long snaking ques of people at the various entrances, we simply wandered over to the 'excecutive suite', where we were ushered inside away from the throngs and given special wristbands that allowed us to basically go wherever we wanted!
The venue was almost full by the time we arrived and the stands were packed. Except that is, for an empty square of seats in the middle of the main stand, that turned out to be reserved for us! Royal treatment! Oh and did I mention the stairs that lead down to the inside hospitality bar and toilets! No portaloos for us thanks!
Catfish and the Bottlemen were on first and the crowd went wild for them. The sound quality was amazing - very loud but crystal clear and there were huge screens on either side of the stage. It was a great show indeed. We sung and danced the whole way through with beaming smiles on our faces! Amazing indeed that Tim's son was down there on the big screen playing the drums!
Next up were the Sterophonics. Before they took to the stage, the big screens played a montage of the goals from last nights Welsh Euro '16 win and the whole stadium shook with the noise of the cheering. Once on stage, the band blazed into track after track of their greatest hits, much to my continued delight.
During the performance Catfish and the Bottlemen came up to sit in our 'guest area' which caused a bit of a stir around us! Then the concert finished with flames bursting from the top of the stage! Spectacular stuff!
Then just when we thought it was over, they were back for a fast a furious encore that has everyone up off their seats - and us dancing away in our spacious zone!
The whole thing was a surreal, fantastic, one-off experience and one to file away safely in the memory banks!
Oh, and did I mention that I met Mike Peters from the rock band 'The Alarm' earlier that morning!? Well that's another story...
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