Blog: Return Of The Scene

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On Sunday evening I headed into London town to meet Mr S Hewitt for a GIG, but this was no ordinary gig - for LO! it was an extra final tiny gig at the end of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart tour which sought to RECREATE their first EVER UK gig, almost eighteen years ago. Eighteen years ago! CRIKEY!

THUS they were playing in The Betsey Trotwood, as they had back then, and the support acts were all people who had played back then as well, but all of them in their current bands. So, we had Sunny Intervals with Andy Pocketbooks (as he will always be to me) representing Pocketbooks from the original bill, Pink Opaque feat. Pete Green, and All Ashore representing The Parallelograms. The only band playing under the same name as before were The Pains!

The actual GIG bit was really good - Andy was splendid, doing apparently his first gig for 13 years, and even did some old Pocketbooks songs. Pink Opaque were fab, and I was especially delighted to FINALLY get to see them at last, and All Ashore made a right proper Indiepop RACKET that I for one am entirely there for.



However, the main thing for me was to just SEE so many old pals again! When I went to the original gig in 2008 I got Quite Emotional about the fact that I appeared to be on a SCENE, or at least SCENE-adjacent. Being on a SCENE is really good fun as you get to go to loads of gigs knowing full well that there'll be PALS there who you can yack to, and I must admit I've missed it, especially since Indietracks came to an end a few years ago. As my blog at the time said, I was always a bit nervous about it because I was sure that, at some point, everybody would turn round and say "Hang on, what are you doing here?" but it never happened and, INDEED, did not happen on this occassion. Instead it was a whole room full of people WAVING at each other from other sides of the room and then tottering over to say "What have you been up to?"

Last time I went I completely missed The Pains, so it was good to see them at last this time, although again I didn't see the whole show as I was KNACKERED, and so slipped off into the night, full of happy memories and a great delight to see everyone doing so well. It was entirely lovely, and a wonderful thing for Marianthi and Ian to organise for us all. Part of me is now thinking "DO INDIETRACKS NEXT" but that might be a bit much to ask for!


posted 24/11/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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