Saturday 25.January 2003, Bedford Esquires.
Review no. 1
When we arrived at Esquires we were suprised to see SIDEWINDER.
They werent on the flyers, or on the board at the front of Esquires, or anywhere. They started off the
night with something original. Even though they played their first song rather badly, by the second song
you could see they had got into their set quite well. Sidewinder are quite clearly, more 'instrumental'
rather than concentrating solely on vocals. Their entire set were origionals but had major influences in
two of the songs (the second song reminding me of radiohead, and the fourth one sounding like the matrix/godzilla!)
but apart from that very origional, sounding, in some of the songs, 'Egyptian'. You could see quite clearly
the band wern't in their best form. The bassist had some really cool bass lines, and the drummer had some
really cool fills. The guitarist had his parts in their 4th song which was quite amazing, you could see the
whole band didn't express what they could do, as shown by each of them at times during their set.
STILETTO SUICIDE are an all girl band except the drummer who just looks a bit like a girl and appeared to
be drumming to another band other than the one he was in - maybe he couldn't hear his moniter or perhaps he was
listening to something else on a walkman, although his drumming did get better towards the end of the set. Their
lead singer did have quite a good voice and it has to be said, displayed a good interaction when talking to
the crowd, which she did quite a lot which was good to see, despite this they also had one of the worst crowd
reactions I've seen - with boo's from the crowd. When their singer announced they were going to do a quite song,
I heard a girl in the audience shout 'yea very quite please', and as if to emphathise with the dying reaction,
their mike stand was slowly slipping down like a flag at half-mast.
Another lead singer fronted THE PRETTIES, her singing was o.k. but the thing that stood out the most was the
fantastic and dirverse guitar work. The guy on guitar even got a kind of Spanish guitar sound out of his instrument
at one point. There was an acoustic included in the set also. Some of the bands sound at times had an almost hypnotic
dirge - a clever dirge all the same, with the guitar work holding the interest throughout, forming the most integral
part to the atmospherical sound of the band.
SPHERE injected a much needed boost to the evening, immediately starting with a strong heavy, fast number galloping
like one of the apocalyptic horses escaping from hell. There was a better crowd reaction with the start of a mosh pit
also. It was the first time I've seen this band, I heard they were good and I wasn't disappointed.
This band had the best singer of the bands on the bill. There were slower songs in which their front man was able to
demonstrate that he did actually have a professional singing ability which stood out along with the instrumentation of
the band that closed on an extremely good Led Zeppelin cover of the song 'Rock n Roll'.
The pretties and Sphere both went through to the final later this year.
Review by Lisa Hellings.
I only arrived half way through John and the brown trouts and all I could hear was like...DUM DUM DUM DUM
Lahhhh DUM DUM DUM. In my opinion they were almost as poor as Sprokit and maybe would of benefited from a second guitarist
and a bassist who wasn't an arrogant tosser. Hey semi-origional concept though... Only their first gig I suppose.
Right.... Next up, Stilleto Suicide, a band who I doubt even know, that a stiletto is a long slightly curved Italian
blade traditionaly used for stabbing attacks in gang warfare.
Dispite this disgraceful display of ignorance, no...fuck being all nice, they were shit. I could pull better bands out
of prison, inject them with horse tranquilizers and replace their fingers with penises and still get a sexier glam punk
band. The only highlights of their set for me was the words "This is our last one" and the cracking lobster style decorations.
The Pretties were the best band of the night, although they should have been in the indi heat. I recognised the guitar player
as an employee of Bedford music centre and respected his shexy bluesy guitar widdling, besides, the singer had black panties on.
Whooooooo they had an interesting kinda image and I found the effect of their tunes to be somewhat similar to a kind of anal
drug injection, - excelent!. Still the Panties were definitely the highlight for me.
The last band were shit too. Some typa shit 3-piece Metallica tribute band with a transexual drummer. Respect to them, they
held the crowds interest and got a hefty 'mosh' pit going. Jeez im sorry..... They did nothing for me.
Review by J. Foley.