Blue Monday? Or was it a Tuesday? New Order have been known to receive a frosty reception. Photograph: Ian West/PA
On Sunday I trotted off to see Kaiser Chiefs in Blackpool. The sun was shining, I packed the usual journalistic equipment (notebook, pen, bucket and spade) but at the last minute decided that since it was sweltering inland I really wouldn't need a jacket for a day out at the seaside.
Bad move. Clouds began gathering somewhere outside Preston. By the time I got to Blackpool the temperatures were plummeting and the wind chill factor was heading towards the stage from the Irish Sea. I stood there shivering in a T-shirt. The Kaisers were fabulous, but by the time Ricky Wilson predicted a riot, I was predicting hypothermia. But it did get me thinking: what were the coldest rock gigs of all time?
One of my coldest was New Order's set at WOMAD in 1985. Again, I'd travelled miles to get there and again, I'd not bothered with a jacket seeing as it was the middle of July. However, I forgot a golden rule: if it's a clear blue sky, when night falls it will be a clear moonlit one and absolutely freezing. Manchester's finest finally came on around midnight by which time the crowd were literally shivering under tarpaulins. There was a moment when I briefly believed I might actually pass out from cold listening to New Order, but at least their opening Elegia never sounded more, well, glacial.
I remember another sleepless night on the floor of Leeds Queens Hall a few years earlier trying to get some sleep after the second Futurama, but neither of these are my coldest gigs. The dubious honour goes to a Pulp and friends extravaganza in Rotherham in December 2002. It probably seemed a great idea to have an all-nighter in a cavernous former steelworks, but the place was so freezing that 3,500 people were huddled together in big coats moaning about turning blue. Even the acts wore scarves and woolies, and by the time final act Royksopp - who must have thought Norway was the coldest place they knew, not South Yorkshire - came on most of the audience had fled in search of electric blankets.
Still, I haven't seen anyone in Russia, never saw Iggy doing Cold Metal in an icebox and missed out on Echo And The Bunnymen's jaunts to the Outer Hebrides... so maybe some of you can go colder. What were your coldest gigs you've ever seen... and did the temperature add or detract anything from the music? Maybe we could all rustle up a Cold Playlist. I'll kick off with It Was Cold by the Ruts, Cold as Ice by Foreigner, Cool as Ice, Twice as Nice by 52nd Street, Snowblind by Black Sabbath and anything by Freez.
