I find it hard to add something to what Alistair wrote, but the third Exeter Goes Pop! was the best so far. Definitely. I had thought it would be ‘just’ Joe from the Pines and the Foxgloves playing his songs, with another bloke singing some of them, five locals coming to the Phoenix to listen and us playing some tunes afterwards. Well, stripped down to bare facts, it was like this.

Except that it wasn’t.

The other bloke, for instance, was Tim Hopkins, once of local band the Visitors, the only West Country band ever to release something on Matinée and the most visible trace of the fact the indiepop did not get completely ignored by Devon. The Phoenix, when it was still known as the Arts Centre, used to be the Visitors’ home venue and they hadn’t played there for more than twenty years. Although back in 1987, I didn’t know there were things as ‘indiepop’ or ‘Devon‘, it wasn’t hard to feel something special when Goldmining was given a home performance for the first time in two decades.

And Joe, for instance, isn’t ‘just’ the bloke from the Pines and the Foxgloves. Because there isn’t a ‘just’ in his songs. Because his songs, whether sung by Pam Berry, Tim Hopkins or Mr. Brooker himself, are close to perfectness.

And it, for instance, wasn’t just us, biased die-hard fans who thought so. Several people who didn’t know they band before –two, at least, but they came from different directions– came up to us and told us how much hey had enjoyed the show.

And we, for instance, weren’t just playing some records afterwards. We were hanging out with the visitors (think of this written with a semi-capital V) on Friday before the gig and for most of Saturday too, discussing topics from James Joyce to Lloyd Cole and from the saddest line in a song to Dutch culture. And mother nature, who had saved the first warm day of the year for the event, showed how much she appreciated Devon. And indiepop. And she told us we should do a popfest here in summer.

We’ll never be cool, probably. But we can have great times. I suppose that’s what matters.