Gig Review: 1st July at Beatherder Festival

Keen to get moving and get there nice and early, our plans were stopped pretty abruptly on realising we'd just filled up our diesel van with unleaded petrol.. so after a little bit of siphoning, we were well on our way.. and we pitched up just as news was breaking that England had just been knocked out of the World Cup. (Admittedly, at the Subsource camp, attitudes about football vary from mild interest to hostile intolerance so this had absolutely no psychological effect on us)

Los Guys who were on before us were making some cool noises and we had plenty of time to set-up and prepare considering it was a festival, although this didn't manage to stop Neil from being organised enough to get his laptop in a good enough position to prevent it from falling to the floor and taking out the sequencer track with it halfway through our first tune. Soooo embarrassing.. we kinda tried to ride out on a single bassline for about two minutes with 'For The People' dying out in a breathless whimper. About 4 people in the audience clapped with some degree of empathy and a high degree of uncertainty.

Still, the highlight for me was to have a couple of the Dreadzone guys grooving along.. and they were very complimentary afterwards - nice down to earth guys, especially considering their status and the length of time (12 years)they've been on the circuit.

Nelly's birthday celebrations ensued straight after.. and what a perfect place to celebrate - the guys at Beatherder have done an excellent job for their first year as a (legal) festival and hopefully it'll grow even more and establish itself further over the next few years.