9/8/2008 Trash-Stock festival - Part 1

Subject	Trash-Stock festival - Part 1
PostedDate	8/9/2008
	So, a long day begins with me meeting up with Honeykill in North London - it feels rather odd meeting a band in the morning, or even in broad daylight!  As usual, by far the hardest part of the journey is simply escaping London.  As is often the case this seems to take at least an hour, and then the rest of the journey to Nottingham is plain sailing. We arrive at Junction7 to find the usual sort of pre-show organised chaos of bands milling around in the car park and insude the venue. Things sort themselves out soon enough and we get the gear into the venue. It doesn't look like most of the bands are going to get a soundcheck, so we settle down to kill a few hours in the comfortable downstairs bar. A couple of DJs are playing a good selection of music, and the bar is very reasonably priced compared to London venues - plus we know some of the people in the other bands so the time passes pleasantly enough. At one point a notice some guy on the other side of the room seems to be staring at me. He looks familiar in spite of his black shades... After a couple of minutes the penny finally drops - it's Robin 'fucking' Black! I only saw him play in London earlier in the week, and if he didn't recognise me from then, I realise he's probably staring at me thinking something like "I just added that fucker on MySpace and now he's just fuckin' ignoring me!". I'd like to say that I just donned my 'rock star' mirror aviator shades and acted just as cool back at him - but actually I went to the toilet instead and had a dump while it was still nice and clean. He may have got the opposite impression, but actually I wouldn't have been deliberately rude and blanked him - I have no reason too - I'm just quite shy a lot of the time. He probably thought I was even more rude later on when I didn't even bother to watch his show, but wasn't deliberate and I was actually quite looking forward to it. Having already possibly offended the headline act before the show even starts, eventually showtime arrives. DIP are the opening act of the ten on the Trash-Stock bill. I first saw DIP several years ago in a support slot at London's 12 Bar Club and I thought they were terrific!  Unfortunately, this Derby based band haven't played in London since then and I've been really looking forward to seeing them again. DIP are, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit mental. Their standard of musicianship is very high - they've been doing this for ten years now so they know what they are doing! Their songs feature heavy riffing, but are very catchy and full of pop hooks - they are likely to appeal to fans of Terrorvision. Another thing they have in common with the Bradford terrors is their tendancy towards lyrics that are just plain silly - songs about biscuits, wombats, and crumble. DIP are simply about having fun and are highly entertaining!  The band's bass player Laney74 is a massive fan of 80's glam rock, so it must have really made his day when DIP were joined on stage by Robin Black (yes him again) for a Poison cover!  The festival has certainly got off to a great start with DIP - this is pretty much a local gig for them and they went down a storm - a shrewd choice of opening act. The energy level is kept high by London band Honeykill who are on next. This is the current version of the band, stripped back down to a 3 piece. With no keyboards and only one guitar the band has been distilled down to it's very essence. With Alfie the 'Italian Keith Moon' driving things along at the back and just Tish and Jimi up front this is almost a punk rock version of the band now - but it's all about the songs. This is one of the fiercest and most intense performances I have seen from the band, and it goes down very well with this Nottingham crowd - most of whom have never seen or heard of the band before. Honeykill only get about 20 minutes on stage as there are still another 8 or so bands to cram in, but they certainly seem to win a lot of people over in that short time and make plenty of new friends.  It's still early - in fact it's still light outside, but already Junction7 is pretty full with excited punters. This event is proving so popular that I find myself meeting lots of people who I regularly see at gigs back in London! This is looking like a really good event - and it's hardly even started...

PS: Nottingham's Junktion7 has now closed as a music venue.