Tomorrow Night!

I should have really posted a blog about this ages ago, but oh well!

I've been part organiser of a charity event which is part of Southend Fringe Festival and it takes place tomorrow evening. I've been working with Steve of Not in Our Town on a Pigtails and Army Boots themed night to raise money for Animal Defenders International. The night has 4 bands playing (sadly Candy Panic Attack have had to cancel)- Wendy Solomon, Death of the Elephant, Dirty fairies and Trash Monroe and I will also be djing before and after the bands. It's only £3 to get in and is from 7pm right up till 1am. All I'm worried about is that the early part clashes with an England football match and that people might go after the bands finish and I'll be djing to an empty room- so if you come (and you should) please stay!!

Southend Fringe Finale Party 26th June 09 review

Well like they say, all good things must come to an end at some point, and it might as well be in style, which is exactly what Southend Fringe did for their finale party at Bar Lambs, a stylish venue, and a sea theme with fancy dress encouraged! The venue itself had fish and crabs sitting along the wall, as well as a treasure chest lucky dip for 50p a go and shells filled with shrimp sweets adorned the tables. here's a few photos for your pleasure! oh and I mustn't forget the colouring! (see left)!



Anyway, the party wasn't just about random sea creatures and pirates (arr)! but of course, one of the best things about Southend Fringe, music!

The first band to play was local rockers Fashoda Crisis, playing a set of rowdy rock, including a song with an appearence from a member of another local band, the very tastefully titled Kunt and the Gang!


After a break with some sea themed songs being played (Echo Beach anyone)? and much pear cider consumed (well by my table anyway)!
The next artist came to the stage, a solo performer called Ste McCabe. A guy with a guitar and a drum machine (I think- it made lots of beats so maybe an fx pedal)? anyway he sang a lot about gay rights etc, and sounded eerily like Le Tigre!





The final act of the night, and in this case, certainly the best was the reggae tastic The Beatroots! This was the first time I've got to see these local legends, and they were great. A perfect end for Southend Fringe. They did a cover of Billie Jean in honour of Michael Jackson (RIP- possible blog to come soon) and a cover of Supelucky by Ten Tigers, Emma, southend fringe organsier's band! was quite amusing to hear a male sing "yay for me and my ovaries!"
I had sucha good time I didn't really want it to end! Thanks once again go to Emma for organising this, I look forward to what next year will hold!























Final photo is myself (I'm wearing the stripy dress and skull scarf in my hair) and my cider drinking crew! The lovely rxkitten (now also a dj on mtjr! check out her show Plan B straight after my show on a sunday at 7pm)! has the cadet hat on, Rachel is next to her and Lauren the sailor girl at the other end :) Love you all!

The Voronas and Devilish Presley@ Club Riga Thurs 25th June

One of the gigs I was most excited about going to during the fringe, as I have seen Devilish Presley before and really enjoyed them, plus the added bonus of it being on my birthday!

First band up we had seen at The Kursaal Vaudeville - The Voronas. A rockabilly band with a twist of lemon! No poodles on big skirts to be found here, just skulls and flames!

The sound in Riga did the band a lot more justice. A great band with so much energy. The singer Carolina, is completely insane! She had manic eyes which were only further exaggerated with her choice of eye make up. She was constantly moving and dancing. The animal noises were great too! They played the cover of "Everybody wants to be a cat" again, and it was fantastic. I'm not sure why I had never heard this band before, surely could get a good reputation here in Southend for being a fun, party, happy band that most people will enjoy!


















Next up was main headliner of the evening Devilish Presley. For those unfamiliar with their music, their music is a perfect compliment to The Voronas, "horrorbilly" maybe the best way to describe it, with a glam edge. It's just the 2 members and a drum machine. Another band full of energy, they played lots of new tracks off the latest album "Flesh Ride" A fun set that had near the end with my favourite song by them "Hammer Horror Glamour". At the end of the set they were telling us about a comedian who they like who does tricks on ladders and things. Anyway, he joked no one was prepared enough to bring a ladder, so someone from Club Riga promptly brings a ladder to a stage and he sings most of the last song standing on it, as well as walking through the audience. Great gig, but not a long enough set in my opinion.
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Southend Fringe Female Fronted Band Triple! Saks Underground Sunday 21st June Review

Yes it's another review! Playlists up tomorrow or Friday, and more reviews of gigs this Thursday and Friday to come as well!

First band was Buried in Mexico (www.myspace.com/buriedinmexico) who actually turned out to be my favourite band of the evening. Hailing from Greenwich, they had a raw "proper" rock sound reminiscent of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and maybe mixed with a splodge of Joan Jett! The lead singer had lots of energy as well, which was very infectious!







Next up was Fever Fever ( www.myspace.com/feverfevertheband ) who had a heavier, punkier sound. I liked their music, but was a little put off when they tried to make a joke about running over a deer. Maybe if it wasn't for my vegan/animal rights opinions, I might have liked them more...



Headliner of the night was The Brownies (www.myspace.com/thebrownies) very punky and very much showed riot grrrl influence with their shouty vocals and loud guitars. Awesome! We liked them so much we bought their single "Cougar" which there is a link to buy through their MySpace. Well worth checking out!

Sadly there wasn't much of an audience to enjoy this, it had competition from Blur! (performing down the road at the Cliffs Pavillion the same night) and it was Sunday after all.

A very Pigtails and Army Boots rated evening! :)

Southend Fringe- Culture as a Dare review Friday 19th June 2009 Cobham Lodge,Westcliff

A very busy time for gigging, thanks to Southend Fringe and getting a bonus at work allowing me to go! This was the night after the anti folk gig.

I had never been to this venue before even though it's only about 10 minutes away. I wish I had took a photo of the outside- it was a hotel and very pretty! Flowers all over the place!

The event was taking place in the basement, a very dark and small area with a separate bar down some stairs. There were cushions and seats around the side, Ruth and I sat ourselves down on the side, and it felt like we were in someone's living room, and that at any moment, someone's mum would walk in with milk and cookies!

Anyway I digress. We were a bit late so only caught 2 songs by the blues/folk tinged Lucy O Driscoll.

Next up was an artist I'm very familiar with, the fantastic Sophie Burrows under the name Goodbye Watson Camus I think her voice is very unusual and great, very raw. It was just her and her guitar, but somehow she makes it sound like more than that. I also love her lyrics.

Best band of the evening award goes to...The Fancy Dress Party! 7 members, male and female, and very young taking up most of the space, they were a revelation and inspiration. Every member played an instrument, in fact the majority of them changed instrument with every song! Very talented and sure to go onto big things! I hope I can get them to do one of our nights in the near future! I tried to take a few photos of the various instruments involved, but wasn't really in the best position to, but here are some of them anyway!

Lastly was the main band we had came to see
Theoretical Girl. Quite surpised I hadn't heard of them before, not until Ruth told me about them, I'd describe them as happy electro pop. Apparently she sometimes plays solo, and other times with her backing band The Equations who were with her this time. I really liked their music and their energy. If you're going to Glastonbury, you can check her out there! :)
All in all, another great gig that surpassed my expections and some great new discoveries!

edit- just realised the links don't work properly! will try to resolve this asap!

Anti Folk Night@ Chinnerys, Southend Thursday 18th June

The 2nd gig I attended as part of the Southend Fringe Festival.

The first artist up was "Breaking Glass"
I've seen this band once before, as I was fan of singer Mel's previous band Johnny and the Mullets. I was quite disapponted the first time, as I loved the fact her previous band was all female and had a great raw, punky sound. When I saw the new band, it was still Mel but with a male backing band and a lot more mellow. This time however, it was just Mel and another girl on the flute. It was more stripped down, but I thought it was a lot better. Some of the songs were more upbeat this time too. They did a couple of covers, including a very interesting folky version of NWA's Straight Outta Compton!

Next up was an artist we saw at the Vaudeville, The Tumbledryer Babies. It must have been a night of doing things differently, as when we saw the "band" before it was just singer Andrew with his bass guitar. This time he had a full band behind him. Again, I thought this was a lot better. I enjoyed this set more, as it was also a longer set. My friend Ruth described Andrew as like Graham Coxon which is a pretty accurate description. He also comes across as sweet and endearing, which makes you warm to him even more!

My favourite act of the evening was Charlot Webster.
She had that "geek chic" look about her and some tattoos on her leg. When she came on stage, myself and my friend Ruth wasn't sure what instrument she was playing, but then realised it was an electric uke designed like a mini guitar! It was awesome! When she sang, her voice was amazing, very similar to Regina Spektor. Again, she came across very lovely and sweet, she had even wrote the setlist on her hand so she wouldn't repeat songs!



After her set, was MJ Hibbett performing solo with just a guitar, his songs were very folky, and were
clearly meant to be witty, but wasn't my sort of humour and I found him very shouty to be honest.


Last act of the evening, I didn't catch all their set but was Deferred Success. I found their lyrics funny, and thought they were very energtic. Not a lot more I can say as only saw a small part of their set.









Overall, an interesting evening, just a shame there wasn't more of a crowd.

Kursaal Vaudeville

Thursday 11th June 2009 was Southend Fringe Festival's Kursaal Vaudeville- a night of variety acts and a silent disco! It took place at the Kursaal Function Room on Southend Seafront from 8pm onwards.

The first act was one man band The Tumbledryer Babies. His lyrics are very amusing and the songs are short and end abruptly. It was only a short set so I am looking forward to the Anti Folk night which he is also playing at next week (Chinnerys on Thursday).

Next up was some readings from the Southend Poetry Group. They weren't really my sort of poems, but nevertheless I couldn't do what they do, stand up and read to a large audience- eep!

The next act was very bizarre. A guy stepped onto the stage, first said he had write a poem, and read some very short line, before saying that it was rubbish, and saying "sod that, here's mixatosis!" disappeared into the nearby toilets, came back out with a hat on his head, turned on a laptop with a mash up of Greenday- Amercian Idiot and Peaches- Bad reputation and proceeded to mime and roll around the floor a lot to this, and a few other mash ups. Like I said, it was bizarre :s

After he finished, Wendy Solomon and her pianist set up. She had an electric uke. but sadly one of her strings broke almost straight away. The pianist kept us entertained playing a tune while they tried to fix the problem. They didn't sort it out, but carried on regardless, and I thought it still sounded really good.

After Wendy, we heard some more poems from the poetry group.

Next was a group called Delusion, a group of tap dancers that is! Very cool it was too!

The last act of the perfomers was horrorabilly band The Voronas, who had a few sound problems but I thought you were great. All of the members were full of energy and what could be cooler than a double bass! I especially liked the version of "Everybody Wants to be Cat" :)

The silent disco ended up starting about 10.30pm with Emma and myself behind the decks. Was quite bizarre to have to two sets of equipment! The people that stayed got special wireless headphones with a switch so they could choose which dj to listen to. It was really hard to tell what they were listening to, and very funny to watch people dancing to no loud music! I was quite pleased that someone came up and asked who was playing daft punk (me) and that my set was really good :) It was so much fun I didn't want to stop hehe.

Here is my set list, probably not in exactly the right order, but all the songs anyway. I don't know what songs Emma played, although it was vastly different to mine!

Shiny Toy Guns- Le Disko

Basement Jaxx- Where's Your Head At?

Crystal Castles- Crimewave

Gossip- Standing in the Way of Control

Amanda Palmer- Guitar hero

LCD Soundsysten- Daft Punk is Playing at my House

Daft Punk- Robot Rock

Fatboy Slim- The Rockafeller Skank

Kasabian- Fire

Apollo 440- Stop The Rock

M.I.A- Paper Planes

The Hives- Hate to Say I Told You So

Le Tigre- I'm So Excited

Led Zeppelin- Rock n Roll

AC/DC- High Voltage

News this week

Quite a lot has been happening this week.

Unfortanely the first thing was bad. Evolution, the club where we were going to hold MTJR Live and Unleashed closed down two days before the event was meant to happen. All because one of the owners decided to go without telling anyone, and take everything away and close it down. I was obviously annoyed because I had everything ready for Friday, and also it was going to be mine and Mike's wedding reception venue. Not only that, but it was the only place I've liked going out to lately, as I'm very fussy, and the nights there were good. It was only just starting to get succesful under the new management. In any case, it can't be helped and I wish the best of luck to Stacey, the manager to find something new. Hopefully we will find something as well.

The rest is good, I promise!

My friend Ruth has just been accepted as a new dj on MTJR. I can't wait for her to start, I will no longer be the only female dj on the station :)

The Top 500 date has finally been decided. The weekend of 13/14th June will be dedicated to it, so no pigtails or new music that week, but I will be taking part in the top 500! There are some real suprises in there, as well as the classics you might expect.

Finally, I'm doing my third public dj set as part of the Southend Fringe Festivals-

Vaudeville and Silent disco! it's taking place at the Kursaal in Southend on the 11th June from 8pm there will be various entertainment including tap dancing, a band and other acts. Then from 10pm will be a Silent Disco! I've never been to one let alone djed at one, but for those who don't know, people get headphones, and there is more than one dj so you can choose what to listen to. So far there will be myself and my friend Emma (who incidentally is the organiser of southend fringe) djing and I think there might be a third dj. Should be a fun night!