The Kids Are Solid Gold

The Nottingham night definitely belonged to The Deirdres! I didn't see our gig of course, and they sure outnumbered and out-popped The Besties. There were so many of them I forgot to count, and they had a load of cute little instruments and toys lying around on the minimal stage. They had a wee picture of the whole band on the pick-guard of the guitar that I spent most of their gig trying to get a photo of but it wasn't going to happen. They'd already done twice as many gigs as A Smile and a Ribbon and that without leaving the Derby/Nottingham area. Derby seems be a New Pop Town with Mascot Fight (whose lovely demo I got from Ian Watson) also coming from there. As The Besties pleaded for people to buy their records, The Deirdres demos were already sold out - as you can see. They only had ten anyway, and I got one of them! It was definitely an important gig for them, and despite some trouble with broken strings they managed to put on a fun-packed show. Stuart Indietracks was obviously impressed as they are now the first band on the bill for the Christmas Twee event. And they've got several more gigs, including one in London for How Does It Feel to Be Loved?. You could see the satisfaction shining in Sam's eyes. Sam, who also does the Tasty fanzine, had arranged these gigs that took place in the smaller Red Room at The Rescue Rooms. We were happy to discover the smell was not as bad as Pocketbooks had reported, it was mostly the stairway that smelled! Thanks so much to Sam and Lisa who put us up and were just plain lovely, and to Andy for being such a sweetheart. And Woody of course - our new favourite cat. It was quite the post-Indietracks crowd at The Rescue Rooms, which wasn't all that strange now that I think about it, as the festival was quite close to Nottingham. Pete and Ian from Horowitz were there, Mark from The Parallelograms, Stuart himself and Janynie - whose Don't Start Feeling All 'Romantic' were actually co-arrangers of the night I should say. The Besties set was good as well, even though you might have gotten the opposite impression this far. It's was the first time I'd seen them, as I wasn't around that long at the Emmaboda festival. They had even bigger problems than The Deirdres though, and I think it was a good ten minutes in the middle there where they had to make smalltalk. But all the people who were there had come to see the bands so we bore with them. They might have played a BIT too long though, as they insisted on playing all the songs anyway. It was Long, but Good. But they were so much better in London actually.

What else is there to say about Nottingham? Because somehow we managed to waste away our day off there. We got there in the afternoon with the coach and the first thing we had to do was walk through the whole of the city centre to find some lockers to leave our bags in. We could have just gotten of the coach at a another stop, but we didn't know that. After that we went looking for somewhere to eat, and accidentally bumped into Jaynie. Then the rest of the evening was spent at The Orange Tree. Where we also met Richard and Leigh, and eventually Sam and Andy. So, we didn't really do anything except for eating. We did get a shown around town the next day by Leigh though, whom I should also thank. We didn't get up until twelve anyway, so we didn't have time for anything much. And it was blazing hot, for the first time during this English summer. Och well, at least we saw more of Nottingham than Cardiff...

You can listen to all of The Deirdres demos on MySpace. But you can't download this song:

CLOUD 10 The Deirdres - Fun to Pretend