THE STONE ROSES: BLACKPOOL

August 12th, 1989 at Blackpool's Empress Ballroom was, perhaps, The Stone Roses' live zenith. Ahead of them lay Alexandra Palace and Spike Island, such great ideas but musical anti-climaxes; three months previously they were battling against equally poor acoustics at watering holes (i.e. toilets) like Camden's Dingwalls.

The mood of the 4,000 odd Blackpool crowd was jubilant. This was Manchester's away-day seaside special, and the fans were celebrating themselves as much as the band. They came to dance it was one of the few packed gigs where the tide parted for you if you wanted to get down the front and the faithful registered their affection with flares and white cricket hats. The band later reciprocated by insisting that everyone could partake of the free bar after-wards (it lasted about five minutes).

It was a truly great event, and it was filmed surreptitiously. There were no cameramen on huge booms obscuring history, just a camera in the wings and another on the balcony. Great for the fans but not particularly appropriate for the VCR. The sound quality, however, just about carries the occasion. After singer Ian Brown's mumbled calls to arms ("Manchester in the area. We're international, we're communairo"), 'I Wanna Be Adored' starts so slowly you wonder whether the band are suffering from ganja excess or the slow button is stuck. Thankfully, the gig picks up with 'Elephant Stone' and then vir-tually straight readings of nearly every song from the album, to the 12-minute 'I Am The Resurrection' fi-nale. Ian's vocals are gloriously flat throughout.

By its nature it could never be perfect (although a black and white version would probably be prefer-able to the glaring reds), yet Blackpool Live will in-evitably outsell original ticket sales and claw back some coppers into the Silvertone bank account.

Shaun Phillips