The Great Escape - Day One

Multiple venues, Brighton - 17 May 2007

by Jon Fletcher

One British institution disappoints as another succeeds: day one of the Brighton crawl

"As if misspelling the name of a venerated British institution is not enough of a sin, Be Be See are decked out in boiler suits. That's the sort of novelty quirk that in the case of pretty much everyone bar the Super Furry Animals shouts out, “we’re not good enough to win you over with the strength of our music alone”"

An apology for starters: to the northern gentlemen in a last minute dash to catch the Cherry Ghosts show at the Barfly (formerly known as The Gloucester), we did not intentionally mislead you – there were two bars marked with a number three on the map and we should have sent you towards the pink one, not the blue one. If it’s any comfort, you had been doing very well under your own steam and would have passed the Barfly only moments later had you continued in the direction you were headed, making it to the band in good time.

And so to the matter in hand – The Great Escape, day one. Very kindly furnished with delegate passes by the organisers (the Barfly group), we make our way to The Zap bar to catch Kubichek! – stopping along the way to sample the queue for regular wristbands on the beachfront promenade. No Coachella stories here – the whole thing seems to be working well, in a rather understated sort of a way.

Kubichek! are one of those bands that somehow fail to grab the attention of the music-loving public where other lesser morsels succeed. Debut album ‘Not Enough Night’ may have its failings – the pulsating guitar swirl can wear a little – but it’s packed full of catchy, riff-heavy songs and quirky lyrics (“I wouldn’t bother talking to poetic friends / It’s more than likely they just want to get their ends away”).

The band manage to lure in a good early crowd, despite the bar’s offensive stench – a medley of urine, sweat and stale beer (and that’s before any punters have walked through the door). Frontman Al McDonald offloads vocal duties onto bassist Michael ‘Frog’ Coburn every now and then, which works to good effect and the band’s whole performance is tight and punchy. Album standouts ‘Outwards’, ‘Nightjoy’ and current single ‘Stutter’ are all just as good live, packed full of energy and northern bluster and the intensity of the performance is mapped out in the gradually expanding butterfly of sweat that unfolds across McDonald’s shirt front. It’s on the ballads that the band slump a little – songs like ‘Hope Is Impossible’ are slow growers to be listened to in the comfort of your MP3 player, not forced willy nilly upon the uninitiated. Even so, it's a showing that seems to bode well for the weekend ahead.

Things take a turn for the worse at Pressure Point, however. Turning up damp around the edges with anticipation for Black Ghosts, we catch the uninspiring closing moments of Chile’s Panico and in the process, develop a totally irrational and no doubt wholly misplaced distaste for frontman Eduardo. Such negativity is not so much eclipsed as grossly inflated by the arrival of Black Ghosts. Xfm’s John Kennedy, who is acting as compere, grandly introduces... Be Be See. He doesn’t explain the switch; indeed he doesn’t even acknowledge one has taken place. Still, in the spirit of the Great Escape, we stick around.

As if misspelling the name of a venerated British institution is not enough of a sin, Be Be See are decked out in boiler suits. That's the sort of novelty quirk that in the case of pretty much everyone bar the Super Furry Animals shouts out, “we’re not good enough to win you over with the strength of our music alone”. The vocals of front man Kevin Retoryka sound featureless and get lost in an audio mish mash that’s all guitar fuzz and drums. And we dare Anastasia Barker, who plonks away on an entirely inaudible keyboard, to tell us she’s not just a pretty face. It actually takes a moment for us to realise the set has finished, such is the bleak monotony of the delivery. If musical success is a cup tie and the live performance is the first leg, Be Be See have left themselves with a lot to prove when they hit the studio; it’s currently one nil to boredom.

The badly named band theme continues with Goose, who rather improbably hail from Belgium. Improbable in the sense that we know Belgium for chocolate and Eurocrats, but not for lush, synth-driven pop underpinned with reverberating, chest-pummelling bass. Goose sound as though the Chemical Brothers have had an uncomfortable clash with the Scissor Sisters in a dark alley. We’d love to hear more of them, but have to duck out early to make it down to the pier for the Happy Mondays.

This is a ‘secret’ gig – a product of the sponsorship of the Great Escape by T-Mobile, who have done remarkably well in coating the merchandise with their corporate paraphernalia – though the venues themselves are refreshingly brand-free. The closed guest list is dominated by industry folk, lending this show a very strange flavour – beyond the hard core Mondays obsessives bonding with a bouncing Bez in the front row, the rest of the crowd seem to treat it more like a TV show than a gig, breaking off into little gaggles of conversation and noticeably thinning out as time goes on.

Despite this, it’s a show of strength from a band that, as Shaun Ryder points out to Bez midway through, released ‘Step On’ almost 18 years ago. The set list is essentially a greatest hits compilation, with ‘Step On’ and ’24 Hour Party People’ bringing things to a close, and while the circumstances may seem a little forced at times and the sense of pilled-up spectacle has inevitably declined, there’s no denying that the Mondays can still cut it as a live proposition. So much so, that we miss the last train back to London.

Promising beginnings for the most part then – let’s see what Day Two has to offer...

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