INTERNATIONAL POP OVERTHROW - SATURDAY (DAY 5)

GIG: International Pop Overthrow Liverpool – Day 5 (Saturday)
DATE: Saturday 17th May 2013
VENUE: Cavern Pub and Club, Mathew Street, Liverpool
COST: £2 entry after 2pm and £4 entry after 8pm at the club

This is blog is intended to be a way for us to capture our personal memories from all the gigs we go to see. The International Pop Overthrow in Liverpool hosts over 150 artists, across 3 stages, ranging from solo acts with an acoustic guitar to full on rock bands covering different music styles from folk, pop, rock and everything in between!!!! Whilst we can’t see every artist / band, we try to catch as many as we can. Some we like, some we love, some are pure nuggets and some are just not our cup of tea. This is just our personal opinion of the acts we see through the IPO festival, highlights and lowlights included. If there’s a band we are not fond of, do still check them out as tastes differ and you could have a different opinion from uhttp://www.spygenius.co.uk/s.


Bands seen today = 11
The Silver Factory (part), The Spontanas, The Fast Camels (twice), The Most, Spygenius, Stootsie, B-Side, The Wellgreen, The Springtime Anchorage, Kontiki Suite (part), Octubre

No of different bands seen so far = 52

CDs: The Wellgreen

Day 5 and the schedule is busy again, and today we need to fit in a break to pop along to Beach Boys Britain's annual hootanany in Liverpool.

Struggling to get up in time, we only caught the last couple of songs from The Silver Factory, doing their second slot on this year's schedule, the band on today in the Cavern Pub. Once again we really liked what we heard and will be keeping an eye out for any recordings and other gigs in the future. The stage is a bit smaller than the back stage they performed on last night, so the space for the lead singer to do his 60's soul moves was a bit more limited. For a lunchtime, the crowd in the pub was fairly reasonable.

Eric Spaan rocks

Over on the back stage when we had the chance to see The Spontanas from the Netherlands filling in at short notice and making their 3rd appearance at this year's festival, when Honeybug unfortunately had to drop out due to an injury. A merger of two bands, The Montanas who we have seen a number of times at the IPO and Buffalo Roam, they definitely get the award for the tallest band members, with vocalists Chris and Eric towering above everyone.

What we got was a set of great, punchy, power pop as it should be, with 3 members of the five piece doing the vocals, they had a really strong sound. Visually this band are also good - in particular, the bass player was really having a great time being on stage, rocking out. This is another band whose enjoyment on stage is transferred to the audience.

We were really glad we had the opportunity to catch them.

The Spontanas

Joe on drums

Next up (after a very brief interlude at Beach Boys Britain), were a band we have known for a few years now, The Fast Camels, from Glasgow. They had two appearances today, an afternoon slot in the Pub and then late night on the Back Stage.

There was already a decent sized drinking crowd in the pub when the set started and they loved the cover of "My Little Red Book". Loads of people took photos as the Camels played a really tight set of songs picked from their two albums. The guitars were at just the right volume, not drowning out the vocals.

This is a band which just epitomises Psychedelic, taking you on a musical journey through each song of different tempos. Ending with "Der Nazi Tea", they got such a thunderous applause we were delighted for them.

The Fast Camels play their Pub set

The drummer, Joe (Big Daddy Smythe) made the day of two special needs guys who had danced at the front of the stage all the way through the set, when he handed them both a pair of drumsticks each. They loved it. The simplest of gestures, but it meant so much. Then Joe had to go out and buy new ones. Top bloke!

The Fast Camels - Back Stage

Their next set, later on, was the final one of the day for us. The backstage, with its much fuller sound and more space is the perfect setting for the Fast Camels to play. Their second set was a bit different and included what is now a great favourite of Minty's "Penny Pinching Debt Collector" which really captures everything we like about this band - the harmony, the psychedelic jingly guitars, the smooth flow from full rock out to a slow psych and back to rock out. Although the lads were knackered by this point, this did not hinder their performance and we got another stellar show of fantastic psychedelic pop. This was despite Alan not being of keyboard duty in Liverpool.

The Fast Camels

We urge you, nay, we demand that you check them and their new album "Deadrooms and Butterfly Dreams" out right now!!!
www.thefastcamels.com

The Most

After the Fast Camels first slot in the Pub, the next band was The Most. This Swedish band were back for their second consecutive year and it was great to see them perform again. With a distinctive Beatleish black and white dress mode, they play short, sharp power pop mod type songs. One of their songs today had a "Be My Baby" drum intro which morphed into a great beat-type song. Very definitely Beatles influenced, but with their own style which the large pub audience really appreciated.


For the rest of the evening we were based in the Cavern Club back stage, and our evening's entertainment started with another band we are particularly fond of, Spygenius. With  a great jingly jangly sound, augmented with an organ/keyboard, this four piece give you great songs with clever lyrics. Their first song started fairly quietly and built to a great crescendo that crashed over the audience. From then on, it was a fast paced set, including three new songs which were superb.

For the last song, Ruth, handed her bass to Matt (on keyboards) and took to the microphone and gave us her "angry song" - a 70's inspired punk ditty about a work colleague she didn't like. After that performance we have sworn to never smile at Ruth again!!! It was totally off kilter with their usual sound, but it was brilliant! Loved the whole set. Check them out yourselves on http://www.spygenius.co.uk

Spygenius

Stoosie

Stootsie from Austria was up next. A member of the powerpop group SeeSaw, he was flying solo tonight. His set was a mixture of SeeSaw songs and material from pre-SeeSaw days. We are not familiar with SeeSaw, but you could tell that the songs would have sounded good with a full band behind them. Stootsie himself gave a pretty confident performance that a few other solo acts could have learned from.




B-Side is Sean McCreavey's latest, and very new project, essentially a morph of last year's Surf's Up band. The size of the band and number of instruments meant it took a while to set up but once they got going, they got going. Their single, a summery (very) Beach Boys influenced number (such that Brian Wilson has been given a writing credit!!) went down a  storm and received a great response from the audience.

They ended on a Genesis cover which should have had a backing tape which (thankfully) the sound engineer couldn't get to play (we are not fans of backing tapes)  and in between we got a mismash of different styles of songs as members of the band essentially performed their own material using the rest of the band as backing. Nice enough, with melody and harmony but a bit disjointed in terms of the differing styles of music.  We are sure, as the band develops in time things will fall into place..... it was their first live performance anyhows.

B-Side

The next band were, according to many people, THE band of the IPO. The Wellgreen from Scotland were performing tonight as a four piece. Previously we have always seen them as a two piece but with the introduction of a bass player and another guitarist/vocalist just added so much to their already great sound.

They have all of the ingredients for success - the harmony was pitch perfect, there was a great (and very sizeable) crowd, and the overall sound was just superb. The vocals were beautiful and one song in particular just wowed us and the rest of the audience. "The Greatest" started off with an accapella from Dan which hushed the audience and enraptured them all before the rest of the band joined in. The whole vocal performance on that song was just incredible. The sooner this gets recorded (with strings PLEASE) the better.

Another highlight was Stu the drummer singing lead on "Grin or Bear It" which had a really catchy hook of "whoo hoo"'s from the others. Brilliant set, brilliant sound and the audience absolutely loved every minute. https://www.facebook.com/TheWellgreen

The Wellgreen

The Springtime Anchorage

How do you follow that? The Springtime Anchorage had a tough job. The irony is that this local Liverpool band got this gig on the endorsement of The Wellgreen!!! They are a country rock band, with a bass player whose fingers dance all over the fret board and a really good harmony sound. The lead guitarist was very good but stared down at the floor for most of the gig. The main harmonies came from the lead vocalist and the drummer and their second song of the night really stood out for us, with all four band members adding some terrific vocals.

The Beeb had signed up for a stint as a Cave Dweller on the front stage (the regular Saturday Cavern entertainment) so we took a small break to make sure he didn't miss his call up. When he was called, he had complete command of the Front Stage and the audience and did a terrific version of "20 Flight Rock", with the house band backing him. Did it sound good? It sounded terrific!!!!

The Beeb does "20 Flight Rock" on stage at the Cavern

Kontiki Suite

Back to the IPO entertainment, we caught the last couple of songs from Kontiki Suite. We had seen them last year and bought their CD. From what we heard, they played a tight set, had a great reaction from the audience and had some lush songs that led into guitar crescendos. Maybe a bit too Doors influenced, but good nonetheless. Still looking forward to the second album.


Next up were Spain's Octubre. They played a good set with a sun-shiney Power pop beat, complete with a Rickenbacker to give that jingly jangly sound. It didn't matter that their songs were all in Spanish - it was the melody sound that hit the spot and infected us all and proves that music has not barriers. They did have a saxophone player for some songs, who sounded a bit more like Sweep from the kid's TV show but that just added another dimension.

Octubre

Our last band was the second set for the Fast Camels which we have covered earlier. It was way past mid-night by the time they finished, Bed time for us. See you tomorrow for our last day.

The Beeb with The Fast Camels and Jeroen after their gig