Leicester’s Music History 1

2000 to 2002

30th January 2020

By Trevor Locke

My involvement in rock music started in 2001. I know that because that was the year I went to the Reading Festival, August Bank Holiday, 24th to 26th. I still have the wristband that I bought to get in and the hoody I purchased, when I was there, on which were printed all the names of all the acts billed as appearing at the festival. That event ignited my interest in rock music.

For the first time in my life, I watched rock bands play live and listened to music the like of which I had never heard before. Prior to 2001, I never went to gigs or knew anything about rock, punk or metal bands. The only music I knew was what I heard on the radio or saw on the television on programmes such as Top Of The Pops. In fact, it was not until the following year that I went to The Shed for the very first time, on 27th November. I continued to go to The Shed on a very frequent basis from then on and also went to all of the other music venues in Leicester including The Attik.

I say this in order to explain the limitations of my personal history of music in Leicester. Anything prior to 2002 is historical information I have gleaned from documentary sources and not from my personal experience. My historical account of Leicester’s music covers the years from 2002 to 2013. The reasons for this are explained in other instalments of this series. My narrative ends in 2013 because that is when Music in Leicester magazine was launched and anything published about the years 2013 to the present day is still available online; nothing was ever taken down. All the old material is still available through searches on the site.

Instalment 1

Instalment 2

Photogallery to this series