Students Rock At North East School's O2 Academy Gig

Four of our Year 9 musicians recently took part in the North East School’s Rock Gig held at Newcastle's O2 Academy. Band member, Hector H, tells us all about it.

"After months of preparing for the gig, we finally arrived at the day of the performance. It was only our second performance as a band and we were all very nervous.

Once we got to the O2 Academy, we were given wrist bands and headed upstairs for our audio checks which went really well. We still had a couple of hours to wait until people started coming in and before the start of the concert. It was hard because the more, we waited the more nervous we got. We were 7th on the running order so we had to wait a while but after what felt like an age, we were finally called up to get ready.

We were told to stand by the side of the stage and wait for the band in front of us to finish. We were going on after CTOAN who were amazing in multiple ways. One of the guitarists broke three strings in the first of five songs and all of them were jumping up and down on stage - it was crazy. They did an extra two songs which prolonged our wait but also - in a funny way - made me feel less scared and more ready and raring to go. CTOAN finished their last song and then we were asked to go up onto the stage.

We were told we could get ready and then go off and come back on, but we were all fired up and really just wanted to start. We introduced ourselves and started playing our first song Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie which was a great opener and went really well. We went on to play our next song which was an original called Falling and then played our best and favourite song - Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis. This last song could not have gone any better, we had the whole crowd singing along and the band after us were dancing to it at the side which was such a great feeling.

The gig was absolutely amazing and I loved every second of it and hope we can go to similar events again in the future."

Colossal Squid consists of Hector H, Oisin C, Sonny D and Lachlan E.