FIONN REGAN Live @ The Wedgewood Rooms, 22/02/2010

Loz Bridge

Loz Bridge is gaining a bit of a reputation. Having dropped the box social, he’s now all on his own. On the back of supporting David Ford, he’s Hampshire’s best kept secret, winning fans wherever he plays. It’s no exception to night as everyone shifts from the bar as China starts the evening. He seems very much at home, full of confidence on the big stage. Armed with only his acoustic guitar, the sound and lyrics really captures your attention and imagination, inventive yet uncomplicated. The folksy-blues sound you could say is meant for the old smoky blues club, but this very much a sound for now and should be appreciated on a much bigger level. The slow burner of ‘The Room’, ends the very accomplished set on a grandiose high.
Danny and the Champions of the World open with Henry the Van, a nice slow introduction to the band before they really bring the song to life. From then on its all proper Americana. Real feel good, toe-tapping goodness. The band themselves ooze enthusiasm and this really rubs off on the crowd and their cover of My Girl a personal highlight.
With Fionn on stage, his band is basically DATCOTW. Its more confusingly rather than being a novelty. In all honesty the music’s the same, but gone is that playful edge and replaced with his beautiful velvet voice. The band does a really good job in showing his songs in their full potential and thankfully doesn’t overshadow him. New single catacombs break out the biggest cheer of the night in what has generally been a subdued yet appreciative night of music.

SOUTHSEA FEST: The Editor’s View

The Deads

Here is the first of our reports from Southsea Fest, but keep checking back for other people’s views of the day and some brilliant photos of the goings on

 

 

Many people mark down Bestival as the end of the summer festival calendar, but for those of us who dwell on the South Coast (and, indeed for many others too), there’s a one day event that really caps the summer off. Southsea Fest has been running for a few years now and, much like this writers waistline, it grows ever bigger. This was my first experience of it though, but after a day of being roasted alive, crushed, being told there was no more beer and missing more bands than I laid eyes on, I wouldn’t miss it again for the world!
By the time I arrived, collected my wristband and headed back out to the street the party was in full swing, bumping into one of Call Upon The Author’s favourite artists, Loz Bridge, I discovered he had been added at the last minute to the Gang Bang stage. Looking in we saw that The Deads were about to take to the stage, these Portsmouth garage rockers disappeared a few years ago, but are now back in force and played a blistering set that was as compelling as it was fun. Never more so than when the band poised themselves to launch into a new number only to realise that they couldn’t remember how it went!

Kill Kasper

Popping out for a few minutes we made our way to The Loft, but despite the joys of Villiers Terrace we left very quickly due to the baking heat in the venue, heading instead to The Wedgewood Rooms to catch another of our favourite, the almighty Kill Kasper. The Kolonel had been laid low with a particularly vicious strain of swine/man flu, but summoned all his strength to hit the stage and blast out some good honest old-fashioned rock! With the closing chords of Scenesters still ringing in our ears we dashed back to Little Johnny Russells to catch Loz Bridge, only to find him tidying his keyboard away, thankfully it wasn’t in vain as Hold Fast were next to the stage, playing possibly their most ferocious set to date, the band threw out their music so hard and fast that they shaved ten minutes off of their set time. Jumping down into the audience, Roberta didn’t miss a beat while the band rocked out and decimated the crammed in audience with old favourites like Lie and newer tracks such as Jaws.
It was across the road to see The Strange Death of Liberal England next and we were thwarted once again, though this time not by poor timing (by this stage, at about 4.30pm, most stages were running late to a varying degree) but by a queue, the venue was full to bursting, but from the street the band sounded great, as did The B Of The Bang who were playing on the stage we had just left.
Off it was then to The Fat Fox, for a quiet sit down, we caught just a snippet of Nat Jenkins, whose songs didn’t do enough to capture the attention. Back on the street we decided to go walkabout and see where we ended up, which was the Magic Bean Café, hosting a poetry/acoustic stage, this was a lovely little find and the only venue selling cake! Abi Lanigan was performing and rapidly became our favourite find of the day with some great song writing, (more of that later). As we stood outside and shared a beer with Abi’s bass player Ryan, we caught up with Alex from festival headliners Official Secrets Act who appeared to be having so much fun that he’d lost his socks. Meanwhile, back in the café Le Plat Du Jour played a strong set of laid back, fuzzy post rock musings.

Gabby Young

Back to The Wedgewood Rooms and Dan Smith was sat alone on stage with his keyboard, pouring out some intriguing tunes and leading us to make a mental note to check out more. For the second time in the day we poked our head into the Awesome Noise stage next door too, only to find that once again there was nobody playing. Were they hiding from us? We popped into another stage at The Wine Vaults, bumping into Greg from Melodramas who excitedly shared the bands new ventures with us (again, more on that ata a later date).
Back at The Loft, which had thankfully cooled down somewhat, we just missed Logan (Son of Robert) Plant’s band Sons Of Albion but we were just in time for Gabby Young & Other Animals. Built around Gabby’s powerful voice this set was a little treat from the Hong Kong Gardeners Club who were running the stage (if you haven’t checked these two ladies and their brilliant nights out, then you really should make the effort). For some reason Young & her animals even brought a puppy with them, which seemed to perk up the slightly flagging staff at the stage.
Across the road, and back to where our day had started, we caught the festivals only internationals, the brilliantly scuzzy LoveLikeFire, who were so great that we decided, on the spot to end our evening on that high, disappearing into the night in pursuit of Chinese food, while the rest of the festival goers delighted in the likes of The Joy Formidable and James Yuill.

many thanks to Emma van Kooperen for the photographs.

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF: Loz Bridge

Here at Call Upon the Author we have no shame in crowing about the artists that we love, thats why we want to introduce them to you. One of our absolute favourite songwriters is a young man named Loz. He’s been one of the biggest influences on this site getting started in the first place (though he probably doesn’t realise it) and with the Box Social by his side, he’s an artist we think you should all be checking out. So, without further ado, lets have a chat with him.

I started picking out tunes on a little Casio keyboard when I was about 8. The first tune I learned was Axel F, you know from Beverly Hills Cop, I played it with one finger. That, and the Terminator theme tune. I pretty much did that for the next ten years, then I spent some time living over in Amsterdam and a guy over there who was very influential in my life persuaded me to start using my voice and writing my own tunes.

Suburbian was the band I moved to Porstmouth to form in 2003. I had a bunch of song ideas and a couple of willing participants and we mangled together a band. It grew and distorted over the years and eventually turned into a huge epic rock band with four full-time members. And we did ok – I have really good memories of being in that band, particularly a real positive sentiment of doing something new and right, something completely for ourselves which was a first for me. Unfortunately our guitarist had to leave town and pursue a Uni course in Manchester so that was the end of that, and by that time I was starting to realise anyway that the full-blown rock thing was not for me. I had other ideas…

I think it really must be given how many people seem to have responded to that song! Maybe it’s true of all professions, but I think when you’re employed in a menial office position as pretty much the lowest cog in the works there comes a point in the day – usually about 5 hrs into an 8 hr shift – where you could just put down your data entry and gouge out your own eyes. That’s the place where this song was written from. The funny thing is that it started out as a joke, just a little poem I wrote to keep me sane and make us laugh, and then I thought why not try and put it to music? The idea behind the big stomping Bavarian beat was to try and make the track sound like a work song, like the rhythm of the big drums they used to bang inside warships to make the galley-slaves row harder.

What I’ve drawn from supporting these guys is to remember that if I ever make it to that level to be a nice guy and not turn into a wanker. It’s so pleasant to meet someone like Karima Francis who’s being propelled to the dizzying heights of a national stardom who has such modesty and humility about who she is, and is so sincere about what she does.

Also, just because you’re a touring artist that doesn’t give you the right to take up the entire 2 hours sound-check yourself and leave no time for your supports to sound-check. All you’re doing is ensuring the opening two bands are pissed off and sound rubbish, which makes for a shit evening for the audience so they’re in a bad mood by the time you come on. Sorry, I don’t mean to rant, had some bad experiences with headline acts who think they’re God’s gift…

I feel like that’s the viewpoint I have anyway. I don’t mean to sound like ‘love me love me I’ve got no home‘, but I’ve been moving towns and countries for the last ten years never really settling – that’s bound to have an effect on the music. Funnily enough though I don’t seem to write songs about places, more about situations, that’s what I find fascinating.

Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes their work can give me other ideas about how I should approach my songs, ideas I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. But to be honest, I’m not really thinking like that when I play for other people. I embrace the chance not to have to think about songwriting, or singing or being a frontman or any of that stuff, it’s just nice on those occasions to be just a keyboard player again and loose myself in that.

Ha ha! Brilliant question! Firstly if I had access to a time machine I’d visit myself aged 10 and say: look mate, those huge tinted glasses are a big mistake, chicks will never dig boys who look like Mike Reed…, then I’d nip over to San Francisco and steal Rufus Wainwright’s idea for ‘Fourteenth Street’.

I’d like to have seized control over Indo-China.

No, not really, that’s not gonna happen until at least 2011. At the end of this year I’d like to have built up a decent fanbase. We’ve got some great fans at the moment but there’s only about 4 of them, so by Christmas I’d like to have at least 6. Also I’m keen to start playing more in Brighton, I love that town but it’s proving difficult to infiltrate….

Check out Loz’s music at: www.myspace.com/lozbridge

POLLY SCATTERGOOD – Live @The Talking Heads, 19/04/09

Stiff Promotions have a strong reputation and steady following in Portsmouth, but when they decided to venture into Southampton we at Call Upon The Author decided we had to be there! The Talking Heads is a real spit & sawdust venue, a stage in the large back area of what is essentially a pub. It really works though, there is a ton of atmosphere here. First up on stage were Loz Bridge and the Box Social. Bridge and his band have really grown in the past year from a bunch of guys with good songs into one of the most impressive bands in the south. Tonight they played old favourites like ‘Witches’ and China and a couple of new tracks, most notably ‘Brazen Bull’, a departure for the band musically with it’s much more uptempo vibe. Andy Foster was on form tonight too, layering bluesy guitar over the songs in ways I’d not heard before from the band. Next up were Light Effect. You may remember these guys as Beau Monde, but their former front man is gone, replaced by rhythm guitarist Austin. It seems to have worked in the bands favour, shaping them into a much more cohesive unit. Of all the bands that regularly ply their trade locally, these guys look most suited to mainstream success. When Polly Scattergood took to the stage I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Speaking to her before the show she seemed a little shy and withdrawn and I’d heard tales of stage fright, but when she began performing she held the attention of every audience member. Swaying and gesturing like Kate Bush, she put me in mind of a British Paula Cole with her interesting song structures. She is already picking up plenty of media interest and judging by the crowd reaction when she attempted to leave the stage, she’s only going to get more popular with the public too!

check out Stiff Promotions at: www.stiffpromotions.co.uk

check out Polly Scattergood at: www.myspace.com/pollyscattergood

check out Light Effect at: www.myspace.com/lighteffectband

check out Loz Bridge & The Box Social at: www.myspace.com/lozbridge

LOZ BRIDGE AND THE BOX SOCIAL: Witches EP

Loz Bridge is a talent I’ve been fortunate enough to come across many times, making plain my admiration for him both as songwriter and performer. Thus it’s rather obvious that his debut EP is going to become a favourite part of my collection, especially as the titular Witches is, in my opinion, the best thing he’s written yet. We’ve all been trapped in a mind numbing office job at some point, but I for one have never viewed it quite the same since having a gander through Loz’s twisted window on the world. Make no mistake this is a song that would sit proudly on albums by the likes of Lupen Crook, Louden Wainwright and even Tom Waits. It is, in short, the perfect introduction to this young man’s music.