Our own little Kingston

Massively overdue, but here goes anyway. I'm going to try and tackle the 5-gigs-and-a-festival-in-5-days marathon.

Day 1...

Thursday my good friend Mike was putting on the Bridge Nine tour. Local (I think they're local, at least partially Norwich-based anyway) openers Holy State kicked things off nicely. I'd seen them before supporting Cloak/Dagger and thought they were ace. Kind of rock-n-roll punk-hardcore, I guess. Great start to the night.

I wasn't familiar with Defeater or Ruiner but was blown away by Defeater. Ruiner were good too, but not as good. Both were good hardcore bands but Defeater had something about them.

A year ago I wouldn't have known we Polar Bear Club were. I'd heard their name a lot and checked out some tracks on Myspace when I'd seen they were support on the Gaslight Anthem/Frank Turner tour. Tracks sounded ace - punk-hardcore with an indie edge - but come the gig I wasn't impressed. I thought it might have been the venue (700-capacity Waterfront) so wanted a chance to see them in a much smaller environment.

Fast forward to this gig - at the barely 150-capacity Marquee - and, I don't know why, but they still didn't do it for me. They're a good band, and play really well, but I just wasn't feeling it. Maybe you have to be at the front screaming along to every word to really get it?

Anyway, I went outside during the latter part of their set and raced back inside when I heard them covering The Get Up Kids' Ten Minutes. That was ace. More on The Get Up Kids later...

So yeah, an alright night. Probably would have been a lot better had I really known the bands going into the show.

Day 2...

So yeah, running a gig is a chore. Especially when you can't announce one of your acts and are constantly ultra-paranoid that he won't be able to turn up and your reputation will be shattered.

Luckilly that didn't happen, and everything went smoothly.

Back story... years ago I'd put Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly on a few times at the tiny Ferry Boat pub. I'd seen him a stack more times too, both in Norwich and other towns. Then he got signed to a major and got really, really big for a while. You know you're big when you have a song played on Hollyoaks!

So yeah, the aforementioned Mike had a similar relationship with Gallows. Once they'd got huge (1,000+ tickets sold per gig, that kind of huge) he'd got them to play a 300-capacity show for him. There and then I was determined to get Get Cape to play a small show for me.

Fast forward to a month-or-so ago and I decided to see if Get Cape can play our upcoming Dave House show. Alas my contact details for him are out-of-date so I go for a PM on the Punktastic.com forums... which actually works! A few e-mails later and Get Cape is on for the show. Fucking A! The caveat? I can't actually announce he's playing. Easy, make sure word of mouth spreads and spreads a lot!

So onto the actual gig (with over a hundred people turning up). Darwin and the Dinosaur were on first. To be honest, even though I was putting on the show, I'd never heard them before. Alan (bassist) has been in a lot of ace bands before, so when he asked if I could give his new band a show I trusted they'd be worth it. They were. Awesome pop-punk in the Saves the Day-esque mould.

A Broken Robot were Dave's tour support so I'd not heard much of them either. They were also really good though, in the good-pop-indie-rock kind of way!

Next up was Get Cape who was just phenomenal! The crowd was so attentive, especially given it was just one man and a guitar on stage. A couple of classics, some new ones, a Saves the Day cover. Good times. It was awesome to see Get Cape again, especially on a small stage.

Headliner Dave House was equally ace. I'd not heard much off the new album but was suitably impressed with the tracks played off it. Dave's set was somewhat stripped down as his drummer was unavailable so the line-up was Dave on guitar/vocals, another guy (whose name was Aaron, I think, apologies if that's incorrect) on second guitar and bass (where appropriate), a backing track sometimes, and Dave kicking a bass drum with a tambourine attached to it, which compelled me to text Dave at about 1am saying I'd decided that would now be called a drumbarine! Dave played possibly me favourite song of his; All D's, No Future from his awesome second album See That No One Else Escapes.

All-in-all a fantastic night, topped off with a huge political discussion involving myself, Sam Get Cape, Claire and Luke. The other thing about Sam is his political views are actually logical! I've seen far too many people get too into politics and lose sight of logic and sensibility, but Sam manages to keep sight of these (whilst remaining true to his beliefs).

Two days down, and still more to go...

Tune in next blog, same Bat time, same Bat channel.