The songs are still as fresh and appetising as a hot loaf: The Lightning Seeds livestream reviewed

One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing, though, is that it’s not really a festival. That’s not to knock the North Will Rise Again (TNWRA), which took place over Saturday and Sunday nights a few weeks back, the first featuring Liverpudlian bands and filmed in that city, the second coming from Manchester, with Mancunian groups.

The simple fact is, you can’t replicate a festival online: what the best festivals offer is chance, when one stumbles across something wholly unexpectedly on some outlying stage at an unpromising time of day. Simple economics make that impossible for an event charging a tenner: unless you were to get Woodstock levels of attendance, there would be no way to pay the bands. Hence TNWRA was just three bands per night, and only one each night familiar to a wider audience — the Lightning Seeds representing Liverpool and the Charlatans for Manchester.