I’m celebrating being a student, even though I may not be one for much longer. I’ve handed in my last bit of coursework today and two-months-tomorrow I do my final act of my degree – a presentation of the results of my dissertation.

Students go to gigs. They wear leather “biker” jackets. They raise hell.

Me? I can’t honestly remember the last gig I went to. (Apart from the ones in the local pub on a Saturday night and those I have to be dragged to!) So, here is a small selection of ones I went to earlier. I didn’t ever see U2 in a Student Union bar but I certainly saw all of these other bands in them over the years. You may think it’s only U2 who are still playing these days but you’d be wrong.

Nine Below Zero also regularly play the pub circuit in London although it’s been many, many years since I last saw them. In fact, I saw The Truth (Dennis Greaves’s later band) more recently than I last saw Nine Below so I’ve not seen them since they did a phoenix impression. Years ago, I saw them play live at a lunchtime gig in The Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street when they released the album that’s being celebrated by this button badge, Don’t Point Your Finger. I LOVED that band. I’ve just checked the unholy bible of Wikipedia to find that the album was released in 1981 so that’s obviously when the gig happened. I bought the album that day in limited edition green vinyl, which, were I prepared to sell it, now sells at £15 or so! Anyway. I have another unholy trinity of all three of their albums released before their first split and I am thinking to myself that I may just break them out of their sleeves and play them.

At Uni we have it drummed into us that we shouldn’t use Wikipedia because it is full of inaccuracies. I’m sure they are right but for a quick pog at something non-scientific it’s still my top choice. Mind you, they do say that one of the members of 9BZ “had some success with the Blow Monkeys”. Now they are another one of the bands I spent a lot of time watching in the 80s and I’m as sure as I can be that he was never a member – perhaps he was a behind the scenes man for them?

As for the other bands on these buttons:

U2 – I hate them and love them in equal measure. Siouxsie and the Banshees – one of their albums is in my top 5 albums of all time – A Kiss in the Dreamhouse. I wanted to be Siouxsie Sioux. What the hell – I STILL want to be Siouxsie Sioux. (PWoargh Budgie – that’s a bit of an in-joke that no-one but a Banshees fan will get I suspect.) Q-tips – well, I think I said everything I need to say about them a while back on these very pages! Roman Holliday – aaahhhhh, my boys. It broke my heart in January to have to turn down an invite to the drummer’s 50th birthday party. I have a CD of photos from the night on my kitchen work-surface from Shazbop who did go. I am so un-rock-and-roll that I put a lecture on the day ahead of going up to London to see them. Given that in 1983, I travelled all over the country, seven days a week, watching them, it was a bit of a cop-out but one I had to make. If Simon had made the party a Saturday, I’d have been there. They were bloody magic.

Anyway, am I going out to celebrate being a student tonight? Er no. I’m going out alright but only into the village for a night with friends who are going to be helping with job prospects. I expect there may be a few glasses of the red stuff quaffed but that’s as wild as it gets for me these days. I should have done this years ago, this student thing, I’d have been better at playing the wild child then!

PS Bloody hell - I've just re-read that thingy about the Q-tips and it's been viewed 13,000 times. Blimey!