Since the beginning of time (or at least the cancellation of Gladiators), mankind has been locked in an endless struggle to attain a pure high without ugly after-effects.
Dentists tell us sugar turns you into your gummy great granddad. Doctors lecture you about how ecstasy boils your brain into a fried egg. And Disney survivors gargle in emergency wards about the time they woke up from night with the Mouse, with a beehive of ditties about friendship and puppies wedged in their heads.
At this point in time, the final results from the British Medical
Association are still in the post. But the signs are that THE GO! TEAM are peddling the most eye-swellingly exciting experience you can have in an enclosed room without seventeen arcade machines, a golf club, several Ming vases full of banana and peanut butter milkshake and a box of Spongebob Squarepants DVDs.
But more on them later, because I'm hyperventilating quicker than a holidaying banker trying to find his station wagon in the Goofy Zone parking area of Disneyworld...
First we'll take a few deep breaths and take a few tentative baby steps in the direction of the support band. THE STICKS are a two-piece act from Brighton, although they do enlist the aid of a versatile gentleman in an alpine smock when the mood strikes them. By "versatile gentleman in an Alpine smock", I mean a Native Indian Chief. At least that's what I suspect he was supposed to be...
At the risk of restricting comparisons to bands in the Top 40, The Sticks have the same approach to drumming that The White Stripes have to distorted guitar. And that's just as exhilarating as it sounds.
Armed with inexpensive instruments, including boot sale trumpets and PE teacher whistles, The Sticks scratch and screech at their instruments like a cat trying to grab a ball of yarn in a tumble dryer.
But amidst the bells and whistles, all eyes rest on a single
weather-beaten drumkit. Both members share cutlery duties on stage, whipping up the frenzied pace of the set with astoundingingly violent, original and almost melodic rhythms.
The Sticks are a weird, wonderful creature that hops maniacally between the alien dimensions of classic honky tonk and Husker Du garage rockiness. And their drumming is so good, they're almost a circus act. Fabulous stuff.
So, nearly an hour later, I was still sober, squashed and sulking. The soundcheck was dragging on like an interminable inventory at an ironmongers, and my Murphy's Law musk had lured all manner of freaks into my eyeline, including Ben Affleck, the boobed man in pyjamas and the pushy egg-headed beanpole with luminous earplugs.
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Electrowerkz was like a boiler room buried in the hull of a grimy rebel craft battling The Matrix. And the sheer number of armoured security guards inside gave you the impression you're ten minutes away from a bomb scare.
But the underground vibe is oddly suited to The Go! Team, who emerge on stage in a flurry of flashing lights.
The vast army of The Go! Team look like a bubbly pop exercise video, but they sound like a giant lorry full of Saturday morning superheroes roaring up your butt at 90 miles an hour.
The six-piece band are pinging around Europe with a series of dates this summer, hot on the heels of their Glastonbury performance and the release of single "Grip Like a Vice" on July 2.
And I'd definitely recommend you rush out and get the CD right now, if it wasn't for the fact that you've just got to see this lot live first.
Rapper and vocalist Ninja seems determined to burn off her entire body weight in half an hour, assuming she hasn't bludgeoned it off in collisions with passing musicians first. And multi-instrumental back-up Kaori Tsuchida has a jagged melodic vocal that could pierce concrete.
But for all the sheer nuclear power of the Go! team, it's startling that they're able to remain consistently upbeat, without going all Fast Food Heroes on you.
While some songs sail into the punchy territory of fast, beaty artists
like Prodigy, others wander off into a streamer-blast of Jackson Five Motown. And if you can keep your feet stapled to the floor for even five minutes of their eclectic and delirious assault, you're going to need the emergency services to dislodge you.
Choked with dancing, noise and movement, the stage looked like the most fun place to be in existence. And it got a whole lot more crowded by the end, when the team orchestrated an Iggy Pop-style Glastonbury stage invasion during the encore.
Within the space of an hour, the band had transformed a whole room of people into a bouncy mulch of grinning lunatics. And, as far as I know, no one even needed fillings or rehab the next morning...
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