Summers End Festival, September 15th/16th 2007

The third Summers End festivel, once again held at Bilstons Robin 2 club (not Birmingham), was an excellent weekend of music provided by 12 acts and I can honestly say that I cant wait for next years.

Saturday afternoon:
The Progz
Tinyfish
Final Conflict

Saturday evening:
Clair Hammill
Also Eden
Pain of Salvation

Due to the late withdrawls of Karnataka and Abarax, The Progz, a covers band of all the major classic groups, took over as the days opening act and got everybodies attention immediatly with a strong performance of Genesis' Watcher of the Skies. They proceded to supply us with a number of classic songs, with Comfortably Numb and Firth of Fifth, despite the slightly clumsy intro, being excellent crowd pleasers. A great opening, reminding us of the classics, but Tinyfish brought us into the now. An excellent set by a bunch of talented musos that absolutely rocked and would prove to be one of the better bands of the day. The afternoon set was completed by Final Conflict who, despite being around since the early 90's, were largely unknown to the audience. Unfortunatly we found out why, their songs were standerd Neo-prog and definitely a bit hit-and-miss to be honest (I know some people were so unimpressed they walked out, but I dont think they were that bad). Their opener and Encore stuck out as being great songs but everything inbetween lacked any real substance or was only captivating in short spurts, disappointing and shown up by the upstarts Tinyfish.

After the customery extended delay for sound checks (now becoming a Summers End tradition this) Clair Hamill took to the stage to provide the opening acoustic set to start off the evening. I know SE trys to get in a veriety of musical styles but I think this might have been a bit to far into the leftfield. She has a wonderful, captivating voice but her set would benifit from a more capable guitarist and 9 love songs in a row is a bit much for me. Event organiser Huw Lloyd- Jones' band, Also Eden, was next up and I was not impressed. The music seemed uninspired and very much like a poor copy of bands like Final Conflict, Credo, Ezra etc, so not good. However, kudos to their new bass player who only joined the band two weeks before hand and was playing his first gig with them. A disappointing day so far but with Pain of Salvation up next their was still some hope. And they duely delivered. The set opened with a storming rendition of Scarsick, a great song live, and even America sounded great. From hear on out they played one or two tracks from each of their albums interspersed with plenty of bad jokes between the band that earned them plenty of laughs as well. Hilights of the set were the amazing performences of Nightmist, People Passing By, Diffidentia and the encores !(Forward) and Inside. I know before they came on half the audiance were hear to see PoS (but also showed interest in the previous bands) and the other half were looking forward to something new, needless to say PoS now have gained a number of converts and I went home with a goofy grin on my face.

Sunday afternoon:
Touchstone
Whimwise
Solstice

Sunday evening:
Christine Booth and friends
Threshold
It Bites

Due to public transport being as bad as it is I only just got to the Robin in time to whitness Touchstone start up. I'm glad I did, they were an impressive band that really rocked and displayed better musicianship than many of the bands this weekend, particularly the Bass player Paul Moorghen who was really impressive on his 5 string fretless. Whimwise followed up and they were a real surprise, a 10 man (and women) band led by Nick May (ex The Enid) made up of guitar, flutes, sax, violin, double bass, keyboards and a whole array of percussion. An interesting band that defies description in few words, but a definite must hear and one of the performances of the weekend. This made them a difficult act fro Solstice to follow, and they duely gave it a good try but, though they had several cracking songs, they had a few duff songs to boot that left me with a feeling that they could have done better.

Unfortunetly the evening got off to a bad start when It Bites were insistent on using their own drum set (the sparkely gold paint didnt seem to make much difference to me), extending the sound check by an hour or more(!) before Christine Booth coukld take to the stage. She certainly made up for the delay by giving a great acoustic set of some of her solo materiel and a brilliant performance of Magentas I'm Alive. Female singers seem to getting far more commen in prog these days and several were in evidence at SE, but Christine certainly had the lungs to beat the lot of them. Because of the delay and the 11:00 (ish) curfew Threshold performed a blindingly quick turnaround to get on stage in about 5 minutes to give us what would be a sadly truncated set. But Damien Wilson, Karl Groom and co gave us something to remember and certainly had me wishing for a longer set. The band played hard and loud with many of the songs being from the recent album Dead Reckoning, with Pilot in the Sky of Dreams being particularly well recieved along with Light and Space. Damien Wilson gave a stunning vocal performance and I can only hope he joins the band full time again, and to cap of his performance he stag dived at the end (), Mac who? And onto It Bites. They arent a band I'm familier with so this was a new experience on me. However, I was not to impressed with what a saw and heard. John Mitchells voice can be a bit grateing at times and the lyrics were cringe worthy. Musically they had their moments of genious but all to often seemed like a standerd rock band, thoughthe crowd loved it. Sadley I had to make my exit before time because of public transport finishing at unconvenient times, but the sunday definitely had the better line-up, though Pain of Salvation were without doubt band of the festivel, and introduced me to some great new bands
 to check up. Same time next year then.

Note: first live performance review so dont lich me, please?

We really had a great time playing at SE. The crowd were attentive, enthusiastic and made all the bands feel very welcome on the stage.

PoS were fantastic and their version of Disco Queen just had to be heard to be believed.

I did eat some very dodgy fish and chips from a place just up the road from the Robin 2 after the show  which made their presence felt a number of times on the Sunday however. Plus the chips were bright orange in colour - that should have tipped me off I guess...

Cheers

Simon.


Edited by Tinyfish - October 05 2007 at 19:35