General: Pewsey Festival

Had an interesting few days, popping up to Swindon to see my sister and have my Physio check out my knee before my Orthopaedic appointment on the 21st. I've now exhausted all possible physio options and chances are I'm looking at surgical intervention

Still, popping up to see my sister has the added benefit of seeing my brother-in-law Chris. I gave him a hand over the weekend doing the sound and lighting for the Pewsey Music Festival. For such a small place, I was surprised to see such a cool event taking place, with quite a line up.

It was a little odd being the other side of the microphone, but an interesting experience, especially setting up equipment of this magnitude. In the end we had a 15KW setup, with computer controlled lighting and a pretty awesome sound.

One thing that came apparent was the subjectivity of what sounds right and the notion of "everyone's an expert", being perpetually told what needed tweaking by everyone. There's also the battle of the monitors - which starts with "can I have the vocals up a bit please" followed by "can I have the guitar up a bit please", followed by "can I have the vocals up a bit please", wash, rinse and repeat.

Still, aside from being up at 5:30 and finishing at 3am (including putting the kit away in the pouring rain), two little gems made the day worth while. In no particular order, The Mentalists and The Operation.

The mentalists are certainly on the kooky side and I was worried were going to play on their image and not on their music. We have four attractive women, wearing strange outfits and decorating the stage with flowers. The outcome was not what I was expecting - very tight musicianship with some wonderful on stage energy that certainly got some heads bopping. The tracks were unique and catchy and I'll certainly have to pop along to a London gig for a bit more. Do check out their debut single on YouTube.

It's worth mentioning at this point, that despite the wonderful line up and super sound, the place was pretty dead! But I imagine they would have had a crowd going pretty easily.

The next band that caught my attention was "The Operation". A classic three piece rock band, with an outstanding vocalist. I'm a real sucker for a band with a decent vocalist and they dragged me in hook line and sinker. I bought a copy of their EP "San Giuliano" and I've been listening to it this morning and I'm enjoying it. It has a bit of a mid-nineties brit-pop rock sound in places and I was reminded a little of early Terrorvision, Dodgy and The Manic Street Preachers. However, there was enough of a modern sound that made it feel like it would fit nicely in today's charts - and not a band living in the past.

They have a few tracks available on their website - which aren't all on the EP. I look forward to a complete album, instead of having this one on repeat!

The solution is easy. - Just tell them to stand further apart!

Posted By: ClubBarf

Or... Pretend you can't hear them when they ask to have stuff changed. Or... Just stare at them in silent disgust like they just asked you to set your mother alight.

You've not met my mother!