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

Southampton Joiners
Thursday 31st May 2007

The Veils
The Dawn Chorus
Videosprint

I didn't see much of Videosprint as I was having major problems with our tickets. I long for the day when I don't have to go around counting tickets and collecting money before we play a set.

We had a bit of a shaky start, it was the first time we'd tried to start with 'I Can be Anything' and perhaps we should move it into the middle of the set for a little while. Otherwise things seemed to go pretty well, and the crowd were very receptive and incredibly quiet between songs, which was a welcome change from the boisterous Wedgewood Rooms a few weeks ago. The doorman/ticketman was very kind about our stuff, and compared us to the Beautiful South, which I took as a compliment of sorts.

I was really looking forward to seeing The Veils since I hadn't seen them for 3 or 4 years and I'm a big fan of both of their albums. So I'm sorry to say that they were a real letdown. Their singer came across as a real Prima Donna, knocking over his mic stands and repeatedly falling into the drum kit. He seemed to be deliberately spoiling their songs by not delivering the vocal properly, and my favourite song 'The Wild Son' was stopped after about a minute and not re-started. Their setlist had 12 songs and a 2 song encore, but they played 8 or 9 songs and then fucked off. They were rightly booed by the crowd when they didn't return for an encore. I found it disgraceful that they treated their fans that way, as far as I'm concerned if one person has paid to come and see you they deserve a performance. Hopefully it was a one-off, but I don't know if I'd ever risk seeing them again on the back of this shocking performance.

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