I arrive just as Age Of Misrule start their set and it sounds like they’re covering Suzie Quatro’s `Devilgate Drive’. Cool. First impressions quickly fade, though as they settle into an anonymous soft metal rumble while singer Caz tries to do her best Maria Carey-gone-rock impersonation. It’s a set packed with histrionics and cliché but sadly little to take away with you. The odd funk interlude or drum solo offers necessary but not always welcome diversions. They’re not bad as such, more anonymous, a band that could be from any point in the past thirty years, though there’s some comic relief when Caz announces, “This next one is our forthcoming song”. And as soon as it has a tune to go with it, it probably will be.

“Never meet your heroes” is a wise maxim. They’ll always let you down. Similarly, never go and watch one of your favourite bands of yesteryear on a reunion tour. It’ll almost inevitably end in tears.

Back in the mid-1980s We’ve Got A Fuzzbox and We’re Going To Use It exploded on the indie scene in a riot of dayglo clothes and wild, back-combed hair. They couldn’t sing and they couldn’t play and it just didn’t matter because they were all 17 years old, had no sense of cool or respect for their elders and completely typified what pop music, and more importantly the idea of Girl Power should be all about. Mostly because they were indeed girls, not grown women. John Peel, predictably, loved them as did every indie boy and girl worth their Doc Martins.

Sadly by the time the novelty wore off and they’d signed to a major label they’d been subsumed to industry playthings, stripped of their individuality and instruments as label bosses decided they just wanted singer Vix as a pin-up pop doll. `International Rescue’ and `Pink Sunshine’ were their big hits but they were also bland, disposable plastic rubbish.

What possessed three of the original quartet to get back together is anyone’s guess. Even a fan like myself couldn’t see the appeal, but you live in hope. And hope is there to be crushed. Tonight is tragic.

Fuzzbox 2010 finds Vix, guitarist Jo and keyboard player and singer Maggie bolstered by a solid new drummer and a bassist who looks like Miss Piggy’s kid sister. They all, obviously, look older but are trying not to, especially the still tall and willowy Vix, decked out in ill-advised mini-skirt and black and red dyed hair, like a mum trying to be best mates with her teenage daughter while desperately clinging to her last vestige of youth. Jo still looks cool though, demure behind her shades.

Back then it didn’t matter that the girls could neither play nor sing, it was part of the fun. Now, though,  as Vix’s flat, toneless voice tries to belt out the old favourites, it just sounds… horrible. And sad. Really sad. You start to think this exhibition should have been reserved for a mate’s birthday party, a bit of private nostalgic fun. As it is, there are only a few dozen fans here, almost all middle-aged men. When Vix hands out tissues to the crowd because “This is a sad one”, one wag suggests another use for them and you know he’s only half joking.

Fuzzbox still retain some of their old humour but now it’s less the natural exuberance of youth, more like they feel they need to recreate that old atmosphere with forced enthusiasm. There are exceptions: `Love Is The Slug’ buzzes furiously as Vix and Maggie exchange one-liners and bitchy glances and actually look like they’re having fun, while `XX Sex’ is belligerent and rowdy and shrill, just as it always was.

Beyond that, though while `Spirit In The Sky’ is as irreverent as ever it now sounds slightly desperate, `Pink Sunshine’ hasn’t improved with age and when they announce their new single is a cover of M’s `Pop Muzik’ and proceed to suck any kooky charm out of the original, you just want it all to end.

I don’t think I’ve ever left a gig feeling so low. Not just because a band that once thrilled me and many others now sounds like it needs putting down, but the fact that Fuzzbox themselves are pissing on their own legacy for what is probably a few meagre bucks. The reunion can’t last if tonight’s poor turn-out is anything to go by and they’ll be left with sour memories when they should be able to look back with great affection and pride on what they once were. Tragic.