(The Friday, anyway)
The Gosport Festival has been running for a few years now, barring a hiccup a couple of years back when a council dispute led to the organiser throwing his toys out of the pram and abruptly cancelling all the booked acts. Shame. I was quite looking forward to seeing Showaddywaddy...Anyway, this year the festival was the usual mix of local acts and cheap & available headliners - Saturday through Monday were headed up by, in order: Doctor and The Medics, Junior and Glam City Rockers.
Friday though, was the day that interested me thanks to an interesting choice of headliner.
80s Metal band Girlschool.
But let's start with me arriving at the festival site in the first place. And thanks to losing track of time and managing to miss my bus I got there too late to see rockers Circle of Reason. Remiss of me, because what I heard on their site sounded worth a listen.
I just had time to grab a painfully expensive beer before Irish outfit Roving Crows ambled onstage.
The lineup is an unusual one. Drums, acoustic guitar, fiddle and...trumpet? Musically Roving Crows go in for Celtic folk and it was all pleasant enough but not exactly earth shattering. The singer did try and encourage the crowd to get up on their feet but the only ones taking him up on the offer were the cluster of young metal/alternative kids down the front. The resulting activity was part mosh-pit, part jig and enthusiastic in the extreme. The band finished with a cover of The Devil Went Down To Georgia, giving fiddle player Caitlin a chance to show off her chops.
I just had time to grab a painfully expensive beer before Irish outfit Roving Crows ambled onstage.
Another non-standard lineup for the next band. Local outfit Hoffenffeffer are at heart the sort of blues-rock trio you see playing the local every Monday night but added a bongo/conga player and a backing singer who I suspect may have been somebody's girlfriend.
Note the way the crowd has got significantly larger.
I was initially unimpressed but they won me over. For one song the frontman brought his daughter up to take over lead vocals, which was a nice touch.
The singer of The Dakotas took great delight in announcing that one newspaper had mistaken them for the 1960s outfit so you have to wonder if anybody else got a bit of a shock when the band trooped onstage. I'm fairly certain I have t-shirts older than these guys.
Anyway, the youngsters played an energetic set, heavy on radio-friendly rock covers - Green Day, The Stereophonics, Foo Fighters - and were the first band to really get people moving.
Anyway, the youngsters played an energetic set, heavy on radio-friendly rock covers - Green Day, The Stereophonics, Foo Fighters - and were the first band to really get people moving.
Memo to self. Buy new camera that isn't crap.
At the time I thought that they had the energy and talent to maybe get somewhere playing their own stuff and further reflection hasn't changed my mind. Give it a few years and we'll see.
Round about now is when things started to go a bit pear-shaped and the first of these was entirely self-inflicted. Having decided that the beer I'd just bought was not only overpriced but ghastly, I thought " Nobody is anywhere near me. Sod it" and dropped it.
And watched in horror as the beer sprayed about 5 feet across the grass, liberally dosing the shoes and lower skirt of the woman who'd been having a good festival up to now.
Her husband managed to resist the impulse to smack me one but did point out that said shoes were brand new. Oops. I apologised profusely and scuttled away before anybody had second thoughts on the whole "Smack the idiot" issue.
The last time I saw Girlschool was back in 1993. Given the location ( The Student Union at Stafford College), the timing (A wet weekday) and the prevailing musical climate (Checked shirts, downtuned guitars and moodiness) the turnout was predictably low. Despite that, the ladies put on a decent show and I was hoping for better things this time around.
But thanks to an unfortunate conjunction of events, things did not go according to plan.
But thanks to an unfortunate conjunction of events, things did not go according to plan.
The one photo I have of Girlschool that's remotely worth posting.
Everything else tends towards "Dark" or "Blurred"
It all started so well too. The siren intro tape led into old staple "Demolition Boys" and Kim and her team got ready to rock Gosport.
And then the sound and lights abruptly cut out.
While band and crew attempted to get everything working again, an unpleasant situation was developing in the front row. The security team took exception to the overexuberant antics of a young, impressively mohawked, punk lad and while things were quiet, a few words were had.
I have no idea what was said and, crucially what he said in reply, but next thing I knew,the youngster was being hauled out through the crowd with one arm bent behind his back and a forearm lodged firmly across his throat before being slung out of the closest exit.
I've never seen aggro at this festival before and truth be told, it was not fun to watch.
The rest of the teenage rock contingent hurried to join their mate while yellow-vested reinforcements gathered by the gate and for a while it looked like things might escalate.
So when Girlschool got the power going again, they now had a crowd that was subdued, missing most of its more enthusiastic members and more than a little alarmed at the way the security kept bobbing up from behind the barrier anytime somebody looked like they were enjoying themselves.
I'll give a respectful bow to the band at this point. They recovered quickly and got back up to full speed in short order, cranking out a selection of their better know songs plus a few newies that bear further investigation. Having three lead vocalists also gave them a melodic edge that they used to full advantage, while grinning the whole time. Meanwhile the underrated Denise Dufort kept things motoring at the back.
Problem was...
Everytime I looked around the audience was getting thinner and thinner. In retrospect, while Nazareth and The Kenney Jones Gang fared well in previous years, Girlschool were way too heavy for this festival and this crowd. The people who'd come to see Girlschool stayed until the finish while the casual crowd, out for a few beers and some music on a sunny day, sloped off home.
The shenanigans with the power and the security didn't really help either.
So to sum up, file under "That could have gone better"
While band and crew attempted to get everything working again, an unpleasant situation was developing in the front row. The security team took exception to the overexuberant antics of a young, impressively mohawked, punk lad and while things were quiet, a few words were had.
I have no idea what was said and, crucially what he said in reply, but next thing I knew,the youngster was being hauled out through the crowd with one arm bent behind his back and a forearm lodged firmly across his throat before being slung out of the closest exit.
I've never seen aggro at this festival before and truth be told, it was not fun to watch.
The rest of the teenage rock contingent hurried to join their mate while yellow-vested reinforcements gathered by the gate and for a while it looked like things might escalate.
So when Girlschool got the power going again, they now had a crowd that was subdued, missing most of its more enthusiastic members and more than a little alarmed at the way the security kept bobbing up from behind the barrier anytime somebody looked like they were enjoying themselves.
I'll give a respectful bow to the band at this point. They recovered quickly and got back up to full speed in short order, cranking out a selection of their better know songs plus a few newies that bear further investigation. Having three lead vocalists also gave them a melodic edge that they used to full advantage, while grinning the whole time. Meanwhile the underrated Denise Dufort kept things motoring at the back.
Problem was...
Everytime I looked around the audience was getting thinner and thinner. In retrospect, while Nazareth and The Kenney Jones Gang fared well in previous years, Girlschool were way too heavy for this festival and this crowd. The people who'd come to see Girlschool stayed until the finish while the casual crowd, out for a few beers and some music on a sunny day, sloped off home.
The shenanigans with the power and the security didn't really help either.
So to sum up, file under "That could have gone better"
No comments:
Post a Comment