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

Camden Enterprise, London
Sunday June 15th 2008

Alex from the Retards (?!)
Winners
The Dawn Chorus
The Steve Bland Assembly
The Boicotts

My favourite type of venue - pokey, bit smelly, easy to fill with a few bodies. Large asian crowd, presumably because of the promoter Taka - legend - and the first band on The Boicotts, who may well have been great, but one of the guitarists' amps was so loud that you LITERALLY COULDN'T HEAR ANYTHING ELSE. The soundman must have been elsewhere. It was so loud that we had to go out of the room.

First time I'd seen the SBA with full line-up, and they were shambolic at times but mostly excellent. Great new song called 'Streetlight Lullaby' perhaps - I'm a sucker for a muted trumpet. Some awesome foot stamping action too.

Winners were like a cross between The Darkness and Razorlight - insanely, unapologetically catchy, they even had a key change towards the end of one song. Though I wasn't entirely happy with the way that they sat downstairs with their mates til their stage time, then sodded off with their kit afterwards.

That should've been the end of the night, but Alex from the Retards - really - did an aoustic set. God knows who he was or where he came from, but the less said about his songs the better. If I say that he closed with a cover of 'That's Entertainment' that should probably be enough. We couln't even leave because our kit was still on the stage.