"its funny how you remember the summers by the records"

So said Kevin Rowland on 'Reminisce Part 2' and of course he was right.

This Summer (the Summer that never begun) will forever be the Summer when I fell in love with the music of the Hold Steady. 'Boys and Girls in America' will always be the album of this Summer and 2nd July 2007 will forever be remembered for the best gig I have seen so far.

I used to go to lots of gigs but things have changed a bit. I suffer from anxiety and one of the results of this is I worry about sleep. Going to gigs became something that was really difficult to do and I've only been to a few in the last couple of years. Everything was organised perfectly for the Hold Steady gig though- a couple of days off work, we booked a hotel in London quite near to the venue, nothing could go wrong.

And incredibly it didn't.

I had an idea of how amazing it might be to see the band live and I thought I could only be disappointed, it could never quite reach the highs I was imagining. But it was even better. Craig Finn was an unbelievable frontman that night, so full of energy. The songs all sounded great, I sang along as much as I could whilst trying not to draw attention to myself. I got 2 great t shirts. We had a wonderful time and I'll never forget that gig.

Thank you to The Hold Steady. You can't possibly know how much that gig meant to me.

Now I need to have the confidence to have more nights like that.