Last night saw a landmark evening in the history of Northern Irish rock n roll.  I felt strange and grateful to be a part of it all.

The night included Ash, Therapy, Snow Patrol, Divine Comedy, Duke Special, Foy Vance, and great new N Irish bands The Lowly Knights, Kowalski, Cashier No. 9 amongst others.  The BBC had pulled all this together and were broadcasting it live.

The Ulster Hall was that building where we all saw our first 'big' gig.  The ceiling is dizzyingly far above your head, behind the stage stands a frighteningly vast pipe organ, the balcony wraps itself around the walls, surrounding the open floor with lofty onlookers. You fit 4000 people in there sweaty, close and empassioned. Its ornate, but not gaudy.  There's an ambience about the place.  Especially when you have been stood in the crowd countless times, gaping in awe at all your favourite bands.

So that's how come we ended up coming together from all corners.  We all got two songs - one of our own and a cover of something we saw performed there in its hayday. 

Divine Comedy played a stunning 'Gigantic' by the Pixies.  Ash had the place grinning widely and singing 'Mrs Robinson'.  Duke Special stage dived in the middle of 'Fisherman's Blues'.  Therapy bust out the most livid and tremendous version of 'Alternative Ulster'.  I got up and played Songbird and then followed it with The Frames' 'Lay Me Down' during which Gary and Nathan from the Patrol appeared guitars in hand to a deafening response which cracked the ice cap.  I stayed on with them and sat in on Chocolate and Chasing Cars.  It felt like a moment.

The finale involved the entire cast invading the stage in a version of 'Teenage Kicks' with Therapy providing sonic abandon. 

All of this felt brazenly optimistic, defiant, forward looking, proud, untroubled, and belligerent, despite the fact that it followed the saddest and most potentially disheartening day Northern Ireland has had in years.  Music is the most exciting force I know.  We raise our head, our arms, our heels, our voices, our cameras, our hopes, our eyebrows, and dare I say our souls in one great swell of feeling - like we're all fused together somehow, for this moment.  And someone stands on a stage and dreams up their own colours. I'm proud to feel haplessly idealistic, at least for today.

You couldn't make this stuff up.