Ron Sexsmith, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, 27 June 2015

When a performer draws heavily on material from his or her new album, that's often a signal for a mass exodus to the bar.  But Ron Sexsmith's latest CD, Carousel One, adds a fine selection of songs to a twenty year recording history and no one was rushing to leave their seats as Canada's finest singer songwriter under the age of 60 (I have to be careful not to upset Neil Young fans here) trotted out Getaway Car, Lucky Penny, Sun's Coming Out and Nothing Feels The Same Any More.

Saint Bernard also gets an airing and Ron has a giant cardboard cut out of a Saint Bernard on stage with him whilst his drummer sports the face of another such dog on his bass drum.

The band is tight and muscular and handles Ron fluffing the lyrics to one song and wanting to restart it mid intro without any fuss.

But the show takes a particularly poignant turn when Ron performs unaccompanied firstly on the acoustic guitar and then at the piano.  He doesn't look like a rock star and at times his delivery of songs he has himself written, such as Tomorrow In Her Eyes, Gold In Them Hills and Brandy Alexander, makes him sound as though everything's about to fall apart.  This vulnerability is part of his charm and the reason why the audience brings him back for two encores when Ron and the band want to get away for their Glastonbury appearance the next day.

Other highlights are Strawberry Blonde and Sneak Out The Back Door.  Ron finishes with a stunning Can't Get My Act Together from Carousel

One and Lebanon, Tennessee from his debut album, bookends to his career.  The audience is loud in its appreciation.  Ron is amongst friends and the crowd knows it is in the company of a rare and self effacing talent.

Support was provided by singer songwriter Sam Palladio, who hails from Cornwall by way of Nashville.  He's in the TV show Nashville, which he managed to reference three times.  He could have done with giving the audience fewer mentions of the TV career and allowed his songs to do more of the talking.  There were a couple of beauties in his set which will hopefully feature on his soon to be recorded first album.  Think Peter Case with additional twang.

Black Sabbath, Phones 4 Us Arena, Manchester, 18 December 2013

By rights two members of Black Sabbath shouldn't be on stage in Manchester on the grounds that they shouldn't still be alive. Guitarist Tony Iommi is being treated for lymphoma, which would lead lesser mortals to take an extended sickie at the very least while lead singer Ozzy Osbourne's drug and drink travails, well documented in the red tops and in wife Sharon's regular autobiographies, would have done for anyone without the constitution of a team of oxen.

But here they are, clad in black and grinning broadly, and along with bassist Geezer Butler and drafted in drummer Tommy Clufetos are firing up their amplifiers to 11 and turning the clock back to 1972.

From the opening siren of War Pigs through to the encore Paranoid (Ozzy rushing back on stage having hidden behind the speaker stack encouraging the audience to clap louder - 'come on you f*****s') the band that can be argued to have invented heavy metal grind out the riffs of classic song after classic song. Sabbath have rarely troubled the singles chart, but their repertoire draws heavily on their first four albums with three songs from this year's album chart topping '13' (Age of Reason, End of the Beginning and God is Dead) thrown in for good measure. The Sabbath sound has come full circle as the newer songs could easily have been written in the band's early days, so smoothly do they drop into the set. Anyone expecting Black Sabbath to start doing dub step or Miley Cyrus covers is going to be severely disappointed.

Several audience members appear to be paying their own personal tributes to an off the wagon Ozzy, and are significantly the worse for wear before the band come on. Ozzy, of course, has gone from being a shoeless petty thief from Aston, Birmingham to a national treasure singing at Buckingham Palace. You are unlikely to rush out and buy an Ozzy Osbourne keep fit DVD based on the physical shape he is in these days but there is no doubting the power of the voice or his enthusiasm at being on stage.

Geezer Butler, the band's main lyricist, performs a sterling job on bass and Clufetos plays an energetic stop start drum solo that, accompanied by a spectacular light show, builds the suspense before the band launch into the final stretch of the set.

The heart of the Black Sabbath engine though is Tony Iommi, in blue tinted specs and black leather, strolling up and down the side of the stage with a benign smile on his face and guitar in hand, effortlessly emitting arena shaking riffs without breaking sweat.

Heavy metal has its detractors but Black Sabbbath must be doing something right. The band are getting on but the audience, ranging from teenagers to late middle aged bikers, reflects a youthful demographic, demonstrating heavy metal's multi generational appeal and suggesting that as long as the band that invented it can keep going they'll continue to sell out big venues. Long live Sabbath!

The Rolling Stones, Hyde Park, 6 July 2013

Hyde Park was basking in a glorious evening's sunshine and when the Rolling Stones' lead singer Mick Jagger suggested that London in summer was the best place in the world to be, few in the 65,000 strong crowd assembled to see the band return to play the central London park 44 years after their celebrated free concert were inclined to disagree.

From the opening riff of Start Me Up through to the closing bars of ( I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, the crowd sang along and if Jagger had to glance occasionally at his autocue to remember the words of some of the most famous songs in the rock canon the faithful gathered at his feet had no such need.

Like their O2 gigs last year, this and the following Saturday's Hyde Park gig were criticised for the price of the tickets but both sold out in minutes and from the number and variety (and vintage) of tee shirts on display, the concert goers gathered in central London were afficiandos who would have come to see the band whatever the cost.

That tickets for this gig started at £99 says more about the business model for rock music than it does about the avarice of the Stones. Musicians don't make much money from selling their music any more and ticket sales from concerts is the big revenue stream.

Not that the Stones had skimped on staging.  The set was bedecked with two large oak trees from which were hung the speaker stacks, slightly obscuring the giant video screens. But a central walkway meant that at different times Mick, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood advanced into the masses and gave the crowd packed in at the front (some of whom had queued overnight to get in) a close look at the nearest thing Britain has to rock royalty.

As a seasoned Stones watcher I have a couple of gripes. The high resolution big screen revealed Mick to be glancing at the autocue on a far too frequent basis and you wonder if he really struggles that much to remember the lyrics.  And I wouldn't have played All Down The Line (my preference in the fan vote was for the Temptations cover Just My Imagination, which they stripped down and rebuilt as their own on Some Girls). But that's democracy for you.

I saw Springsteen play at Wembley Stadium a few weeks ago and was distinctly underwhelmed by his choice of material. And, let's face it, a band that can release Gimme Shelter (with Keith in thunderous form), Sympathy for the Devil (with the audience 'woo-wooing' along) and  You Can't Always Get What You Want (with full choral backing) towards the tail end of a set that is packed with a clutch of memorable chart topping singles (Paint It Black, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women, It's Only Rock'n'Roll, Miss You, Tumblin' Dice and Jumping Jack Flash) is always going to have the edge when it comes to killer songs.

The Stones playing Hyde Park was a celebration of a band that has been a part of people's lives for over 50 years.  The grey hair, the wrinkles and the occasional falling out between friends tells the story of the band but also most of the 65,000 too.  That's why their fans love them and why they were, on Saturday night, once again the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world.