damerell

Pretty good weekend. Off to Malediction in Reading; 6 bands starting about 3pm, although of course they overran. Seize and Swarf I'd never heard of, and indeed they were quite unremarkable tiresome noise crankers, and the bad news was that Libitina, who used to be mediocre, have taken everything bad about their previous repertoire and exaggerated it, producing a hideous harsh ear-blasting effect - so they're now completely awful instead of mildly enjoyable.

OTOH, Libitina did play "Gothic People" (a parody of Pulp's "Common People"), which is actually quite well done - they don't normally, because they hate being better known for a parody than for their own songs, but when it's the best thing they've written...

On the good side, Psychophile (who I'd also not heard) turned out to be perfectly serviceable bouncy stuff (and their singer has a rather good voice - very deep for a woman). Chaos Engine's stuff is not really anything I'd care to listen to normally, but it's very slamdanceable; Martin, Mark and I were joined by 2-3 random people out of the crowd, and we pummeled each other for most of the set. I have an magnificent set of bruises on my forearms as a result - it was mostly in the "punch each other's arms" style, which is pretty hard on you.

The Dream Disciples were fantastic, but that was not really a surprise. Possibly it was a bad plan to participate in lifting people up into the air, since I also have an interesting set of pains in my neck muscles today.

Then, John and I raced off to Slimelight, which was mediocre but tolerable (but I couldn't have gotten back to Bracknell at all at that time, which scuppered the idea of doing anything else) and finished off my legs.

All in all, I'm feeling the effects today. :-)