Bombastic? Overblown? Serenity!

... and they were absolutely marvellous.

I'm talking about the melodic metal band Serenity, of course (named after the ship in Firefly apparently).

Last night we went to a concert at Koko in Camden to watch Delain headline with Serenity and Cellar Darling in support.

The doors opened late, and it took some time to get the sellout crowd into the venue, so we missed the first half of Cellar Darling's set. Apparently there was some sort of mishap as they started, which may have put them off a little, but they sang several interesting folk-metal songs. Mostly they were accompanied by the hurdy-gurdy, as well as the usual drums and guitars, which made for an original sound; although my favourite song was one accompanied by flute instead (which I now can't remember the name of, sigh). The lead singer is definitely a talented musician.

Serenity were up next and really hit the ground running with Deus Lo Vult,  the highly dramatic instrumental which opens their new Lionheart album, continuing with United from the same album. Four older songs followed before the set peaked with the title track of Lionheart. They finished with Follow Me.

There are lots of things I like about Serenity: they are a really powerful band, musically, vocally and lyrically, yet they understand and use light and shade, heavy and gentle, slow and fast. Their frontman Georg Neuhauser, who is also their songwriter, has a remarkable voice, yet they ring the changes on vocals, with a second male voice in the band and a guest female vocalist for some of the songs.

It helps that Neuhauser is apparently a history lecturer so he has interesting things to say on the historical themes which the band so often sing about. Although it has to be said their Lionheart album is something of a whitewash of Richard the Lionheart, who was a complex and not always honourable leader: the album is more about the legend than the reality.

What about the headliners, Delain? Hmm. Koko was sold out last night, so there was a vast number of people in a limited area. Add to that a bevy of six-footers who felt they had to stand right in the centre, blocking people's view, along with the rudest crowd I have seen at a melodic metal concert: pushing and shoving their way around. I was feeling downright claustrophobic and Delain took forever to come out, so I wasn't at all enjoying myself by the time they did.

It was the last night of the tour and Charlotte Wessels' voice sounded quite badly shot to me, so maybe they had to spend time working on her throat so it could survive one final night, hopefully without damage. Wessels has a very distinct timbre normally, which was missing last night - so much so that at first I wondered if they had a guest singer themselves.

Nevertheless she hit the notes and the whole band sang and played well. A particular treat was that they did have a guest singer: Marco Hietrala, who came out and did the male vocal parts to several songs which they don't normally perform on tour; I especially enjoyed Control The Storm.

I don't really like going to London for concerts, because the journey back is always grim; the wonder of privatised rail: first-class prices for a third class journey. Last night/this morning the train was standing room only - just four coaches so what can one expect - and a points failure outside Slough added to the delight. Still we got home eventually, and it is always good to see live music.

To finish with a bit of enthusiasm: a song which Serenity sadly didn't do last night, but which I think is brilliant:-

The Courtesans In Southampton

Last Friday the two of us went to Southampton to see The Courtesans, who were live at The Talking Heads there. It was a superlative experience, so I'm afraid you're now going to see several hundred words of me gushing.

Even travelling by Cross-Country Rail to get to Southampton was pleasant enough - certainly far easier than driving. The only slight problem was that there seemed to be no indication at Southampton Station which exit went where ... once we had left by the wrong exit we couldn't go back through the station to the right side of the tracks.

Southampton Novotel is easy walking distance from the station, even with the detour, so it wasn't a problem. The Novotel was a great find! Getting back from Southampton to Reading after a gig is a lot of hassle, so I had booked us a room overnight.

My previous experience of a hotel in Southampton had been decidedly meh, with complications even when things should have been simple. On this trip I had changed the number of people staying in the room (originally my wife was working that day, so it was just me, then her shifts changed so we could both go - nice, but a recipe for confusion) so I was expecting the worst. As it turned out they were brilliant: everything was sorted already, we just paid an extra tenner for breakfast at checkout. The room was comfortable, bar food was fairly simple but good quality, breakfast was excellent, and everyone was friendly and helpful. Oh, and the price was reasonable too.

So, after eating we popped back over the railway line to The Talking Heads, where the Courtesans were playing. They were having technical problems in the venue proper, so we couldn't go in at the official 'doors open' time. No problem: there was also a spacious front bar with a stack of real ales and some acoustic jigs playing (it was early on St Patrick's day night, so it was already busy).

When we did get in to the main concert room it was nice and spacious, with a bar down one side (also with real ales) and a corner with seating and a decent view of the stage on the other - handy for a knackered old codger to wait for the bands. Another feature of The Talking Heads was the friendliness of the clientele in general - although that may be just a feature of Southampton, or of the musical genre, as I noticed the same thing when I went to see Bad Pollyanna a while back.

The opening band were Lost or Stolen, a local band. When they started the room was completely dead; by about their third song you could feel the energy pumping out, warming things up. They were essentially blues-rock, but clearly wanting to push the boundaries of that genre, and themselves. From time to time they pushed further than they should have perhaps, and lost a bit of timing, but I can respect that: it's far better than a band who just play it safe and bland.

Main support was Ruby Blue and The Chain, occupying a sort of triple point between jazz, blues and funk, with consummate style and musicality. I am surprised to see on their website that they have only been around for about a year, they seemed to play so comfortable and eloquently together. I really enjoyed their gig and hope to see them again.

But the highlight of the evening, by a huge margin, was The Courtesans (just as an aside, searching for "Courtesans Southampton" returns some interesting results, including an ad claiming you can buy courtesans on Amazon!). Nothing particularly showy or flashy, just excellent, powerful music, presented with a depth of charisma and presence.

I already had their new EP, from PledgeMusic, so I thought I knew their most recent songs, but hearing them live was at a whole different level. The drumming was so powerful and spikey, bass and guitar so evocative, and the deeply passionate lyrics sung with such heartfelt strength that it was overwhelming. I'll stick a link to their Mesmerise video at the bottom of the post, so you can at least get a feel for their style ... just imagine that with the intensity racked up a few orders of magnitude.

A shout-out here for the sound at The Talking Heads - it was impeccable: loud enough but not too loud, beautifully balanced and wonderfully clear. Often live music means sacrificing sound quality for the live experience, but not here.

Do I have any negatives in the midst of all this dreadful positivity? Just one: by the end of the Courtesans' gig I was bouncing and jumping all over the place, absolutely into the music and the movement. Now I hurt pretty much all over. Would I do it all again? Silly question - I'd be there in a flash, aches or no aches!

Autumn Moon Bands Day 2

Lyriel - Highlight of the festival

Back to Hamelin for the second day of the Autumn Moon music festival, not to mention the Mystic Halloween Market.

After getting up at 8am (groan!) for breakfast, we spent an enjoyable morning wandering around Hameln - a very pleasant little town, slightly touristy, the central area very close within the old town walls, with plenty of interesting things to see. Then, fortified by bread on a stick from the market, off to Sumpfblume  to start another day's music.

First up were Diabulus in Musica, a band who weren't in the original advertised lineup, I think, so we had no idea what they'd be like. As it turned out they were surprisingly good: a Spanish band playing orchestral-style FFM with a very pregnant-looking lead singer. Quite how she could sing like that with what must have been a pretty immobile diaphragm is a mystery. But they were an unexpected treat. The video clip above is very short and has poor sound, but it does nicely illustrate the singer's condition. Like many bands I enjoy, their sound includes light and dark, heavy and soft. If you click on the band name above and scroll to the bottom of the page there are some videos which give a better idea of their music.

After them we stayed in the Sumpfblume for Ravenscry, another FFM band from the Mediterranean, this time from Italy. They'd seemed quite reasonable on the preview video, but live they were painful. Bass and twin guitars all turned up to 11 on both fuzz and volume. No colour, no inventiveness and no sign of originality in the first two songs, so we left them to it.

Across to the Rattenfängerhalle for some supposed cyberpunk-rock, with Dope Stars Inc. Actually fairly generic punk-pop, even emo-pop: heavy on eyeliner and hype, light on originality. Okay, but not exciting.

Staying put, we had a change in style with Clan of Xymox, a kind of gothic OMD: 80's synth-rock, or maybe pomp-rock, brought slightly more up-to-date. Not really my thing but actually done quite well, I thought. In fact, they reminded me that I quite liked OMD back in the day.

I'm starting to get very tired at this point, so it was handly that the next band we wanted to see, Mythemia, were back in the Schiff, where I hoped to get a bit of a sit-down. No chance! Storytelling folk in a mix of German and English, based around myths and legends (hence the name, I guess), so lively and well-played there was no way I could stay sat down at the back. Brilliant, a real treat! If you get a chance to see them yourself, then do.

We had thought about about heading back to the Rattenfängerhalle next to see Leaves Eyes, the one band at the festival that we had seen before: Scandinavian symphonic FFM, with a new album out which had been receiving good reviews. But I was just totally shot, and going nowhere.

So we stayed on the boat and watched Laura Carbone instead; I'm really pleased we did, although I ended up back on my feet again. She's a female indie-rock singer, reminiscent to me of Sheryl Crow in her vocal style. But what really got me going was the band she had with her. They were just fantastic: the drummer and guitarist would start off doing drummy and guitary things but then just veer off in all sorts of strange directions and somehow the bass player would keep the whole thing together in a cohesive and exciting whole. Just wonderful: live music at its best!

Time for a sit-down and a bite to eat before I simply fell over where I stood.

Then to the Rattenfängerhalle for a band I'd been looking forward to: Beyond the Black. In the videos I had previewed they played quality melodic FFM, with hints of folkiness: very enjoyable. In the flesh they were a disappointment. Not too bad but a long way short of what I'd hoped for. Apart from the singer the band just seemed to lack musicality. Nearly all the time they had all the instruments playing basic rhythm and no-one  doing anything vaguely interesting with it. The vocalist was undoubtedly good, and when she played piano she made it interesting, but I don't know what happened to the rest of the band. A bad day at the office, perhaps.

Then off to Sumpfblume for Schwarzer Engel. Male-fronted operatic metal, okay in the preview video, if a little generic. Live they were more sledgehammer metal than operatic, but within that context surprisingly decent. Worth seeing, but not worth going out of one's way for, really.

By now it's close to midnight and I'm getting worried about whether Lyriel will be worth all the effort. After all we'd never seen them in the flesh, and Beyond the Black had just illustrated that bands don't always live up to their recorded promise when they're live. It would have been a long way to travel to see a disappointing band.

I needn't have worried. Half-eleven and the band come onstage, dressed in strange white masks - I've no idea why - and burst into Skin & Bones, the title track from their new album. Straight in with energy and presence, it was great! We were right at the front and their sound was beautifully balanced - cello, violin, guitar, bass, drums and, of course, voices, all coming through with clarity and vigour - and they played with great style and energy.

Lyriel are another band who vary their music, quieter songs amongst the metal, melodies weaving around the rhythms, folk and rock together. But live I really noticed the contrast between the sheer joy of the music and the often sad and heartfelt lyrics.

One advantage of a band with a violinist is that they can lead a dance around the venue - not quite a pied piper, more a dancing fiddler, but great fun nonetheless.

All in all, Lyriel were an absolutely wonderful climax to a brilliant festival, and an amazing way to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary.

Autumn Moon Bands Day 1

Four weeks ago BlackLin and I went to Hamelin in Germany (of Pied Piper fame) to a music festival there: Autumn Moon, which was sharing a site with the Mystic Halloween Market - of which more anon ... if I ever get to part three of this series of posts.

There was one band we really wanted to see, Lyriel, who only seemed to play in Germany, so if we were to see them we would have to travel. As Autumn Moon was the half term weekend shortly after our thirtieth wedding anniversary, we decided to treat ourselves.

Our lack of German language skills was a bit of a challenge, especially as Hameln is quite a small town so there was limited English spoken, but we managed.

The festival ran on three main sites: the Rattenfängerhalle - Ratcatcher Hall - was the main stage, then there was a smaller stage at the Sumpfblume - Swamp flowers - and a tiny stage on a ship - large barge really. The Mystic Halloween Market also had its own open air stage where some of the bands also played.

At 3pm on Friday things kicked off at the Rattenfängerhalle with Austrian band Serenity, a band who had previously supported Dio which seemed a good sign. They played melodic metal fronted by two vocalists - one male and one female - and were absolutely brilliant. Their music had colour, energy and interesting lyrics (in English). If the festival is using a band this good to open at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, what would the rest of it be like?

After buying a Serenity CD from their merch stall ,we wandered over to the Schiff for WaldKauz, a German folk band. The Autumn Moon website had provided links to YouTube previews of most of the bands, including Waldkauz. They looked okay on YouTube but not that exciting. Live they were far better, although folk in a foreign language has its limitations. Later they also played on the outdoor market stage, which actually suited them better, I thought, than the slightly cramped Schiff.

After that we had a choice: stay on the Schiff for Ye Banished Privateers, or pop across to Sumpfblume to see electro-pop-rock band Tüsn. We chose the latter. Tüsn were basically okay but incredibly pretentious. Fortunately we knew Ye Banished Privateers would be on later in the Rattenfängerhalle.

A bite to eat then back to the boat for Tibetrea: pagan folk with medieval instruments and female harmonies. Actually much better live than their YouTube videos had suggested. Good fun but not as exciting as some of the other folk bands we saw.

Then across to the Rattenfängerhalle for Megahertz: rock with a very deep male singer. Slightly weird but a bit too Alice Cooper for my taste.

I'm flagging by then, to say the least, but the boat had seats, if you didn't mind being a bit far back from the action. So back to the Schiff again for Dunkelschön's take on folk rock. As the name implies they mixed dark and light, with some lovely melodic songs interspersed with some much heavier and rockier tracks. Enjoyable.

Back again to the Rattenfängerhalle for Omnia: more pagan folk, this time from Bohemia. Interestingly their style of folk is quite eclectic and there was a good reggae beat going on at times. Enjoyable but, in spite of some interesting touches, in the end they became a bit repetitive.

We stayed put for the Friday night headline act: Deine Lakaien. Male voice over keyboards mostly; the YouTube video had sounded good but live I found them dull. That said, the hall was packed with people who were having a great time, so it has to be a matter of taste.

We popped over instead to the Sumpfblume to listen to Euzen who gave, I felt, the worst performance we saw that day. They play a kind of female-fronted indie pop. They had sound issues at the beginning; but even after they resolved these initial difficulties their sound remained unbalanced, too loud and frankly rather grim.

The Sumpfblume complex includes a cafeteria so we retreated there for a mysterious snack which turned out to be a kind of extra-thick pancake. Good sustenance for midnight after a couple of disappointing bands.

After Deine Lakaien finished Ye Banished Privateers set up in the middle of the audience area to play some really enjoyable pirate rock. I quite fancied seeing Trollfest, whose video shows them as basically playing bonkers rock/metal (click on the link above to see what I mean), but by then it was half-one in the morning and we were shattered, so we decided to quit while we were on a high from the Privateers.

So, day 1. Ten bands: six decent to good, two that we didn't enjoy, and two really excellent, in very different ways. Not bad for day one of a festival where we didn't know any of the bands before we booked. Oh, and some really interesting and very tasty food along the way.

Readipop: Thanks and Praise

I keep forgetting just how good some of Readipop's bands are. Fortunately I got a reminder today at the Caversham Festival, over in Christchurch Meadows.

Less fortunately, there was the usual problem of multiple stages meaning that some of the best-sounding bands overlapped, so I missed a lot. Nevertheless, I heard some excellent music, and discovered some bands to keep an eye out for.

The first band I came across, on the Festival Stage, was Area 52. Sadly I arrived at the end of the set, so I only heard one song, but they were impressively together, full of energy, and exciting. I was able to pick up their CD afterwards, which is a good listen.

Over at the Indian Marquee, I heard part of Military Arcade's set: decent pop-punk, but not really my cup of tea, followed by Unorfadox playing (fairly orthodox, I felt) classic rock.

I'm not really a big fan of reggae - I find the rhythm section tends to be a little monotonous, leaving all the creativity to vocals and lead guitar. However, The Majestic really were (majestic, that is). Excellent music, impressive stage presence (it's no surprise to find that leader singer Faada Ras has been performing live since the eighties), and a positive, uplifting message meant that the sizeable crowd had a good time - especially all the youngsters dancing at the front.

Watching the end of The Majestic's set meant I missed most of Jakabo's :( Zepellinesque rock with excellent guitar and a female vocalist (the best Zeppelin-style singers tend to be female, I find ... except the young Robert Plant, of course), the end of their set was a full of energy and audience interaction. I just wish they'd been on half-an-hour later.

Caversham Festival was heaving by late afternoon, which has to be good for the festival's prospects. If you didn't make it today, the festival continues tomorrow down at Christchurch Meadow. As well as music, there are loads of miscellaneous stalls, comedy, drama, weird boats followed by monsters, and lots of food. Well worth a visit.

One of the odd things I find with good live music in a relaxed setting is that you get a small insight into peoples' stories, through their interactions. Just glimpses of story without beginning or ending - totally unlike books and films - simply brief flashes of lives. A chance to hope and pray for God to touch, bringing his expansiveness: an experience of life lived more fully. What could be better, on this sunny summer afternoon.

Grace and peace to you.

Harvey Andrews - Glad To Be Grey

 

Another weekend, another concert ... and another long drive and another late night. I wonder why this CFS flare-up is taking so long to clear! Yesterday was Within Temptation and Delain at Wembley - booked ages ago and postponed from January, so not really to be helped. Last Saturday was Harvey Andrews at Portishead.

Harvey Andrews is a singer-songwriter who was a major influence on my teenage self. I had a friend who played the guitar and had Andrews' Writer Of Songs album on constant repeat as he gradually learnt the guitar accompaniment, for what seemed like months. Angry songs, happy songs, sad songs: songs that told stories, often songs that took an unusual point of view.

There's a song about one of the students shot at Ohio Kent State University by the local national guard; a song about a British soldier in Ireland (see the link); a song about an early morning 'knock on the door' in any of the many totalitarian countries which go in for that sort of thing; a song about a bitter and angry gossip, questioning how she got that way (see the video at the bottom of the page); a song about a teacher who put his hand on a young girl's knee.

As I say, Harvey Andrews was a major influence; he retired a few years back, and now only does the occasional charity concert in the area he lives, around Shrewsbury. So for him to be as far south as Portishead is an unmissable treat (actually he'd been in Thame the previous weekend, but even I'm not that daft).

These charity concerts, under the banner Glad To Be Grey, are advertised as  “A celebration of maturity, with songs, stories, humour (and the occasional rant)”, which is an accurate enough description. Harvey Andrews gigs always included a fair amount of chat and stories mixed in with the songs (see the video at the top for a typical example). Now there is a bit more reminiscence, and a couple of stories from his autobiography replace a couple of songs, but he remains consummately entertaining and a fantastic singer (the very first song, I thought his voice did show slight signs of age, but after that it warmed up and was as good as ever).

At Portishead he sang a mixture of songs old and new, told stories, and played his guitar. The sound was good, and the atmosphere brilliant. A lot of people there had never heard of him before (they were there for the fund-raiser) but I think everyone enjoyed themselves enormously, singing along with the chorus songs, listening to the music, joining in the nostalgia (it was a church-organised event, so the average age was older than me), and laughing at his humour. Harvey and his wife, Wendy, were friendly and approachable as ever after the show, and I was able to pick up a fresh copy of Writer Of Songs to replace the old vinyl one I cleared out when we moved house.

All in all an excellent gig, long may he continue.

Unfortunate Timing I

I'm not quite sure what I did, but somehow I mangled my back the weekend before last, leaving me unable to drive for part of last week. That was unfortunate timing, as friends were moving house this weekend, and had asked for help on Saturday, including with the driving. Luckily the back was less bad by then, especially after a hot bath, and I coped. I even managed to mostly resist helping carry stuff ... mostly.

They had someone else to drive on Sunday, which was useful as we had tickets to a concert in Brighton that evening, quite a long drive away, to see The Dirty Youth opening for Heaven's Basement. Unfortunately, in a piece of bad timing for all concerned, that driver's wife fell ill after his first run, so I got the call early Sunday afternoon. Just one more run needed to transport the last few bits and pieces, then get the van back to Berkshire Van Hire (although the dirty great Luton was a scary beast to drive, it was a nice - and surprisingly comfortable - piece of kit). "The last few bits and pieces" - except they had managed to forget to check a room that morning, so it was the last few bits and pieces, plus a fair bit of furniture, plus all the other stuff that goes with being "90% complete".

So we got the van back quite a lot later than I'd hoped, and I was quickly picked up by BlackLin and BlackSar in our car, and set straight off for Brighton, with just about time to get there for the start of the show. But not enough time to go via home, so not enough time for me to persuade the PC to print off the map of Central Brighton which I had found. So we depended on a print-out of directions from the RAC route finder. Which had Brighton Pier a mile down the road from where Brighton Pier actually is. Which is a tad inconvenient since BlackLin didn't have the postcode of The Haunt, which was the venue, but she did know that I'd said it was just opposite Brighton Pier.

That meant we made good time into Brighton, but still ended up getting to the venue late. Which was unfortunate timing when it was the opening act we really wanted to see. We managed to see a song and a half of The Dirty Youth: the sound was really good (this time), the venue was pleasantly busy, the band were brilliant ... and we got to see them for a song and a half!

The second support act were Glamour Of The Kill, a band from Yorkshire. Wikipedia describes them as 'post-hardcore'; I'd call them generic 21st-century pop-punk. They are like all the least interesting tracks on Kerrang, whizzed up in a blender and poured out, lukewarm. This Yorkshire band sings its own songs with an American accent - how's that for artistic integrity! What really got me, though, was the drumming. Generally I like hard working drummers, and he was working hard. He was also drumming absolutely flat, on the blandest possible beat - no push, no pull, no interesting offbeats, nothing creative at all: one two three four wibbly bit wibbly bit one two three four and so on. I really didn't enjoy Glamour Of The Kill.

Headliners were Heaven's Basement. They were much more convincing: for a start they had genuine stage presence - you could tell they were the headliners. They also played their brand of modern heavy rock with energy and skill (and proper drumming). I genuinely enjoyed their set, but there was no doubt they were dinosaurs: from the posey guitarist to the "if God invited me to Heaven I'd choose Hell' woffle (Dio did it far better decades ago) to the acoustic ballad with a heavy finale, they were basically reworking ideas from the Classic Rock era, just heavier ... nothing really new. One entertaining moment was when the lead singer went off to allow the posey guitarist to sing lead on a song: the sense of presence just vanished; for all his posing he had the stage charisma of a damp towel dropped by a supermodel. Although, to be fair, he was good on guitar. At the end of their set there was no real enthusiasm from the crowd for an encore, but they gave us one anyway, as the audience slowly trickled away ... including us.

I'd say Heaven's Basement were a decent band, but anachronisms - out of time.

Takedown Festival 2014

If you're going to a day-long rock festival, it's a really bad idea to be exhausted before you even start. That's the mistake our daughter and I made before Takedown 2014 yesterday, and it did mean we ended missing quite a lot, just trying to recoup our energies.

Takedown is a one-day festival, hosted by Southampton University's Student Union, featuring mostly up-and-coming rock bands. It showcased an amazing number of young bands over the afternoon and evening (click the graphic above to see the programme), for a very reasonable price.

Two bands we particularly wanted to see were The Dirty Youth - who we had never seen before, although I did help to crowd-fund the DVD of their last tour - and Dendera, who are a local Southampton band - we have seen them before a few times, but they say they are working on new material, which we were keen to see.

If you look at the programme you can see that we had a problem: The Dirty Youth were due to finish at 5:50, whilst Dendera were to start - on a different stage - at 5:45. Then The Dirty Youth hit technical problems during their sound check, so they were at least ten minutes late starting. In spite of sound problems, though, it was a really good set, which we got to see from right in front of the stage.

After the gig, BlackLin and BlackSar got their picture taken with Danni, which they were really chuffed about. We gave up on Dendera and went to the cafe, where we got to talking with some of the Dirty Youth stage-crew, and later got some posters signed by two more members of the band (Phil & Leon). So that side of the festival was really good. We'll just have to look out for the next local Dendera gig and see them there instead.

In the meantime we also got to see some bands we'd either never heard of or never seen live before. Western Sand were one I'd never heard of, although they have some decent YouTube clips so we had a look shortly after we arrived. I was very impressed: they sounded to me like a kind of 21st Century reboot of Bon Jovi; heavier and less pop. One to keep an eye out for, I think.

BlackSar was looking forward to seeing Fearless Vampire Killers, but they turned out to be a disappointment. Skarlett Riot were decent, although as another female-fronted rock band playing just before The Dirty Youth they suffered in comparison. Ghouls were fun - basically heavy Ska - although I'd had enough by the end of their set. Kids In Glass Houses were another band BlackSar had heard on TV ... and another disappointment - although by then, to be honest, we were so tired they'd have had to be really good to keep our attention. We skipped the two headline bands and went home early, shattered.

Food was poor, organisation seemed decent, the range of bands was excellent (within their target genres), and we heard some good music, so overall a very good day. Now we're all wrecked, but it was worth it.

"Rise Up, join the revolution"

Caversham Festival 2012

It's funny how being even a very tiny part of an event gives one a much greater feeling of interest and involvement. I was a programme-seller at one of the festival entrances - the festival itself was free, but there was a £1 programme, including a CD featuring the artists - and it was fascinating to see that small glimpse of the organised chaos that lies behind the scenes.

Caversham Festival 2012 was organised by Readipop - a music and arts charity based in Reading - with support from Churches Together in Caversham (CTC), as well as the many Caversham traders and small businesses who set out their stalls, literally, as part of the event. There was lots of music from local bands; the churches ran sports-themed activities, plus a couple of ginormous inflatable bouncy-castle-type-thingies, and started the festival with an open air service; and the stalls either sold stuff or sought to get people involved in their activities. It all felt very much a Caversham community event. I don't know how many people turned up - between showers and Murray in the Wimbledon final - but there seemed to me to be a real bustle about the place.

Unfortunately (in an entertaining way) when the churches set up a quiet tent in their area, presumably to give people a chance to chill out away from that bustle, they put it right next to the children's activity/sports area. It was the noisiest 'quiet tent' I have ever seen.

Since all the bands were local (apart from one import from far-flung Bristol) their quality was very much an unknown (apart from Amy's Ghost). On the other hand, with three different stages there was a good choice. Unfortunately I was programme-selling when Nicki Rogers played her set - I'm told she was very good; we saw her many years ago when she was just starting out and she was impressive then.

After I finished my stint, and had wandered past a couple of acts that really didn't appeal, I came across Private Jet on the Main Stage. Very Zeppelin-esque rock (my daughter hated the singer's seventies-style open sequinned top) played extremely well. Definitely a band I'll be looking out for in the future - I've 'liked' them on Facebook so hopefully I'll be notified of upcoming local gigs.

After Private Jets finished I wandered over to the Festival Stage to catch the end of the Subverts' set. The band were described as 'pop rock' so my expectations were low; it was a pleasant surprise to find really lively, well-performed, indie-style rock music. To be fair, they did play catchy tunes with lots of energy, so 'pop rock' really is a decent description - it's not their fault that the label is also applied to inferior bands.

Then I was back to the Main Stage for Amy's Ghost. Lots of percussion, keyboards and cellos combine with Amy Barton's distinctive vocal style and beautifully-crafted songs to give a remarkable and enjoyable performance which I can't even begin to pigeon-hole.Your best bet is to click on the video at the top of this post to see a slightly out-of-date glimpse of them live. Very entertaining, the show even came with its own post-modern, deconstructionist moment when the keyboard/percussionist threw a drum off the stage and moved over to one side before carrying on giving it welly.

By this point I was getting very tired, so I wandered around a bit trying to find my teenage daughter, whilst enjoying Dead Maids' music coming from the Festival Stage and what I assume, from the timing, was Dolly and the Clothes Pegs on the Floating Stage. I finally found her in the littley's play area, sitting on a dragon. She wanted to stay chatting so I headed home, thoroughly knackered but having had a good day.

Delain At HMV Institute Birmingham

I got back home in the early hours of that Sunday morning utterly exhausted. My neck was tender - and promising to feel much, much worse in the morning - my hands were sore and my feet hurt, my voice was giving up and my ears were ringing: it had been a fantastic evening!

Delain were headlining at the HMV Institute in Birmingham, supported by Trillium and Halcyon Way, back on the 12th May. It was supposed to be three of us going, but my wife had a badly injured knee so it was just my daughter and myself making the long trek up the M40 - it would have been nice to have gone by train, but there was no way of getting back after ten pm so car it had to be.

After a lot of messing about finding a car park that stayed open late enough, and a long queue, we finally got in about half way through Halcyon Way's set. This was very loud thrashy metal. Their singer, Steve Braun, had a really good voice, but I felt the band as a whole simply didn't rock. Maybe they were just having a bad night, but they didn't seem to be together that Saturday. Vocalist and drummer were mostly together most of the time, but the bass and guitar players just seemed to be thrashing away in their own individual time zones. Disappointing.

Trillium were up next. I hadn't heard of them before, and didn't really have great expectations, so they were a very happy surprise. Amanda Somerville is a classic operatic metal soprano with an amazing voice, and the band behind her were very together, and very heavy, but with plenty of colour and dynamics. For a supporting band they also had a tremendous stage presence, and their energy filled the room (although, to be fair, the HMV Institute isn't actually that big). I would imagine that 'back home', in the US, Somerville/Trillium headline their own tours.

Trillium were great, but Delain were utterly unbelievable. Trillium's energy filled the room; Delain radiated presence and energy to fill a far larger venue and it was picked up and reflected back by the crowd, which inspired the band, who generated more energy, and so on. It was like being inside a kind of acoustic laser cavity, overwhelmed with such coherent energy and power.

They played songs from their two released albums, as well as from We Are The Others which is due out in early June. One of the new songs is Get The Devil Out of Me, which is a good illustration of their style that you can hear by clicking the YouTube thingie above.

On their records Delain tend to be quite song-focussed: majoring on words and tune ... still quite heavy and quite rocky, but that side is a little less to the fore. Live, they are solid, high-energy metal.

The songs are still very strong, so there's no tendency to become 'samey', as can happen at heavy rock concerts; also Charlotte Wessels has such a strong voice that the vocals don't get drowned out. The result is that songs on the album where I'd thought, "I bet that would be amazing live" absolutely are amazing live, but so are other songs where I'd just thought, "That's a nice song". Quiet songs were played with quiet power, loud heavy songs with explosive power, all interweaved with the colour and melodic interest which makes symphonic metal such a worthwhile artform.

The UK leg of Delain's 2012 tour is over now, but if you should get an opportunity to see them in the future I highly recommend them. With musical energy, intensity and authenticity they put on an amazing show: brilliant!

The Prince Of Wales In Caversham

I've mentioned the PoW several times in previous posts, but I thought it was worth its own ramble today.

Something I only realised recently is that the Prince of Wales is actually part of a small chain of pubs - it seems the same team also run the Fisherman's Cottage and the Rising Sun. It's a very long time since I last went to either of those, but my memory of the Fisherman's Cottage is that it is next to the Kennet, over in Newtown, and seemed mostly focussed on the lunchtime office workers' trade, whilst the Rising Sun is an edge-of-town-centre pub which (back then) had a bit of an unfriendly reputation. As you can probably tell from the links I've put in, there's not much information on the web about either, although it seems that the Rising Sun are also featuring weekly live music and are starting to do food. Clearly the team responsible for the three pubs are not really into posting much info on the internet. Still, I reckon they've done a good job on the Prince, so if you live near either of the other two, they have to be worth a visit.

Like many pubs these days, the Prince has a fairly sizeable and pleasant outdoor area, to cater for smokers and anyone who fancies getting out of the main building and breathing lovely vehicle fumes from Prospect Street. A couple of Fridays ago I turned up, on my bike, to find the outdoor section completely full. Indoors it was like a Tokyo bullet train - absolutely packed. The reason was a local band showcase, with four local bands all playing on the same evening. I watched about half a set from one band, who were excellent, but claustrophobia took over in the interval and I squeezed my way out and left. Maybe they should do fewer local bands at once but more often?

Tonight they had The Generaters playing - to a busy but (thankfully) not completely packed audience - it's the first gig in a while where I've felt motivated to stay to the very end (life's a bit complicated and very tiring recently). They weren't perfect by any means, but were very enjoyable. Basically they play covers in and around the borderland between rock and funk. At times they really hit the groove and were brilliant, but they kept falling back out again. There was a tension between a younger singer and bass player, with an older guitarist and drummer, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. The lowlight of the set was a version of Queen's We Will Rock You, where the guitarist just went AWOL  (try to imagine the song without the lead guitar parts, and you'll see why it didn't work), followed by what I assume was AC/DC's Highway To Hell, completely testosterone-free. The main highlight was the encore, something about 'burning your sex'(?), where the guitarist and bass player swapped instruments and the singer finally persuaded several men to come up and 'dance'; but an honourable mention has to go to a really good cover of Bowie's Spiders From Mars during the first session.

I did plan to insert a photo of The Generators from a previous visit to the Prince into this post, but their Flickr albums block copying, so I can't.

Somewhat ironically, I seem to be visiting the Prince of Wales more often since we moved further away from it - as well as the Saturday night live bands (and occasionally Friday too) they also do excellent Thai food, so the two of us sometimes pop over for that also (the kids aren't keen on Thai, which is a bit of a pain, but they are old enough to be left to their own devices from time to time). The beer is more expensive, but far better kept, than the horrible big-chain pub down the road, and it is a genuine, friendly, community pub, which has to be good news.

PS: I meant to mention that on the 'Local Bands' night I dropped my coin purse somewhere in the PoW. When I popped around next day in the slight hope someone might have found it, there it was behind the bar waiting for me. As I said, a proper community pub.

The Muggs At The Prince Of Wales

I wonder if they have two 'g's in their name because the band consists of two guitarists and a drum machine? Anyway, they were playing last night at a fairly quiet Prince of Wales, in Caversham; BlackLin and I went along and had a good time.

The Muggs played what you might term 'light rock' - ranging from Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison, to Coldplay and Travis, via the Eagles and 70's Fleetwood Mac. Not as exciting (for me) as heavy rock, but when I'm there with good company still very enjoyable. They combined an electric guitar with a twelve string, which worked well with this style of music, and their singer was in good voice. The drum machine was only used on some tracks, and wasn't at all intrusive (unusually). As often happens, the band warmed up as the evening went on (or maybe the audience just had more to drink), so by the end there were people up dancing, and I think all of us were tapping our feet.

It was interesting that last night felt like a quiet night at the PoW - there was a reasonable clientele really, but I have become used to Saturday night being busier. But it was nothing like fifteen months ago when the new landlords started doing live music and some evenings there was a brilliant band but hardly anyone there to enjoy it (for instance). If I'd wanted packed I should have gone Friday evening, apparently: the England/Wales game was on the big-screen TV, followed by a young local band, and the pub was heaving. It's really encouraging that such an excellent local community pub is doing well - particularly one that does such good beer and Thai food.

Incidentally, if you happen to have a website link for The Muggs, please let me know and I'll link them, with a picture if there's one available. Google didn't help me because 'The Muggs' seems to be an immensely popular band name.