Some time back in the mists of the very early 90s, a friend offered me a spare ticket for a gig at what was then the Town and Country club in Kentish Town, north London, writes Chris Borg.
"It's a band called the Blue Aeroplanes," he said. "You might like them."
That turned out to be a chronic understatement - the Bristol group were exhilarating, blasting their support acts (and I can't even remember who those were) off the stage in a flurry of great songs and virtuoso guitar.
Fronted by the speak-singing, shades-wearing beat poet Gerard Langley, the Aeroplanes encompassed everything from folk-inspired jangling to hyper-confident pop, storming through the styles with a high-octane charisma topped off by Langley's original, erudite lyrics.
But - like their equally individualistic British contemporaries the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy - they never quite made the leap from nearly big, despite supporting REM on a UK tour and producing some critically-acclaimed albums.
Nevertheless, although they later disappeared off the radar for prolonged spells, they never completely went away - and now one of those albums, 1990's Swagger, has been reissued by EMI. There's a new album, Altitude, coming out soon, and there's a tour. It seems like a feast after a pretty lengthy recent famine.
Last week, the Aeroplanes played the Borderline club, in central London, to mark Swagger's re-emergence, providing a sell-out crowd with a powerful reminder of why Melody Maker once called them "the best live band in the country".
The besuited Langley declaimed dramatically and dancer Wojtek Dmochowski (the band had a dancer long before the Happy Mondays) whirled chaotically while another incarnation of the ever-changing multi-guitar line-up (there was once a T-shirt reading: "Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Blue Aeroplanes?") roared through a set of songs whose sparkle hadn't dimmed in the slightest.
The self-styled beatniks with altitude are back, it seems - and, at a time when so much in pop is bland and derivative, the music scene is much the richer for it. Here's to more revivals like this.
