Radio LBB: Press Your Nose Against the Window With Ant Melder

It’s about 3pm on a cold but sunny day in London. November 1989. I’ve called in sick to work so I can buy tickets for The Stone Roses concert that evening. Tickets secured, I’m sitting on a bench eating a packet of cheesy Quavers, drinking a can of Fosters, when a bunch of rowdy, excited kids run behind the building. I join them.

From the top of Alexandra Palace, there’s a panoramic view of London. But, right now, we have our necks craned and noses pressed against the window, taking in something even more special. Just behind the glass, The Stone Roses’ drummer, Alan ‘Reni’ Wren, is soundchecking. Except the sound technicians have disappeared, and he’s still going.

I have a crap view. I don’t care. Reni just sits there slapping away at his kit, lost in the moment, unaware that we’re watching, simultaneously calm and frantic, like the drums are alive and the beat’s flowing through him, like he doesn’t actually need a band or an audience, like playing for playing’s sake is something sacred. 

We stand there on tip-toes for close to half an hour, hypnotised. It’s like being on drugs except all I’ve had is that one can of 3.5% Fosters. 

Eventually, some Mancunian kid nudges me in the ribs with his elbow and says, “That’s fuckin’ Reni.”

“I know,” I say, without moving my eyes from the window.

We stand there silently watching for 30 seconds more, then he nudges me again and says, “This is the best fuckin’ moment of my life.”

At first, I think that’s sad. But I somehow feel lighter, less weighed down by fears about who I am and what I’m going to do with my life. I finally turn away from the window and say, “Me too.”

That half hour has been burned onto my psyche for 30-something years. And just like it did that afternoon, music has intermittently popped into my life, yanking me out of lethargy, shaking up my emotions like a can of Coke and ripping the ring pull open.

Here are some tracks that, for various reasons - some deeply personal, some fleeting and frivolous - have had that effect on me…