Swindon Music

So, I had the pleasure of attending Dirty South on Saturday night. What a mixed bag. The venue lives up to its' name. It is dirty but the sound is glorious, and it is indeed in the south of London. Thats an aside. The first act, whose name I cannot remember, sounded like Adele being force fed kittens then killed. A big old bag of s**t set with a pointless and ill-informed cover of one of Rihannas less stellar moments. No applause followed their songs or their set. Rightly so. This general theme of the evening was set by this point. Shoddy, pointless, tuneless acoustic acts supporting the band end of the night. The next support act actually raped a keyboard live on stage, at the same time as choking a guitar to death. Some of the most horrendous noise I've ever seen passed off as music. Basically every act before Soulsmith received little to no applause and didn't appear to have attracted even a rubber-neck audience. Soulsmith took to the stage and had the whole venue all-eyes on them within about 20 seconds. They had all the elements the previous acts lacked; melodies, rhythm, musical dynamic, charisma and above all, seemed to actually want to be there. Finally the night had picked up. Force You had a new pop-punk twist to it and new song You Are There (Correct title?) was beautifully understated. Soulsmith pretty much raised the bar 400% and the acts that followed did not by any means rise to the challenge. The act that followed them were a Ting Tings style two-piece, but served with less musical intelligence (I know!?) and a wedge of comedy. A grumpy immovable dumpy guitarist chugged at guitar chords while her male counterpart poked at a Casio keyboard and a drum machine that even the 80s would reject. They were booed off stage needless to say. The last band were so boring I actually went outside to save my sanity and the headliners Dirty Pretty Things and the girl from Ash dodged their acoustic sets and simply went up to DJ. Lazy, and NOT what was billed.

Luckily Soulsmith were worth the £8 I had paid on the door and I live 4 minutes walk from the venue so had paid no bus fare otherwise I'd have been thoroughly disappointed. What a badly promoted evening but completely saved by the joy that was Soulsmith's half-hour on stage. Thanks guys.

I guess that's to be expected when you attend a pay to play night where the bands are picked by how many people they say they can bring, rather than a night with a quality threshold and the line up selected with a musical flow to it - sounds like it was a successful trip from Soulsmith's perspective though!

I agree with you to an extent, but they are a useful thing if you have a reason for playing them - by this I mean the ones where the minimum is no payment, not where you have to buy a set amount of tickets to sell - either as Mike stated in a previous thread you just want the fun / experience of playing out of town, or if you're already in talks with someone in London and they want to see you play live down there (I know a couple of bands who have used this tactic to good effect - saves having to put on your own gig down there, and you get one back on the promoter by being the band that provides no crowd but some actual A&R!)

I'm sorry, I was on that coach and there were more like 20 of us.