Prattle

Dot to Dot
m posted in General moans, Music on May 27th, 2008

So, finally we made it to the Dot to Dot festival, this year. This is a festival that’s been going on in Nottingham and Bristol for years, and involves bands playing at local gig venues over two days. Generally, they’re not very big bands, meaning the price of the tickets can be kept extremely reasonable (£30 for two days). The problem is, the low budget seems to result in low commitment from some of the people involved. On the Sunday, two schedule changes during the day were posted up at some of the venues. The first change saw two of the three bands I really wanted to see being cancelled all together. Little Ones and Team Waterpolo both failed to turn up, with no explanation to the increasingly annoyed punters.

Still, we used the amusingly empty inter-venue bus service to get round town, and managed to see some excellent gigs. Here’s who we saw, in chronological order;

Saturday

Ida Maria at the Trinity - I’d been listening to some of Ida Maria’s album in the days leading up to the festival, and was quite excited about seeing her play. Despite the ridiculously early hour (awful scheduling, putting them at 4:45), the band went down well and played all of the best tracks on the album. By the end, they seemed to have won some new fans, as well as impressing some existing ones. The band were a bit thrown by playing at such an early hour, but they got into it eventually. Ida Maria herself is charismatic and rather attractive, with the occasional hint of Brody Dalle’s snarl. Worth checking out next time they come around.

Frank Turner at the Academy - I’d never heard of him, but he was extremely good. The songs are a bit bland, but he had a remarkable and elastic vocal range, and considerable energy. Despite the Academy clearly not giving him use of the full P.A. his frequently intelligent and interesting lyrics cut through the echoes and crowd-chatter. Plenty of people seemed to know exactly who he was, and were singing along to his songs. Presumably they were Million Dead (his former band) fans. Made me feel a bit weird, seeing as most bands/artists at least appear on my radar at some point. Still, now I know.

Oppenheimer at the Fleece - Just made it in time for the start of their set, having stayed a little too long for frank Turner. Having been greatly impressed with one of their songs, I’d been a little underwhelmed by the rest of their forthcoming album. But seeing this Ulster duo in front of me, those previously middling album tracks came to life. With the help of loads of sequencing/backing tracks, a vocoder and their handful of live instruments, they made a luscious, full sound. The singer/drummer looked a bit like Moby, hidden behind a microphone and a drum kit, but he sounded more like Ben Gibbard in Postal Service mode. Really enjoyed their poppy, electronicky set, and would like to see them again, if they play somewhere with a P.A. as good as the Fleece’s. Possibly my favourite show of the weekend. At least until the early hours of Monday…

Two Gallants at Trinity - Hmm. They played their best song first. After that, they played two crap ones, and their lack of soundcheck showed up in the dirgey, unbalanced racket that they continued to make. We couldn’t take any more, so buggered off.

Nick Harrison at the Fleece - With some time to kill due to the Two Gallants disappointment, we thought we’d stop off and catch this bloke. Turned out that he and his band were extremely proficient musicians, but had quite patchy material. It tended to lean a bit too heavily towards the Police and, even more worryingly, Sting’s solo material. Still, I won £68 on the fruit machine, so I marked this as a good gig.

It was at this point that the first hiccups really set in. We decided to forgo Spiritualized, as their set was due to be 90 minutes, and we wanted to be somewhere else after an hour. Three of us had seen them before, and we all agreed that we’d rather see a whole set than a half. So we decided to go over to the Louisiana to see Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit. Except, when we got to the Louie, it was absolutely rammed. We were refused entry, so had to find something to do while waiting for Santogold. Decided to call it quits and head for the Thekla, where Santogold was due on in an hour, to make sure we could get in. Just as well, as later reports suggested that people were queuing for ages outside, and many people missed Santogold entirely. While we waited, we heard Burkaka Som Sistema, who were bloody awful.

Santogold at Thekla - We were there for the single, really. That and her supporting dancers, who looked amusing. As expected, it was a karaoke set, featuring a backing tape, whateverhernameisbecauseiassumeit’snotsantogold, and her two supporting dance drones. Thing is, their statuesque stillness and very occasional movements weren’t sufficiently synchronised to be fully effective. They were a bit of a mess. Anyway, she was pretty good, and I suppose I didn’t not enjoy the other songs we stayed for. The single was done pretty well, and we decided to clear off shortly after. Passed massive queues on our way out, so were glad we managed to get there early, even if we missed Johnny Flynn and his folky acousticness.

Glasvegas at Fiddlers - After Santogold, we had to walk a reasonable distance to Fiddlers, to see everyone’s current favourite merchants of doom and Jesus & Mary Chain gloom, Glasvegas. They were pretty good, but really sounded extreeeeeeeemely like Jesus & Mary Chain. Oh, maybe they’re sounding a bit like My Bloody Valentine now…no, it’s the bits of J&MC that sound like MBV. And the singer looked like Billy Jo Armstrong from a distance, which is very off-putting when they’re trying to be so earnest. Also, we were fairly drunk at this point, so found it funnier than necessary. While we were in there, two blokes were stabbed outside a nearby pub, leaving one of them dead and the other hospitalised.

Sunday

This is where it really went wrong. We were planning on starting with the very promising Team Waterpolo. But when we got to the venue, they’d been removed from the schedule. Also removed were the Little Ones, who were the main reason we’d bought the tickets. Very very annoyed, at this point. We stayed for a bit of Light of Words but they were pretty drab, and we were too annoyed to give them a chance. Off we went, deciding to ignore everyone else who was playing, and get some food instead. Fittingly, the food was crap too. After the food, we headed off to Bedminster, to see…

Ruby Suns at Fiddlers - This was odd. They took an age to set up their assortment of instruments, and quite slowly got going. It was still light, and the crowd didn’t know what to make of them. The fact is, they weren’t very good. I wanted them to be good, but they weren’t. Lots of manic drumming, but barely distinguishable tunes and not enough consistency to allow you to get into it. They took it all pretty seriously, but didn’t like the crowd’s indifference. Eventually, they brought it to a close a song early, and cleared off. When they announced this, there was a very loud and sarcastic shout of Aaaaawwwwww… from the blokes in front of us. I thought they were rude at the time but, in retrospect, it was justified.

Time for something else to go wrong. Sort of. Two of us went to the Academy to wait for Dirty Pretty Things, and two went to the Fleece to see Dan Deacon. But when we got to the Fleece, they’d changed the schedule again. Dan Deacon moved from 8:30 at the fleece to 00:30 at Thekla. Great. Now we might not be able to get in to see Dirty Pretty Things (wouldn’t have been bothered, if we could’ve seen Deacon, who I would rather see). So we hot-footed it across town, heading for the academy. Got there in plenty of time, and managed to capture a good spot in Bristol’s worst venue.

Dirty Pretty Things at the Academy - Deeply unmoved by their album, I was still reasonably curious to see what they were like. The Academy P.A. was fully turned on, and they’d clearly got extra dry ice machines in. Eventually, DPT came on stage to great applause, and manfully trudged through their mediocre set of songs. A couple of good ones in there, but nothing special. They made a nice sound, and they’re good musicians, but too many forgettable tunes meant for a fairly unsatisfying hour. The bloke next to me drunkenly barked “Now THAT’s what I call a GREAT band”. I had to ask him to repeat himself, and responded with something like “Well, they’re alright, I suppose”. And that’s an accurate review, I think.

Due to further “rescheduling”, the next two bands we considered seeing (Alphabeat and Infadels) were cancelled. So, in anticipation of Dan Deacon, we headed over to Thekla early. After quite a wait, we went through to the balcony to see…

Heartbreak at Thekla - Billed as “Rimini Disco revival”, two very unlikely blokes came out on stage. One looked like Robert Webb, and worked the keyboards. The other looked like…well, I don’t know. What was he trying to achieve? Anyway, their music was 80s Europop, and rather entertaining. What lifted it further was the singer’s dancing. It’s captured in the video below, at about 1m30s. Do watch. The camera may jump around occasionally, as I was shaking with laughter. I binned a couple of other clips, because they were all over the place, and you could hear me crying. I almost had to be held up when he was singing “You won’t see me sitting down” over and over, while doing his dance. Brilliant.

Dan Deacon at Thekla - This was a bit of a punt, I think. 00:30 on Monday morning, and we were a bit tired. The others weren’t overly keen to see him, but I’d really enjoyed Deacon’s album and thought he might be worth seeing. The album is difficult to pigeon-hole, but it’s got a sort of groove to it, and a lot of humour. It turned out that this was the performance of the weekend, even though very little of it was played live. Instead of setting up on stage, Deacon stuck his little table of gadgets onto the dancefloor, surrounding himself with a drunk and enthusiastic crowd. This became a problem at one point, but he took it in good humour.

As well as playing his tunes, he got the crowd to go over to one side of the boat (listing it quite dramatically) and then come back to the other side through human archways. He got everyone crouching down and waving their arms around, got us singing along to barely intelligible lyrics. And most entertainingly, he attempted to instigate a dance-off. This inevitably involved local gig celebrity Jeff “Big Jeff” Johns, who didn’t fully grasp the idea of the dance-off. He didn’t want to leave the limelight, so it eventually descended into chaos. But watching it from the balcony above, it was very entertaining. Deacon’s banter with troublesome crowd members, and his various games were very funny indeed, and hugely enjoyable. Fantastic gig. Even if it brings to mind kids’ discos and Black Lace records.

And then home. They were still queuing outside Thekla when we left. Apparently someone fell in the water, and was fortunate to be rescued by gig-goers, after the bouncers ignored them. I took photos of every band, which I’ll stick on flickr eventually. Also, some fairly dodgy video footage from my compact camera, which I’ve stuck together and uploaded to Youtube. So, please witness Ida Maria, Oppenheimer, Heartbreak and Dan Deacon;

Click to link or watch below;