It’s not all drinking a can of warm Crucial Brew by the bar of the Docker’s Fist in Stevenage on a Tuesday night, waiting for Zuckerberg’s Lachrymal Manscaping Cyborg to take the stage in support of Eviscerated Pangolin; sometimes it’s about going to the biggest shows (outside of big festival bills) one can conceive of. Celebrating some of the biggest gigs we’ve been to – the good, the bad and the very ugly – here are some pearlescent selections from tQ’s archives… expect shock, awe and helicopters.
Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht was supposedly too grandiose to stage, and has been used as a 'pretentious' stick to beat him for years. Leo Chadburn witnesses that refuted in a very human performance in Birmingham. Pictures by Katja Ogrin