damerell

I should probably write up Whitby while it's still reasonably fresh in my mind. I've overcome my helpless fanboy enthusiasm long enough to cut off the wristband, so now's as good a time as any.

Travelled up on the Thursday; train from Bracknell to Waterloo, across London to King's Cross, train to York, train to Scarborough - quite an undertaking, but I managed to weasel onto earlier trains for the latter two legs. Then a mere 20 miles of gently rolling countryside (this is a LIE, it's up and down like a yoyo until you're five miles out, when suddenly you can see the Abbey on a clear day and you realise there's no more 18% grades to grind up - indeed that it's all downhill from here) and I arrive.

The first hitch is, of course, that Whitby is full of cellphone dead spots - and everyone I'm staying with appears to be in one of them. I trawl around a bit, nip in to the Elsinore (thus briefly being the strangest dressed person in there in my bright yellow cycling jersey), find the place, and much to my relief there is everyone.

Various people showed me the ropes (shush, ya pervs, that's Wednesday's job), but particular thanks to Karen, Alex "Dave", Alex/Heather, and Marisa/Graham who I spent quite a bit of time asking "gee, so what do we do now?".

Thursday night was Creamy at the Metropole, which was - well, actually, I'm a little spoiled here by B-Movie and the rest of the weekend. If I'd gone to it during the gap between Slimelight going downhill and B-Movie rearing its head, I'd have been delighted. Some good music, some not so good (and if I wanted to listen to the Prodigy I'd - well, I'd hit myself repeatedly over the head until I felt better, but that's besides the point), bounced about a little, caught up with a number of the usual suspects. Off to bed relatively early - through the rest of the weekend I kept up my appearance as an up-all-night kind of guy by sleeping in the afternoons - after a wee drop of wine at the cottage...

Friday dawned bright and early, but I did not; nevertheless, I crawled out of bed in time for the newbies' Welcome Meeting, but couldn't find it. I had something of an advantage in resisting the lure of the stalls in that I knew I'd have to lug anything I bought up those damn hills, so I kept it down to a few CDs and a t-shirt. I also managed, throughout the weekend, to drink up to a pleasant buzz, but not to become a dribbling idiot.

Soon enough the evening rolled around at the Spa. First up; Zombina and the Skeletones. I'd seen them before at Rathaus, but I was excessively drunk and couldn't be sure if they were as good as I remembered. They are. Zombina are _really_ good; anyone reading this who even vaguely likes that sort of thing should try and see them. There's some freebie MP3s on http://www.zombina.com/ too, albeit with some registration hoops for downloading them. It's the first time I've seen a first support band get cheered for an encore (which they didn't get, alas, but time was tight), and the front of the crowd was like a B-Movie usual suspects lineup.

Earth Loop Recall sounded pretty good at what they do (once the sound was sorted out a bit), but it's not something I like. Full marks for "sign your name, cross my heart, I want you to be my baby... so I can fuck you" - but I ended up spending most of their set in the bar.

The Damned still rock... but, alas, they were obviously expecting problems, and the response went a little far. No glass across the bar, fair enough; but (perhaps owing to a miscommunication somewhere) the bouncers were perpetually trying to calm down the pit, the primary effect of which was to roll the pit backwards into the crowd behind. I had a pretty good time for 2/3 of the set, but at that point they'd pretty well suppressed everything, so I hid at the back and got a drink while the bar queues weren't quite so killer...

Didn't pay much attention to the DJing afterwards - and I'll cast a veil over the whole "cavorting" incident. After a little of this Alex and Dave and I were off to climb the however-many steps and sit on random lumps of stone - not many other people around that night, but enough to have a fairly decent crowd. Alex managed somehow to get very drunk without noticing it until we came back down, but I resisted the urge to give him a helpful push down the steps.

Didn't do much on Saturday beyond lunch, then back to the Spa. Libitina, alas, are still disinctly off form, but better than they've been. Looked like they got a fairly decent crowd for "Gothic People", but would you want to be best known for a cover?

I'd come to this Whitby because it was the Dream Disciples last gig (John tells me they've played one previous "last gig" - believe me, I can only hope this pattern continues), and they didn't disappoint. A lot of the older material's been reworked to sound as heavy as the newer songs, so we got to hear a lot of the early stuff - no Sweet Dreams, but they did play Aradia and Pray (and Pray is the first of their tracks I ever heard). Plenty of enthusiam from the crowd, too - people riding each other's shoulders, good-natured heckling ("fuck the Mission" I admit was a little unkind), dozens of people going nuts to the favourites like Cure For Pain. One slight annoyance; I hauled Davefish up on my shoulders, but then my neck gave out and I had to put him back down again.

The Dreamies were the first band I ever saw live. I can't really believe it's over...

Last up were the Mission, who I've never seen before. They were _really_ loud - and I was kind of bushed after the Dreamies, so I hid at the back after a few songs. They were still pretty good, though, but I don't have much to say about them.

Then, back up the hill again, and up late enough to see the dawn (and to hear the screaming hordes at the other end of the Abbey - sheesh). As a result I did very little on Sunday short of a few beers in the Elsinore, a nice dinner on the waterfront with a bunch of the usual suspects (including Rhona's impressive trad disguise), and off to Laughtons for the 80s night.

I had wondered if this would be just another B-Movie - not that that would be any bad thing - but Sexbat and Charliemouse excelled themselves, and the bigger venue and crowd added an extra something to the usual hijinks. At the end I was pretty shattered, so I didn't stay up much longer - when it started to chuck it down, having been so nice all weekend, I was off to bed.

Monday I was still pretty shattered, but a big lunch and a nice fortifying beer in the Elsinore left me ready to pack and trawl up to Scarborough. On the way out I noticed one of the nuts retaining my front mudguard stays had gone AWOL; fortunately the bike shop in Whitby (Dr. Cranks on Skinner Street) simply gave me one when I asked, and I'd left early enough that I had time to mess about with the bike. Back up and over the hills - with a headwind AGAIN, and rain - but once again I managed to weasel onto an earlier set of trains, and so made it home just before closing time...