The Dawn Chorus / The Retrospective Soundtrack Players - Blogging all over the World

Southampton Unit 22
Sunday 18th February 2007

The Dawn Chorus
The Light Divided
Jon Walbrin
Introducing: Emergency Music

A lesson in how not to put a bill together. Throw a melodic indie band, a nu metal band, a loop pedal bothering noise artist and a jazz-funk group together and what do you get? 4 lots of 25 mates who only come to watch one band and then leave. There really was no common thread beween any of these bands whatsoever.

I:EM

I quite liked some of their moments, they were certainly very well oiled for a newish band. I think there was a slight over-emphasis on musicianship over songcraft, but they can't have been too bad since I usually find any sort of jazz/funk hybrid to be the devil's music. On a sourer note though, I:EM, there is nothing cool about slagging off the headliners of a gig before you've even played the gig. Bitching about other bands to your mates is very uncool, and won't get you too far.

Jon Walbrin

We actually reccomended him for a slot so it's a shame that his set was a bit of a disappointment. I hope he won't mind me saying that too much. He admitted himself that he was out of practice having not played for 5 months, and his one-man loop pedal tricks just didn't seem to come off, especially infront of a far from friendly audience. Hopefully i'll see him play better again in the future.

The Light Divided

Could have brilliant, could have been terrible, I will probably never know since I have absolutely zero appreciation or understanding of nu-metal. What on earth they were doing on our bill I will never understand. It would have been much better for themselves and us if we were on an indie bill and thay were on a metal bill. Oh well, thats Joiners promotions for you.

Us

It was very nice to get back to playing, we were only a touch rusty. The biggest problem was Neil showing off infront of his mates and consequently buggering up several guitar lines. But we did at least get to play a decent length set and we're starting to get properly tight with Pauly B now so roll on Wednesday.

x