'ARE you writing this down?' John Robb asks sympathetically, knowing that no shorthand pencil can keep up with his sprint-speed conversation.

Fortunately, the tape is running, and so is Robb's boundless creative energy, juggling his various projects (writing a book on the history of punk and living the punk rock life for real with his band Gold Blade, to name but two) while also chivvying Manchester's finest into performing at a free gig for tsunami aid.

In truth, they did not need much chivvying. Elbow, Badly Drawn Boy, I Am Kloot, Durutti Column, The Earlies, Andy Votel and, of course, Gold Blade, are confirmed for the Apollo on January 30, and other big names are expected.

'Like everyone, I saw the tsunami on Boxing Day and was staggered at the scale of it, and sat there thinking, what can you do about it?' says Robb.

"He teamed up with music manager Gary McLarnan, and together they began organising Love From Manchester. The Apollo offered its venue for free, Ticketmaster agreed to waive all its profits on ticket sales and artists volunteered readily.

'In Manchester, the bands are all really cool people,' says Robb. 'You cold-call people - even during the Christmas holidays - and they will do stuff. It is not like you have to go through big-cigar managments who are looking for their cut and position on the bill. People just said straight away 'Yes, we will do it'.'

The gig should make at least '100,000 towards the Manchester Million - the effort to raise a million pounds through a host of events in the city.

'When you think that it costs 50 quid to build a shelter for one family, we can rebuild a village off one gig,' Robb says with evident enthusiasm. 'I like the idea of people in Indonesia or Sri Lanka knowing that a bunch of people they'd probably think are freaks really care about them.

'The greatest thing about the British people is they are always prepared to pay. The poorest people will put their hands deepest in their pockets. It's what makes you proud you're British.'

Born in Blackpool ('Everybody goes there but nobody ever comes from there,' he says) Robb's life was 'fairly boring' until punk rock came into it.

As front man of industrial-strength punk band The Membranes, Robb toured the world to underground acclaim. Fortunes were not made. In his glass-half-full kind of way, Robb counts The Membranes 'fairly successful' to have broken even.

Stone Roses

In 1984, he moved to Manchester, took up rock journalism, wrote a book about the Stone Roses and became known as something of a yoof pundit. The Membranes fizzled out in 1990, but in 1994, Robb convened Gold Blade.

'Once you've been in a band, it's very difficult to stop. You miss that adrenalin rush of getting on stage.'

Adrenalin is Robb's drug of choice. He does not drink, smoke, do drugs or eat meat. Instead, he runs, does yoga and weight-trains four or five times a week at the Y Club in Castlefield, Manchester.

'It just makes you feel better,' he explains. 'You're buzzing all the time. You're as high as you would be if you took drugs, but without the down bit.'

Robb lives in a tower block in 'old' Hulme with his girlfriend, and is now a seasoned face on the Manchester scene. He loves Manchester's way of producing belligerent singers who don't sing in tune, citing examples such as the Buzzcocks, the Stone Roses,
The Fall and the Happy Mondays.

At the age of 43, Robb is still a proud standard-bearer for the punk ideal, though stressing that he is 'not one of those people who think it was so much better in the old days'.

He adds: 'I have not changed my life at all since I was 16. I'm into any form of counter-culture. The early acid house thing was good.'

Relatively unsung in their homeland, Gold Blade are popular in south America and big news in the Balkans and points east.

'In Russia we get thousands of kids jumping up and down in the mosh pit,' he says. 'We get recognised walking down the street. We would get big in a country where everyone bootlegs records. They are all burning the CDs.'

If he is concerned that Gold Blade's acclaim in Russia does not translate into mega-roubles, Robb does not seem it. Right now, he is more preoccupied with a gig closer to home.

'It is going to be one of those classic Manchester nights where everyone in the crowd knows everyone else,' he says. 'The crowd is more important than the bands. The people who turn up and pay to get in are the stars of the show.'

Love From Manchester, a charity concert in aid of the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, takes place at the Apollo, Manchester on Sunday, January 30 at 7pm. Tickets are priced '15. To book call the Box Office on 0870 060 1768 or click here .

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