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The Great Escape Festival, Day Three - Saturday 16th May 2009.
Die! Die! Die!

Final day. I am shattered, and starting to feel a little sad that my three day music extravaganza is coming to an end. We set off early this morning to attend A New Zealand based day starting with a performance at The Thistle Hotel. Men dressed in tight black under pants and a straw skirt over the top joined some women for a ‘Haka Dance’. This was suitably followed by some, erm…….Red Stripe.

First performance of the day was at Horratios Bar on Brighton pier. The sun was shining and I knew it was going to be a good day.

Bang Bang Eche had started off the New Zealand show case, a young band who are lively and it seems quite willing to join the crowd for jumping around and general tomfoolery with guitars and microphones. They were great and I wish I had been there at the start of their set rather than near the end.
http://www.myspace.com/bangbangeche

Die! Die! Die! Wow, what a performance. The venue on the pier was packed, lucky for me I had smuggled myself onto a ‘reserved’ table at the front of the venue, thus saving myself from various acts of crowd surfing from the band members.

Their organised chaos of songs and random jumping made the crowd go wild, I did panic for one minute when I actually realised I was part of the masses on the end of a very old wooden pier….The heavy punk beats coming for the guitars and drums mixed with the synchronised jumping by the enthusiastic audience made the venue shake, however after 30 seconds of panic I found myself lost in Die! Die! Die!’s world. It was brilliant and what a show they put on. A.T.T.I.T.U.D was the highlight for me. A catchy heavy pop punk song, which gets you shouting along with them.
http://www.myspace.com/diediedienz

I needed a break after watching Die! Die! Die! That meant The Thistle Hotel for, well I am not even going to mention those three words that have seem to become the story of my life over the festival period. I will just tell you that a cold can of …… went down really well.

After a few hours of drinking, I mean ’networking’, I headed to The Ocean Rooms to watch The Low Anthem. I have been following these guys for months and I was so pleased I would be catching them in a small intimate venue for their first time to England.

They had a tiny stage in a very dark basement room. My legs had started to give way after a few days of walking and jumping around and I sat on the floor right in front of them to soak up their beautiful sounds. The three piece folk band from Rhode Island gave the small audience a taste of their stunning songs. Front man Ben Knox Miller’s voice was effortlessly beautiful and with backing vocal from Jeff Prystowsky and Jocie Adams it was all just music loveliness.

They backed off from their recording sounds and almost sounded bluesy. It was so good, I was gutted when the thirty minutes ended, it just went so quick, however we did get a encore which lightened the blow of losing their sound and made it little bit easier to manage. ‘Charlie Darwin’ was the highlight for me and I had a little sing with the band. Catch them on June 23rd at The Union Chapel in London for their album release show.
http://www.myspace.com/lowanthem

Preparing myself for the long walk to ‘Hove’ to catch VV Brown I took ten minutes out. Then it was back to it. I walked miles, or so it seemed, to get to The Old Market.Everyone was pulling up in taxi’s why did I not think of that? I positioned myself at the front of the venue, put my bag on stage along with two cans of Red Stripe and prayed my legs would stand for another thirty minutes.

VV ran onto the stage with bags of energy and a backing band who would not stop smiling. It was great. VV is sexy and her voice accompanies that. She started the set with her first single ‘Crying Blood’ the crowd (and myself) sang along and VV got the crowd really going.

VV’s vocal range is immense, she really is fantastic. I loved watching her perform, and her vibrancy and energy on stage seemed to give my legs a new lease of life and I started bouncing around and clapping with everyone else. ’Shark In The Water’ was my highlight of the set and is VV’s new single.

VV ended her faultless set with a reggae version of ‘Crying Blood’ this was yet another way to prove her vocal talent, the crowd swayed in rhythm and again it was great.
http://www.myspace.com/vvbrown

As I left The Old Market with legs on the verge of collapsing and headed back to meet my editor at the hotel it dawned on me that this was it. I had spent three days listening to some fantastic music, discovered new sounds and had been treated so well. I felt very lucky, and this made me smile.

Overall I learnt that I love Brighton, I love live music, Red Stripe is now thee drink and I am one lucky girl. I loved every minute of The Great Escape 2009, please pencil me in for next year!

Quick question……How many times did the words ‘free Red Stripe’ get mentioned?