Mancs For The Memories

May 26, 1990 and Manchester is looking good. You step off the train at Picadilly and straight away you appreciate that there's a significant culture quake going on. Every young person has it. The flares are wider, the hair more shaggy and the Manc walk has a pronounced bounce. It's an epochal scene, interspersed with Japanese tourists, bemused old folk plus music journalists from all over. Tomorrow, The Stone Roses will play at Spike Island, near an old chemical plant in Cheshire. Tonight, we party.

At The Dry Bar, Shaun Ryder is holding court with Mick Hucknall and Cressa, sometime dancer with the Stone Roses. A bunch of NME people are remarking on the rather mad press conference earlier in the day, when the Roses had mocked the expectations of the media folk. For years, the band had been ignored by the soft Southerners. Now they could handle intense fame in their own terms. Mostly rudely and with nonchalance. The first album had established the cool and 'Fool's Gold' had delivered a masterclass in sustained indie-funk, loose attitude and John Squire's imperial wah wah.

I'd seen the Roses at Alexander Palace the previous November, when London finally swooned. And so Spike Island was the moment when the baggy nation would have its coronation. The 27,000 strong crowd wore their beanie hats and their Affleck's Palace shirts, expecting greatness, possibly bliss. It was the closest thing we would get to a Woodstock moment, a defining day.

Unfortunately, the sound was awful, the facilities were lacking and the party mood never quite peaked. And while we had denied the problems with the live Stone Roses, they were quite apparent on the night. Ian Brown was potentially regal, but the sound was blown around and the enormous potential receded.

Then there were five years of mostly nothing. And a second album that was only special in parts. I watched them at the Brixton Academy and it was underwhelming. And when I bumped into Ian Brown at the Reading Festival in 1996, he was fried and unfocussed. I didn't even bother hanging around for their performance. Apparently it was one of the great comedy moments as Ian became a stranger to the art of melody.

Have your reunion and your payday. We can hardly begrudge it. But while you're at it, cancel my subscription to the resurrection.