All this for free

As many of you know, I am from Nottingham but recently decamped to the West Midlands. However, Nottingham is still very much my home town, and so when I heard that they were planning a series of events to celebrate the opening of the redeveloped Market Square, I thought that it would be worth checking out. Even more so when I heard that the Magic Numbers would be playing, and it would be free!

Actually, there were events for several days, and for several hours prior to our arrival in the Square. Our intention was to arrive in time for Just Jack, who put on a decent set. Jack seemed to be enjoying the day and smiled a lot. Can't say it inspired me to buy his album, but full marks for the use of vocoder and swirly and robotic 80s keyboard sounds.

Magic Numbers are a band who I like, but would not necessarily pay to go to a gig. I have previously thought that they would be a good band to see at a festival though. And to their credit, even though this was a free gig (which threatened to be ruined by some lairy kids who wanted to shout abuse at the band - if you don't like it, you can just walk away, it hasn't cost you anything!), they put on a proper show. My favourite songs were "Love's a game" and "Morning's Eleven", although everyone was jumping and singing along to set-closer "Love me like you". And they finished with what I can only describe as a hoedown, accompanied by Nottingham City Council's fireworks display. Nice.