Mike & The Mechanics

IT WAS a partisan crowd that greeted this fortysomething super group. The members each have a wealth of experience behind them: Mike Rutherford from Genesis, Paul Young (a different one) from Sad Cafe, Paul Carrack from Ace, Squeeze, and a handful of other name bands, and Tim Rennick, quicksilver guitarist with a pedigree as long as your above average arm length. With such credentials to their credit, you can bet that the sound was excellent, the lighting scaled down professionalism, and the music tasteful, if somewhat lacking in bite.

Rutherford hadn't been in the Stadium since the early Seventies with Genesis ("I'm glad to say it hasn't changed a bit", said the man who is presumably used to Green Room hospitality par excellence), but you could tell that the intervening, hugely eventful years hadn't dampened his enthusiasm for getting up on a stage to entertain. The deliberate ordinariness of the band's name indicates a willingness to just muck in and do the job, and a good one at that. Which they did.

All the hits were played (The Living Years, Beggar On A Beach Of Gold, Over My Shoulder, All I Need Is A Miracle, etc), as well as a medley of the individual members' own best known songs, the inevitable highlight of which was Paul Carrack's How Long from his Ace days.