I was so, so hyped about this gig. I’d been a massive fan of The Mission since about 1986/87 and was finally getting to see them live. Carved in Sand (their fourth studio album) had just recently been released and they were touring in support of the album. They were pretty damn big at the time, thus playing to a packed Wembley Arena, and I went with Nick, Donna and Neil (although we bumped in to a bunch of others at the gig too).

The support was an Irish band called Something Happens. Although I thought they were alright on the night I ended up buying their album (on cassette!) and saw them headlining in their own right a few times (both at The Marquee and at The Town & Country Club) later the same year. Something Happens were a fun band and I’m glad I discovered them.

The Mission rocked. I have since seen The Mission countless times over the years at a variety of venues and they remain one of my favourite bands today. I’ve even seen a few of the secret gigs they occasionally play under the name ‘Blood Brothers’ – which is the name of one of their earliest songs – including a tiny cellar vault venue called Moles, in Bath, which had a max capacity of 192 people if we became sardines!!!!

This gig blew me away – and they were truly brilliant live. But I was to later see even better gigs (largely due to the fact that Wembley Arena was all-seated and pretty much every other gig of theirs I went to was standing so you could actually dance, etc). It was a fantastic night (although it was slightly ruined on the way home when Nick, Donna and I were waiting at bus stop in Barnet and they’d been a massive pub brawl up the road on the High Sreet (at The Bat & Flickknife – I can’t remember the pubs actual name!) and a drunken thug who was heading home from it decided to give Nick a fatlip in passing.)