A Band in Time

They say you can’t turn back time, and I used to believe that, since no time machine had been invented. Until one day it came to a point when even Newton’s gravity might as well have been disproved; indeed I realised you can turn back time (be it only so far).

What was I supposed to do then, when my entire way of thinking was flipped on its head? Indeed for about 2½ hours just recently I travelled right back to 2002 on a kind of time-machine ferry that had the ability to transport whole arenas full of people, not just once but 41 times over, right across the UK.

I’m telling you, there was something highly nostalgic about being back in 2002 with a stadium full of people at the click of a switch when the lights went down, and hitching a ride back to 2014 on the 11:20pm train afterwards. I can think of only one word to describe such a feeling, and such a remarkable band … Time Machine!

Indeed I was one of those people who in my childhood got up early on Saturday mornings to see the band on chart TV shows for children, and hung onto the band’s list of every “like” and “dislike” like these were each precious family heirlooms. Standing in the arena with every other viewer, I felt the phrase “I remember watching them on television too” written, as if I were in unison with everyone else, in the atmosphere with our sheer energy; a feeling I personally found really comforting. What’s more I was able to answer a woman who commented over the music “they’re really good aren’t they?” with a smile, as I replied “yeah, I saw them 10 years ago first time around”.

Now the setting of a room full of people each wearing out their vocal boxes in the way rain wears down wood, is not for everyone. Though as I say, just recently I was moved to give a reflection of how it personally felt for me to go back to see the same band that introduced me to the gig scene a decade previously. In my own opinion there is only one word for it – nostalgia!

By A