The title for today's post is a line from a song by The Boat People who were just one of the 13 bands we saw over the weekend. As this weekend was the Great Escape festival, with over 200 bands playing in a variety of venues across the city on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
So as we had successfully seen a lot of bands last year we were confident that we knew what we were doing, basically if a band have started to make a name for themselves then make sure you get to the venue early if you really want to see them. Which we managed to do on Thursday and Saturday although we were less successful with the Wombats on Friday night as although we got there about 7.30 and the first band weren't due to play until 8pm there was already a one in, one out policy and what with the delegates having priority over us regular punters there was no way we were going to get in. I do think it would be helpful if the booklet had said when the doors open to give people a chance but never mind, we were not bitter and certainly did not refer to the delegates as the scum of the earth ;)
Actually in all honesty I can't say I was that upset as if we had gone straight there we would have missed the aforementioned Boat People who we all liked. Then we ended up at the Prince Albert as their stage was in association with the BBC, hosted by Phil Jackson who has a weekly slot for unsigned bands on Southern Counties radio each Sunday night 7-9pm. This meant all the bands were there purely on merit rather then promoters trying to push certain acts. So that night we saw The MFV, Intervurt and Turning Green all of whom were excellent, well that is if you like things a bit rocky with a hint of funk thrown in for good measure. While I can't fault the music and I do like the venue I do still have one thing to moan about and that was the arrival of the purple posse who started jumping around in front of me and almost sat on me. In case you are wondering the purple posse were a group of people advertising a website, which I do remember the name of but I am not going to help promote on here. Anyway the site had obviously hired people to wear their t-shirts and give out flyers while they were at the gigs, which would have been fine if it was a couple of people but when 15-20 purple people suddenly arrive, especially in such a small venue it is rather irritating, but luckily they didn't stay too long...
Anyway overall we had a great time and got to jump around to Monster by the Automatic (you know - "what's that coming over the hill, is it a monster, is it a mon-ster....") and we can now feel smug about getting to see One Night Only in a small venue before they become really famous. But I think the best part about the Great Escape are the bands you happen upon by accident simply becasue they happen to be on at a convenient time, or because it was the only venue you could get into and then they turn out to be really good. In actual fact there were only a couple of bands that we were not that impressed with. So I'm sure I'll be going again next year, although it seemed some people found dancing around for three nights in a row a little too much to cope with.... :)
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