Trigger Inside

One Shot, i guessed that was all i had left, and she still hadn't moved...

I was in Leeds at the O2 academy, at the end of a very long day, and the omens weren't looking good.

I'd planned to leave Barnsley at 730pm, but my dad was agitated so it was after eight when i got in the car, then a text message saying that Therapy? were coming onstage at 845 doing short set.

42 minutes later i was running through Leeds,having abandoned the car god knows where looking for the 02 academy. When i found it, turned out i was in the balcony so had to go to a different entrance..tick tock tick tock...

So i'm stuck on the balcony, stage right, with what is euphemistically called a ' restricted view'...i could just see the bass player and the top of the drummer's head, i'm pressed up against a couple of totally immobile adolescents who aren't there for Therapy? and aren't for moving, and the low battery light on the compact i've brought begins to flash.

The only shot i can possibly get of the stage is if i hold the camera at arm's length hovering an ich above the girl's shoulder...if she doesn't move.

three songs go by, four, then five, no movement, i've seen more movement in a Tussaud's waxwork, and i figure there can ony be two songs left.

I waste one shot and blind myself pressing the flash by mistake trying to work out the camera's settings, but then i'm ready to go, stretching the arm to its fullest extent, and she still hasn't moved.

Then it happens, Anndy Cairns sings the first few lines of 'Nowhere Man' then pauses, the guitar squeals out an old familiar riff, the lights hit him, i squeeze the button....and she goes feckin mental!

This is the one, the one she knows, the one she has waited for, and her body explodes in a sprawling masses of arms, limbs, hair and jewellery,.She is like an infective blur of movement, spreading to all the statues around her, and my camera, propelled by the knocks from flying bodies, falls from my hand, the shot is ruined, the camera is not....

and the thing is, honestly i don't care, i love that mute explosion of energy that music in general and Therapy? in particular can generate in a live setting...

so camera retrieved, and crap shot taken, so a photo of the cheering hands of an anonymous stranger who clearly got her money's worth.

Night all.

Therapy?