Last week the Grand Festival came to Berlin for the first time. The aptly titled 3 night event took place in three different venues, starting on Thursday night in Magnet with 8 Ball and Channel One opening up for David Kitt. He has been a longtime favourite of mine. Ever since that one time I saw the video for "Song From Hope Street" on No Disco. Kittser came onstage by himself in a bright pink t-shirt and began the set with his ipod. He told us that it had been a while since himself and his bandmates that night had played together, so they joined him onstage one song at a time. By the end of the night they were five. Keyboards, drums, three guitars. IT WAS DEADLY. It was so great to see him live, i think it was one summer at Witnness that I saw him the first time, and about 2 years ago at Queens Uni. This gig in Berlin was probably the best of all. He played his Thin Lizzy cover of "Dancing in the Moonlight", "Long Long Stares", "All Night Long", "House With Trains", "Song From Hope Street", "Into the Breeze", and some new songs, the one in particular which stuck out for me was "Dont Fuck With Me". Kittser gave us one encore and finished off the night with "Headphones", which I had been waiting for all night long. This is one of my favourite songs and one of his oldest, it is deadly he still includes it in set lists. His onstage presence is warm and friendly, he clapped when we did and smiled and laughed alot and said "cool" after each song in that lovely Dub accent. By the end of the night with a full band behind him he was really rocking out. He was a sight to behold, stamping his feet and shaking his leg a la Elvis and throwing himself about with his guitar. I'm glad he had Ritche Egan playing with him because I wasn't able to make it to see Jape the next night at Intersoup. I heard that the band were doing their bestest to keep up the Irish nation's reputation as incredible boozers. It was an intimate crowd at this gig, and it seemed like everybody was Irish. The atmosphere was different to a usual gig there, there was more hollering and lepping about.
I made it to the last night of the festival then on Saturday for Twin Kranes and The Things at White Trash. This gig was bleedin' massive. Before it, I wasn't familiar with these bands at all, so I was really excited to check out some new bands from Dublin that I didn't know about; I wasn't let down. Neither was the rest of the crowd - at one point there were 5 fellas throwing themselves across the dancefloor like a game of pinball. Lead singer Neil strutted around onstage in full glam: short waistcoast, tight jeans, white face make-up, black lipstick and heavy eyeliner. Their songs were heavy with dirty guitars and sexy lyrics. Neil growled goodbye, saying "Get fucked, go home, roide yer boyfriend." An italian instrumental band called Mashrooms (from Italy) were the very first band. They had a violin player - is that why they were included in the line up? They had a powerful sound and gave us a pretty short but intense performance. Their drummer is cool.
Eh, this post is kind of crap. I'm still recovering from 24 hours on the go yesterday. ASLjuirjdasld.
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