Tonight at the Cavern in Exeter there were two acts on the bill and yet I was lucky enough to experience three fantastic performances.

The third, and potentially most essential performance of the night, was from the roadie for Stone who ran from stage to stage side storage area to soundboard and back on a loop like some kind of technically efficient beaver plugging holes in his auditory dam. I'll get to the why later but first we were treated to the problem free set of Absolutely Anytime. They were already underway when I arrived and the early crowd were loving it - a testament to the energy and songwriting talent of this bunch of youngsters who currently have just 3 tracks available on Spotify. The most recent is a cracker, starts as Girl From Mars era Ash and finishes as The Hives, What's not to like?

Then, to an enthusiastic and thoroughly warmed up crowd, marched out Stone. There was quite a contingent that had travelled the 2 hours from Bristol to get to see Stone's only South West gig and these Bristolians were determined to get their money's worth. The volume that greeted the band was fantastic. This is when the trouble started though, not with the crowd nor with the band but with the equipment. Firstly, the microphone fell apart, but this was easily rectified. Shortly after, the singer removed both his earpieces, clearly not enjoying it yet. Then there are requests to Johnny the sound man to put it all through the speakers, and then "take Sarah's guitar out of my speaker", but still to no avail. The singer was getting visibly anxious about how mishap ridden the set was becoming and apologised profusely to the crowd. This very human moment of humility and fragility was met by enthusiastic support along the crowd. The specific advice given after a round of chanting 'we love Stone!' was "we don't give a fuck, just play the songs!"

So they did - "Johnny, let's go old school, turn off all our monitors, we'll do it like a practise".

Johnny obliged, the band relaxed and delivered a superb set which restarted with crowd favourite ‘Dance’ to ‘The Real Thing’ and then ‘Money'. Song after great song followed and the pace never slacked. Crowd surfing audience, crowd surfing band, the connection was intense and reached a climax when one of the front row was invited to sing the chorus in the frontman's absence (again crowd surfing).

The fragile scouse swagger of Stone belies hidden depths of feeling and the new album explores these fully. Stone are a band of real people and that's why the connection between them and their crowd is so strong. After the gig, there was a massive queue to meet the band at the merch stand, seemingly as much of a highlight of the night as the songs.

Me?, I bought the roadie a Guinness, not all heroes wear capes.

Review by Rich Dunn