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

Southsea Fest @ The King's Theatre, Portsmouth
Saturday 15th September 2012

Tom Williams and The Boat
The B of the Bang
The Dawn Chorus
+ others

Well, this was it. I thought I'd always be in the DC until I was 60 and we'd be touring to our hardcore supporters who were loyally buying the records after all those years... I thought we'd reach out to people who felt like us and wanted to be part of what we did... but as you get older you realise that the world's constant thirst for 'the new' means that if you don't pull together some kind of following from your first, maybe second album, then it will be downhill from there, and eventually you will stop enjoying it as much. No art can exist in a vacuum, and as great fun as it looks to be in Arcade Fire, it wouldn't be quite as much fun playing in Arcade Fire to 8 people at the Liverpool Leaf Tea Bar. So, with heavy heart, this was our final show.



But what a show, and what a day. I was very very drunk on cheap cava and sloe gin by the mid-afternoon but it was a beautiful final hour on stage with my best friends. So what if no-one ever heard of us? That's what happens to 99.9% of all bands. My children will never have heard of the Cribs, and they have a greatest hits out and got the lifetime achievement award at the the NME awards, so what difference does it make how big we were? I got to spend a few thousand hours brilliant time with my best friends, and maybe make a few decent tunes that meant something to people along the way. Cheers!