Yeah, I think most of them were.

There was one song that was on the lists that didn’t get played. The song shall remain nameless, but with that particular song, there are a number of issues within that song which depend largely on who is playing at the time. Given the time that we had to get it together, in my opinion, it would have been doing that song a disservice and I had to reluctantly offer the opinion that I was going to be unable to play that song on that particular evening.

It was a good broad based list and I think it was a very good set list .It was down to Mike that it was picked the way it was. He made a really good call and I think everyone in the band would agree with that.

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you what setlist I would have personally picked, but what I will say is this: I thought we might have had an opportunity to do something different.

One of the things that has always made it difficult for me to consider an Alarm tour or an Alarm album is this whole nostalgia business. It’s all very well playing the songs which everyone wants to hear, that is great – that’s part of what you are there for, because those songs are great and people want to hear them.

But in my opinion there was a massive audience, most of whom, although they made have heard of The Alarm in the dim and distant past, never really knew what the band was about. I felt that the band had really started coming into its own with the Change album and what could have happened after that, so my thoughts were that there were a whole bunch of people out there, that we might have been able to reach with that performance.

Not necessarily immediately switch them into being Alarm fans, but to say ‘‘Hey maybe you want to have another listen, and see what you’re into - because we’re into this’‘. Because I thought some of the most powerful music to do that would be the music focussed around the Change album. So if I had had a free choice, I would rather have focussed on playing to those folks, rather than to the Alarm fans who were going to be there whatever we played.

Obviously we wanted to make the fans happy, but it was my opinion that the fans were cool enough to have wanted to be part of something that was bigger than what is was, and to be part of a forward - looking thing. So if I had had a free hand, I would have been playing into the future - a bit of a nod to the past here and there - but I respected the fans enough to believe that they would have been as excited about looking into the future as I was, being in the unique opportunity of that situation.

But the way it came down, it was a great set, and everybody there had a good time, and it is what it is, so what are you going to do? I really hope that it came across to people who weren’t aware of The Alarm, and I hope that those folks were able to find something inspirational in it.

There was another point right near the end of the gig when we were just waiting to go back on and they were all singing One Step out front. And Mike said ‘‘Look Dave, they’re all out there asking for it, why don’t you go out there and do it?’‘.

Basically what I said to Mike was ‘‘Look man, we came here as a band, I don’t think any of us should walk out there without the four of us being out there, and although I would love to do it, to get out there and sing it for everybody, unless the four of us are going to go out there and do it, I’d rather the four of us went out there and played some more together, because I think that’s what people want to see.’‘

You know, there are going to be plenty of opportunities to hear me jump up on the stage and sing One Step Closer to Home, and although I would have loved to have done it, I preferred to walk out there with the whole band and to really enjoy that time with the rest of the fellas as positively as possible.

Mike was pretty insistent, but I felt that the night was not about anything other than the four of us getting out there and being The Alarm.

Well there was bit of a technical hitch in that we were supposed to have two run-throughs that day, and for one reason or another, we didn’t get started until quite late on in the day. So we missed one of the run-throughs, and it was quite a crucial one because we knew we were going to jam at certain points, but we hadn’t had enough time to figure out where we were going to improvise.

So it was all a bit wide open, and because we hadn’t played together in so long, when it came to the bits where we could have really blasted it off from the launch pad, it was a little bit tough trying to get it all to hang together.

But aside from that, sticking to the script, as it were - I think the playing was pretty much as good as it’s ever been considering we hadn’t played for so long. I was very happy with what we did, from the point of view of being involved in the performance.

Well I saw Mike shortly after at The Gathering.

I would love to see some more of Eddie. The day after the show we had a real good opportunity to talk a lot, and we had a really good chat back at the hotel after the show, so I was really pleasantly surprised to discover that I would like to spend some time getting to know Eddie again.

I think in the past that both of us have been so busy, we haven’t had an opportunity to get together just to socialise, so if we get the chance to get together and hoist a beer or two, I would be more than delighted.

To be continued…