Now uploaded! Juice Brighton’s Sarah Powell bats for the other team for a weekend! XYZ Magazine were the official partner for The Great Escape ’09, Sarah Powell joins our team of XYZ reporters as we bring you the juice from this years festival!
What a bloody weekend… May saw all things Fringe invade Brighton and bang smack in the middle, just when you thought you couldn’t read another programme of events, there was The Great Escape; fourth year and bigger than ever before.
XYZ & Juice Drive were there, watching, listening, interviewing and snogging the best acts for you as well as finding out what you got upto. The show featured Mystery Jets, Lyrebirds, Just Jack, Gloria Cycles in session, Alexandria Quartet as well as King Blues, Rumble Strips, Marina and the Diamonds, Patrick Wolf, Speech-Dubelle, Kasabian, VV Brown, Hockey, Temper Trap and Noah and the Whale over a week. Here’s what happened to Brighton on Thursday 14th May.
The haircuts got more extreme, queues at the bars were longer and the sun was shining. The Great Escape 2009 arrived bringing with it London music & media types who wanted a dance by the seaside. Aside from the tremendous knees up that the festival brings with it, the music & media types also had to do some work this year in the Artist Village, which took over the Spiegeltent, offering somewhere to compare haircuts and get record deals off the back of your demo. This was perhaps my favourite part of the festival (apart form the snogging.) Every day of the festival was rammed with panels, advice on how to ‘get your band good’ and let everyone know about it.
For festival organiser Martin Elbourne this was the most important bit, “…we want to get the festival at an international level and panels give it that status.” A quick chat revealed that all the best ideas really are made in the pub! “It was very wee small hours and it seemed like it could be a good idea.”
Spotify, Limewire, HMV and Radiohead (they’ve always got something to say) were just a few of the hundreds of speakers who came down to tell you something about music. One of the busiest panels of the 3 days was PRS and the mega Jules came on the show on Thursday.
If you’re in a band and you’re fed up of having no money Jules is the guy for you. By getting on PRS you can get money for making music, playing gigs and recording. Everywhere that wants to play music has to have a PRS licence- bars, clubs, pubs, caves; everywhere. PRS go round and see what’s what, then get cash for you. Even if it’s just you playing in the pub on a Friday night they could get you £20, have a butchers at www.prsformusic.com
TGE is an international festival but it doesn’t forget where it is, with local bands all over the bill, record label showcases and a whole skip full of gigs for the Alternative Great Escape if you couldn’t get a wristband. On Thursday night you found me at Fortune of War for The Lost Highway as part of The ALT GE. It was a beardy affair, with Sweet Sweet Lies doing their best set in months as well as Two Fingers of Firewater and Hey Negrita all taking headlining spots. It was a whiskey and sawdust affair, which was perfect on the beach on a Thursday night.
Back into the festival, Thursday night took plenty of local kids to Jam (used to be Water Margin) for our very own Fat Cat Records’ debut at The Great Escape. The brilliantly titled We were Promised Jetpacks played as well as label favourites Twilight Sad and label boy Tom popped into the show bringing Aamon of Brakes, for a session. Aamon is having a baby! He’s making sure it happens in New York so eventually his child can run for president. Tom had a lovely cardigan on.
Absent Elk broke our mic. They were the last session on the show and the only ones who wanted to fiddle with things. This made them surprisingly endearing and they said they were fans of the show, which always helps. But they couldn’t decide which of their tour-mates (Girls Aloud) was their favourite. We suggested Sarah Harding, they think she might be scary, bless them, they’ll be different boys after that tour.
The King Blues are an interesting little number. They play a lot of selective gigs, their last in Brighton was the Vegan Fayre and songs come with a message. One of their records is called Smash EDO, written about a factory near Moulscoombe, which makes weapon parts and is the subject of regular Brighton protests. Itch came on the phone ahead of their gig on Thursday and was thoroughly charming. I was expecting him to say violence wasn’t the answer in the demonstrations, but he couldn’t disagree more, “these people deal in money and the only way to get through to them is to cost them something.” It was one of the longest interviews of the festival and easily one of the most lucid interviewees with the most to say. It’s a close one with VV Brown though.
On Friday afternoon all the plaid brown handbags, brogues and jaunty trilbies queued up down New Road and got in the way of everyone getting lunch. What did they care? The Maccabees were playing (the worst kept) secret gig at The Pavillion (the details of the venue had been on both the Maccebees and Lyrebirds sites for a number of weeks before someone pointed out it was a secret)
An hour before, Felix and Rupert were lolling around outside Riki Tik talking about what they’d have on a pizza. Felix had cough sweets for breakfast but was in good spirits. They said the gig last night had been immense with loads of the punters looking like it was their first Maccabess gig, which was nice. Felix promised to have lunch before the gig.
Noah and the Whale came in on the show that day and they all ate Babybel, except Charlie who’s apparently “the fussy one” and wouldn’t eat one unless he knew how long they’d been there. We also discussed hussies on album covers and Planet Earth, the folk band, not the award winning BBC programme.
Rumble Strips were a total delight but they will NOT be playing Back to Black, so don’t ask. They were sweet, charming and Charlie has the sweetest smile in the history of The Great Escape.
A little festival gossip for you, Danny from The Perils took matters into his own hands on Friday night, lunging in an attempt to smack a sound guy! This is totally in my Top 10 moments of the weekend, that guy was a dick.
Saturday arrived with sunshine and a slight ache from The Charlatans and Kissy Sell Out, but it was our best day of interviews yet: Little Boots, Patrick Wolf, Speech Dubelle, Kasabian and VV Brown.
We started in the sunny gardens of the Speigeltent with the lovely little Marina and her Diamonds. If you want a good download try “Obsessions” and her blog is one of the best going, including the line “Going to Brighton for The Great Escape, I’m going to get fucked up!!” She doesn’t take drugs so it’ll have to be whiskey. She’s become part of a music girl harem (they’re everywhere, Florence and the Machine, La Roux etc) and she reckons that’s cool, “the media would like to think it’s all catty but it’s not, we’re just all doing our thing.”
Half way through the interview, she stops mid question “sorry, I was just thinking how weird my feet look… look at them!” Sure enough she’s wearing black leather Reeboks complete with studs and snakeskin. “They’re awful! Aren’t they, I got given them for free but I’ve just noticed they’re terrible!” Love Her.
Patrick Wolf and Speech Dubelle both had loads to say. Speech is from London and has seen drug and gang culture first hand, I asked her what made her change her mind “I was scared I’d go to prison, make the album or go to prison, that’s kind of how it was.” She also once walked barefoot from Worthing to Shoreham-by-Sea, down the motorway but still says Brighton is one of her favourite places. She had no idea the venue of her gig, Revenge, was a gay club, but didn’t seem too fussed.
Little Boots won’t be in Brighton for long but it’s ok, her boyfriend lives down here so she can come all the time. In fact her favourite is Snooper’s Paradise where she spent £30 on a little casiotone keyboard. But the fish n chips aren’t as good as they are in Blackpool, hmmm, not sure about that one…far too much northern pride. Although we are friendlier (and cockier.) She chooses the songs she covers by what she’d heard that day, stuff in shops, bets, requests from fans, in fact most of them were done as jokes, press love it, she’s a bit sick of it. She might wear something gold or a sequinned cruise number tonight, she doesn’t mind as long as its dress up and she’s going to Bill’s for tea and Billie’s for breakfast.
It was then over to The Dome for Kasabian. Cheeky, cheeky Tom. I’d interviewed them earlier in the week and managed to ask “(my mate said) you could stick it in any orifice, do you have a preference?”. So this interview starts with “…YOUR EAR!”. We also played the quiz, ‘How Rock n Roll are Kasabian?’. They wouldn’t jump the fence at Glastonbury, cos they wouldn’t go- it’s dirty. They’ve got 7 tattoos between them, they’ve never snogged a fan, they’ve caused £800 worth of damage, but they wouldn’t tell us how. But they would have sex on Brighton’s beach. Cheeky boys.
Before we danced it all off at their gig that night it was a taxi over to The Old Market for VV Brown, who was probably our best interview of the weekend. I scanned the sign in book and saw her, she’d been in and out twice. “I was on North Street, I bought a Xylophone and a Chinese gong for tonight.” VV just got back form Cannes, “…it wasn’t all that, it’s not like the music videos.” The Brighton crowd are lovers, not haters. VV Brown really fancies Rick Edwards. She HATES men who have all their nails bitten off, makes her spit. She worries about the kids on Facebook all the time, it’s too much about self, shouldn’t they be out and about together? She collects old-school phones (she had a Nokia 7000 when we met her) It’s been a tidy little wait until VV Brown’s new album comes out on July 20th, but not for her, she was touring Japan at 15 and 10 years later she’s arrived at VV. She’s just signed to Capital in the USA and is totally thrilled as they won’t expect her to get her kit off in a music video. To celebrate she’s got her own comic book to go alongside it which her mate has designed, based on her hair. And she’s got her vintage shop online, this girl is busy! She didn’t know Little Boots was in town! She believes in the sisterhood, that all the current female artists share a similar journey- they’ve all been full on grafting, gigging and carrying their own kit about, now she’s playing main stage Glastonbury and she “can’t frikkin’ wait.” She had the best line of the weekend: “2009: The Year of the Underdog- it’s the year to come through and break through”
I hope you had as much fun as I did this year and saw more! It’s such a wicked festival to have in the city, to create new audiences and get bands new fans; keep it all moving around. And as for the snogging, it’s got to be done! But I’ll let you decide who the lucky boy was…
Til next year!
Sarah xox
