Lightyear supported by Captain Evrything and Sprokit
Saturday 24th May 2003, Bedford Esquires.


SPROKIT put on a seemingly good performance, it’s a band that grows on you even more with each performance, which is probably because they evolve and stay fresh with new material in their set. The songs announced as the new ones were particularly good, which bodes well for the future as it keeps the band fresh, - so fresh in fact that one of their songs hadn’t even been named yet!
Some of their songs had the melodic vocals from the bass player with backing screaming vocals from the lead guitarist which I thought was a great effect, it made for an ethereal quality and sounded quite effective and a good direction for the band to go in, along with the shared vocals between two very different people on stage. their guitarist also showed some worthy lighting effects on the previous nights gig, (heh heh nice one Peg)
The main singer and bass player seems to be the one in charge, - this is the one with the red tuft like a more hen ‘ but it looks quite cool so keep it’, and was seen to be giving stage directions and telling the drummer where to come in etc.

The drumming is skilfully effective also, not just knocking out a rhythm but adding some little intricate bits in to the style to make it interesting and well played, while beating the sound out with his mouth wide open, and I swear it never closed once.

The last track of their set got the crowd moshing wildly at the end, and it has to be said that this was a particularly good set. The band should be pleased with how this one went, and they got quite a bit of respect from the other bands also.

I know CAPTAIN EVRYTHING are bigger but somehow just didn’t do anything for me, they just seemed a bit bland and the songs did not carry enough distinction to not sound different from each other. I couldn’t believe they could be that bad so I moved right to the front in the hope of it improving the gig for me. They did seem to get better, and ended with the classic ‘Casablanca’ but I would have still preferred a bit more guitar riffery to break up the straight forward up and down strumming.
One of the best parts about this band has to be the charisma of their front man who has the ability to entertain the crowd and later showed more talent when adding a bit of guest percussion and trumpet to the next bands set.

Not having caught LIGHTYEAR when they came to Hitchin this was the first time I had seen them and I was totally impressed. I’ll tell you now – I’m not the biggest Ska fan but these were better than I thought they would be. (I even got their C.D. after the show) – looking at the lyrics they seem quite an interesting, intelligent band.
They have a comedic element to their live shows and are fantastic at interacting with the audience, they were able to do anything for you, including organising a cup of tea to be especially made for one member of the audience, while he was off stage doing that, their Mitchell brother look-alike that varied from horn section to acoustic guitar, asked what we want – when someone shouted ‘Guns n Roses’, he went ahead and knocked out a song of theirs and sang as well. They also agreed to a birthday dedication to Karl of ‘The Wans’ which I’m sure made his day.
Another one of their 7 piece it was noticed, had more than a passing resebelence to Shaggy from Scooby Doo.
As mentioned earlier , Capt. Everything’s front man gave us some guest talent appearances with a few instruments – (horn and drums), while wearing a fake tash and beard made from a black felt tip pen which seemed to be the theme of the evening, which included a few other people doing the same. You couldn’t fail to be entertained by this band, there was fast music that you could skank or even head bang to, the tenor-sax, trumpet and other instruments added a refreshing bit of variation to the line up and they played some cool songs including the track ‘Positive Outlook’ which particularly stood out, making for one of the most entertaining and memorable nights at this venue.


Keith Pickering. Bedford Metal.