The Courteeners - Old Trafford

This concert was over four years ago, but this experience will always hold a special place in my heart, the Courteeners took my indie concert virginity. As far as I'm concerned, this was my first concert (Sugababes and Little Mix tend to be erased from my memory when I'm asked who my first artist to see live was) and I'd been told to prepare myself for carnage, although 14 year old me really underestimated the hooligan-like nature of 'Teeners fans.

I've recently started studying music marketing at BIMM in Manchester, and when asked what exactly it was that made me pursue a career in the music industry, there isn't a shadow of a doubt that it was all down to this event. I went with a few friends who had a spare ticket - I didn't choose to go the concert myself I only tagged along - so I always wonder, how would my life had panned out if it wasn't for someone offering me that spare ticket? Would I have even given BIMM a second look? I doubt I'd have ever considered studying anything to do with music at degree level.

It was one of the scariest experiences of my life to date. I was surrounded by topless sweaty men, mosh pits, piss bombs and class A drugs for the first time, high school hadn't prepared me well for this. I loved every second, though. I remember there being something about everyone in the same enclosed space feeling the same vibrations, screaming the same lyrics and exchanging each others sweat (including the band) that I found unifying. The sense of oneness, and the crowd being thousands of individuals all coming together to form one body, is something that I remember finding totally mesmerising.

The event took place exactly a week after the tragic bombing at the Ariana Grande concert at the now AO Arena. Being 15 at the time, whilst being totally shaken up by something so catastrophic and terrifying happening so close to home, I also remember having to beg my parents to let me attend - this was the biggest event to take place in Manchester after the attack, everyone felt apprehensive. Liam Fray played, on his acoustic, a rendition of 'Don't Look Back in Anger' by Oasis, a song which has now seemed to become an anthem of Manchester, and being part of a crowd singing a song with such emotion attachment brought joy out of an event so destructive. At this moment I realised the power of music. Whilst still being just some chords, some words, some drum pattern all put together, it also becomes a force, with the ability of bringing strangers together.