mrph | Morecambe - first half

My ability to write coherently has gone for the night, so I might as well write this instead...

Thursday - Well, ok, I wasn't actually in Morecambe on Thursday. I was in Coventry. If I had a brain, I would have been packing. Yeah, like that's ever going to happen - I was organised enough to get out for lunch and a beer-buying trip with

_gh0st_, and somewhen after that I gothed up and drifted down to Heresy. But sensible preparation for a weekend away? I think not.

I finished all this by scrounging a lift partway home at 2AM, then getting a little too distracted while talking to the driver and missing my turning. A certain amount of walking was then involved.

Friday - Up early, to throw things into a bag. Then out the door to visit the JobCentre (for what turned out to be the final time, yay!) and back at noon to find that (despite my directions, which had a glitch or two)

davefish and

snow_leopard had already arrived.

And off to Morecambe we went... arriving with few problems, noticing the distinctive odor of the place, and easily finding our B&B. Parking was a little more complicated, but it all worked out.

Friday night was the Dance of the Vampires, at the Strathmore hotel. It was also Manuskript, Pro Jekt and Swarf at the Dome, but that wasn't really an option for me. Bah.

davefish and

snow_leopard decided to go to the Strathmore as well, and wandered off for food beforehand while I loitered in the bar and tried to sort out my pass. Ran into

sogoth,

claire_wain,

taoist_goth and

coracaskia and chatted to folks for a while.

It's an odd venue - a typical hotel function room, more suited to meals than music, with reasonably bright lighting, seating, tables and (iirc) carpet. Not terribly good for atmosphere. The low stage meant that the back of the crowd got a pretty poor view of things at times, too.

On the plus side, some absolutely lovely costumes. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I only saw one outfit that didn't look pretty good - and that was only because someone had tried to pair a cloak and frilly shirt with transmuters. Glad to see I wasn't the only person without a mask, too - if I took my glases off to wear one, I'd end up not recognising anyone and walking into things occasionally... ;)

Star Industry were... well, Star Industry. I'm not their greatest fan - I've not got the first album, but Velvet is very hit and miss, and their last live show was mostly the stuff from Velvet. So I wasn't excpecting all that much. Actually, though, they weren't bad - the naff songs on Velvet weren't in the set, some of the Velvet songs actually worked pretty well, and the expected highlights (Nineties, Millennium) were there.

Not so sure about the cover of Here Comes The Rain Again - they tried to turn into into a straightforward goth-rock song, and lost most of the subtlety in the process. I'll stick with the original. Or the Cruxshadows version.

I may have been in the minority, but I preferred Two Witches. Firstly, they look and act like a band. Not just a collection of 30-something blokes in leather jackets playing instruments. There is a difference. That'd be stage presence. Plus they've got Jyrki's vocals - and he's got a really good voice. Plus he's utterly mad, which is always fun to watch (I'm convinced that if Sneaky was 15 years older, trad and Finnish, he'd be Jyrki's evil twin. Or good twin. Whichever).

The material lets them down a bit, though - some of the really old stuff is good (and having had Requiem on the Gothic Rock 2 CD for almost a decade now, it's kind of nice to hear it live..), and the newest stuff sounds good. But some of the rest of it was... er, bland. Or repetitive. Or both. Nice to see Postie Chris dragged in as guest vocalist on one track, though. He seemed to be enjoying himself. :)

Somewhen after that, we went back the B&B. There was Becherovka. Sleep followed.