Whitby review part #2 - Friday Night

[mrph]

So, Friday night...

Because I'm mad, I decided to wear the brand new boots (with 4" heels) which I'd just inherited from Giolla. Because I'm not that mad, I also packed the new cuban heel stetsons which I'd just inherited from Marc Elston (new boots were one of the defining features of this Whitby). And because I'm not completely insane, I didn't wear the straitjacket top. It seemed a very bad idea to combine that with heels, just in case I somehow lost the use of my arms...

Much to my surprise, I can sort-of walk (well, wobble) in heels. The problem comes when coping with uneven terrain in the dark. Like, say, the tarmac slope down to the Spa. Halfway down there, we ran into coracaskia and Paul/ciphergoth. Unsurprisingly, Paul, wearing almost identical boots, was coping rather better with them... :)

I can't remember if I had the cuddly snake with me at this point. It parted company from me somewhen in the weekend, only returning on Sunday. I gather that it had a rather more debauched weekend than I did, which is usually the way of things.

For once, the table-napping scheme went wrong. We're usually very good at this. We turn up obscenely early, grab two or three tables in the far (back right) corner of the spa, pull them together and declare this as base camp for the Coventry / Bristol / etc crew. This plan doesn't work well with 4" heels, as the decreased movement rate meant that there were no free tables by the time we got there. So Tim and I shrugged, gave up and joined Geoff and Chris at the Soton table. It seemed like a plan. What we didn't realise was that the rest of Coventry (...and Bristol, and etc..) then assumed this was "our" table, and invaded en masse. Ooops. :-(

As ever, the first mob activity was a round of Grumpy Tiger photos. Cambridge may have courgettes, but we have the one and only Grumpy Tiger. I think that says something deep and meaningful about the contrast between the two cities, but I've not got a clue as to what... :)

And then we had the bands.

First up were Cauda Pavonis, who I'd seen before - but not for several years. They're a two-piece, drummer and female vocalist, and they've just released their second album. Their style's changed a little - they're still definitely tradgoth, and the subject matter of the songs perhaps puts them towards the vampire/fetish end of tradgoth. They've picked up the pace a bit since I last saw them - the new material is faster, and perhaps more dancefloor-friendly. Not really my thing, but not bad either - I'm still not fond of their Adam Ant "Stand And Deliver" cover, though. Some songs really shouldn't be covered and (for me) that's one of them.

Next, we had D.U.S.T., who kicked off their set with "Wraith", as usual, then showcased a few new songs before returning to the album tracks for the second half of the set, finishing with 'SubObs'. The new stuff is definitely less polished, and perhaps a little more metal-influenced. I'm looking forward to hearing what the CD sounds like. Mikey was, as ever, completely crazed onstage. I was just a little bit amused to see that the front two rows of the audience were almost exclusively net.goths (including most of the DUSTheads), DJs, promoters and members of other bands (including Swarf).

[This was about the point when I ran into the Lawson brothers. They were both, er, somewhat intoxicated. High-velocity drunken hugs are bad enough at the best of times, but in stereo, and when you're wearing heels... eeek!]

Third were the Finger-Puppets. Following D.U.S.T. wasn't going to be easy, and the sound problems that immediately hit them didn't make it any better. The male backing vocals were too loud (and, perhaps, too shouty), the main (female) vocals were too low. This meant that the singer initially sounded like her voice was breaking in a deeply ghastly way. They recovered, but it was a bad start - and they didn't seem entirely sure of what to expect from a goth audience, or what sort of banter was appropriate. Shame, as they sounded pretty good on CD [I may have to play "Smile" at the Calling next week, just to see if Patrick screams and flees the building...].

And then there was Rome Burns. I've been trying to see this band for over a year, and failing miserably. They were worth the wait. Great stage presence, with plenty of chainmail, banter and clowning. Lots of good songs, including a few I didn't know(gothslut - any chance you can mail me the setlist when you get a spare minute? I'm wondering how much of that set was from the impossible-to-obtain "Swoon" CD...). And they finished with Catharsis, which is a storming track. Even when the singer's microphone comes unplugged halfway through the final chorus.

Lastly, we had Swarf. Someone, on one of the regional mailing lists, commented that they "played like they owned the place". Well, hey, by the end of that set, they did. They had the audience eating out of their hands (and, as with DUST, they had a lot of net.goth and band support - Psychophile's Lucy Pointycat was perking away in the second row, and Je$us Loves Amerika were attempting to build a very unsteady human tower...). I've seen them before, and originally thought they sounded great but lacked stage presence - no such problems this time, they were top-notch from start to finish. I was expecting them to play "Fall", the EP title song (and probably their best-known & most upbeat track) as the last song, so I was a bit surprised when it turned up halfway through the set... the reason soon became clear, as they finished on something completely new, "Motion". I'm not sure if it's catchier than Fall, but it's certainly a close-run thing...

Voting followed, as ever. Swarf won by a fair margin. D.U.S.T. were probably in second. I reckon that's a clear victory for the Wasp Factory as well as the bands...

At this point, my feet were killing me. I'd changed back into the cuban heels just before Rome Burns, but I was still feeling a bit shattered, so I wandered homewards. This was to become a theme for the weekend.

Quotes of the day:

"You are just so fucked..." - Mr Tim, to me, repeatedly.

"That came dangerously close to death by cucumber" - me, context now lost to alcohol