The Great Escape - Friday afternoon - Quiet Houses, Cinnabar, Benchwarmer

This was my first venture down to the Great Escape music festival although it has been going for years. Brighton is just about commutable for me, but it is quite an investment of time and money. It is actually a four day festival, but I had nothing in my calendar for Friday and Saturday so took the plunge and did the second half of the festival. Basically acts start at around noon and go on until late at night in various venues scattered around Brighton.

You arrive, pick up a wristband from a central meeting point and away you go with the aid of an app to guide you through the schedules. To make it even more complicated, there is both a festival (for which you need said wristband), and an alternative Great Escape which is free for anyone, at even smaller venues. The alternative does not mean lesser known acts. The biggest draw in the whole festival (ie could sell out Shepherds Bush Empire) was in the alternative section, and a number of the acts in the Festival also did alternative festival gigs along the way too. 

Since this was my first time, I had to pick up the ropes as I went along. Its a bit like the Edinburgh Fringe for comedy, both in that the venues are spread across the city, and there is the feel that all the industry is here so if you are an up and coming band you should be here too. It is a festival for new music - not tribute acts or established bands.

I came to the conclusion that actually it should be more like Edinburgh. At the Edinburgh Festival you book tickets for each show, and the cost varies depending on the performer. A lot of the lesser lights perform for free. Here there is just one ticket for the whole festival (well you can buy just single day tickets as well, but I mean once you have got your ticket you can go to any show into which you can gain entry). And there is the problem. There are a lot of venues, and many of them are not very big. If you don't plan well you could end up seeing almost nothing - just queuing and walking. The venues are scattered over a wide area so you could easily find yourself with a half hour walk to the next venue at which you wanted to see a band, and having done so find it was full. I think they would be better off charging a low sum for registration and then sell individual tickets for each band performance so that if you turn up you should at least be guaranteed to get in as they would only sell tickets to the maximum capacity.

Having made that one organisational criticism, the one real upside for the event was just how busy it was. With so many people out there, even unknown bands performing in the middle of the afternoon were playing to full rooms, where I am sure they are used to opening for bigger acts in the evening to a handful of punters. The atmosphere was super and intimate everywhere. And I love getting to see so many unknown acts, all having 30 minute slots. But usually when I see these all day bills they are all in one venue. Its a set menu. Here you had an enormous menu to choose from, but with only the blurb to give you an idea who you might want to see. With the extra component of how far you might be from where they are playing. I am sure a lot of people just picked a venue and took root. I went for the exploration route.

So first morning I got my wrist band and went to a venue that I had been to before in Brighton, the Hope and Ruin pub, to see a band called Quiet Houses. This turned out to be an excellent start. They are a four piece, but essentially are a duo from Edinburgh who had grown up together and have since bolted on a guitarist and drummer. The Edinburgh couple, boy and girl, now live in London so I should get to see them again. It was the bloke's 27th birthday. This was proper shoegaze stuff, and I am partial to a bit of shoegaze. They were charming, good looking with nice voices. What's not to like?

From there it was a fair old walk to Dust, normally a nightclub, to see a more punkish Brighton band called Cinnabar. Although I arrived just in time to catch the very tail end of the previous act, Daisy Peacock. Didn't hear enough to be able to pass comment.

However Cinnabar were good - they came on a little late as awaiting a compere to introduce them (who was awful - one of those cocky radio one South London DJ jobs who only whoops in cliches "lets make some noise Brighton". She would have been more credible in telling us what a great act she was introducing if she didn't have to look  at her card to find out who they were). Anyway she was awful, but Cinnabar were very acceptable. Would have happily heard more

Then a short walk to Revenge, which I think is normally a gay nightclub. It was a decent size. Again I arrived in time to see the act before. This was Pixie McCann. Great voice, great charm. (As late I wasn't at front so not so great pictures.)

I had come to see Benchwarmer, a new London based act whose name I had at least seen. As the acts changed over I could of course get to the front and assume my preferred spot at side of the stage. They sounded fine, but my issue (as I explained the next day to the guitarist nearest to the camera who just happened to turn up in the audience at another gig that I went to) was that my abiding memory was the enormous amount of their set which they spent tuning up between songs. I tried to say to him that he shouldn't overestimate his audience. To us they sounded fine. They were obviously keen to be perfect, but more for their own sake than ours. And for all the fine tuning, the lead vocalist's guitar suffered a broken string and so he had to finish with one missing string. And still that sounded fine!

The other unfortunately memorable part of the act was that the guitarist nearest to me cut his thumb before the last song. You can see from the photo below the splattering of blood on his guitar. I admired the way he played on as must have been painful. His fingers were dripping in blood

I then circled back to see the North at the Hope and Ruin. To find myself at the end of a lengthy queue. Nicely, the act I was going to see later, the Entitled Sons were coming out so I chatted a little with the youngest, drummer Laurie, who seemed really nice. But back to the main affair. Queuing. I eventually got in only to hear the North's last song. And the lead singer express the hope that he would return to Brighton but next time without a chest infection!