In The City

What a top weekend. Started Friday night watching Alice Russell, of legendary Tru Thoughts / Quantic Soul orchestra fame. Not strictly part of the ITC line up but watched her at the Big Chill in August and she was awesome so took the opportunity to watch her in a more intimate venue. She did not disappoint.

Then on to Dry Bar for some unsigned bands and to check out the room downstairs as that's where i was playing on the Saturday night. It's actually quite a decent venue which i was surprised by, it's not really where it's reputation is at.  Anyway, we stuck around there for a bit, checking on a couple of bands.

Saturday came so off round to me mates for some pre gig warm ups. Everything went smoothly so off to Dry Bar to load in. Then find out that due to bands overunning my slot has been put back to run through the rugby. I'm not a fan of rugby at all, but it seemed like the whole of Manchester had suddenly turned into Henley-on-Thames and magically been given public school boy accents. We finally get on stage at about 7.55, should have been 7.15, play a set that i was happy with until a spot of the old 'technical difficulties' left us having to cut a song out. I wouldn't mind but it was the one I'd dedicated to Tony Wilson, so it seemed a bit cheeky to fuck it up...

Had a really good reception considering so was chuffed with that - lots of 'nice-one's' and 'what's your myspace' etc...so again stayed on to check out some more bands. Now, I don't know if this is something particular to Manchester, but it seemed like every band sounded exactly the same. I can understand this going on for 2 - 3 bands, but we stayed for about 6 - 7 bands, and they all had the same ideas, which was boring as fuck... So we carried on boozing elsewhere. Got in about 5 in the morning then got up at about 12 to check more bands, but again everyone we saw sounded pretty much the same as the last one....pretty hedonistic weekend though...

Anyway - enough of my rant, if that's what I think then I guess A and R guys must get really hacked off with it, my point is that if it's meant to be a showcase then lets see a showcase, not 600 bands that sound the same.

I'll have some pictures and hopefully video to post soon so I'll put those up as soon as I can.

SILO