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

Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th May 2008

Weymouth Harbour Festival
with loads of bands

Cross Kings, King's Cross, London
Lester Clayton
The Dawn Chorus
Surprise!
Charlene Soraia
David Goo
Roxy Rawson
You + Me
Sophie Yau
Brigata Sinfonica
The Steve Bland Assembly
Niall Spooner-Harvey
Wayne the Piano Man

Absolutely fantastic weekend. Drove down to Weymouth on Saturday morning with only a few hours of grim tarffic to contend with. Played some beach cricket despite gale force winds blowing sand into everyone's eyes. I'm still scrubbing sand out of my pores a few days on. Watched Hull get into the Premiership with fat builder Dean Windass and his wobbly tits doing the damage. Went on a pub crawl which ended up in a goth pub with Paul B hustling beers off some dodgy bloke with a droopy pocket at pool.

Weymouth Festival - thought it was going to be a shocker as we were scheduled to play at 11.45am and theday before it had tipped it down. As it turned out we didn't play til about 1.30pm (without bitching - piss up, brewery, etc). Then when were line-checking the PA blew up. Smoke and everything. Neil was already in the middle of throwing a rock star strop at this point - they wouldn't let him use his amp - and we all thought it was going to be gig cancelled. But they got it sorted, we eventually played and managed to win over an initially hostile crowd. By the time we finished the sun was shining and we had a big crowd who seemed to be lapping it up. Sold loads of albums and I was even asked to sign them! Quite hilarious really.

Cross Kings - lush food, chilled atmosphere, friendly hosts and a brilliant bill. Roxy Rawson sounded like Regina Spektor, which is always going to go down well with me. David Goo is a great performer who deserves to go further. Charlene Soraia was an incredible guitarist with a beautiful voice. And Surprise were great fun - bouncy pop with clever lyrics, perfect for a Sunday early evening. I must also mention Niall-Spooner Harvey, who is either completely insane or a poetic genius. Or both. Have a look at www.myspace.com/spoonpoetry. I can't really remember if we played well or badly but it was an ace weekend.