Sharpen up the knives.

I went to see Puressence last night at the Water Rat's in London. I'd not been
there before, and it turns out it's about the size of a shoebox. I'd gone along
with grahamb and when we got there we met with Technical Rob, and
chatted to Pete who is known as scathe and said hello to Tracey who
is dragophelion. When they opened the very small
theatre at the back we went in to be faced with a stage filled with wooden
chairs, obviously for an acoustic sit-down band. This turned out to be for the
support, Fourth Value (or possibly Volume). This was good news - I didn't think there was a support.
They were very acoustic indeed - two flat-tops, a bass, a digital piano and a
bloke with various hand-held percussion accessories, all doing the harmony vocal
bit except for the bassist. Not the sort of thing I generally go for that
strongly, but they were very solid and their set was well worth catching.

After which, of course, came the main attraction. Four ordinary-looking blokes
with short or very short hair. There had been a certain amount of debate over
whether they'd be any bloody good these days. A post-mortem afterwards had been
mentioned. I was therefore a little unsure as they came on. Was ths going to be
a transcendent experience? Or would I have shelled out, dragged myself into the
Smoke and crammed myself down the front of a microscopic theatre for nothing?
Well, fortunately it was a lot closer to the former. They (ahem) "rocked", as I
believe the cool and groovy kids say these days. I was right at the stagefront -
close enough to have to dodge the head of the bass. The sound was
excellent - in what Rob told us was a difficult room - apart from not being able
to hear the keyboards from where I was. And more importantly, they played a
stormer. Their singer was in excellent voice (very important for Puressence),
and they played a good mix of old and new stuff, the new stuff sounding good to
me. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out recorded. It wasn't an
amazingly long set - about ten songs, and India for the encore, finishing at
about half-ten, but it was an excellent one. I nabbed the bassist's setlist at
the end (Okay, before the encore . . .) and afterwards my associates made me
(forced me, at gunpoint) to buttonhole the various members of the band and ask
them to sign it (Graham Clark - saddest man alive). This they all did, with friendliness and good humour, and
chatted about stuff. they said they'd felt a bit rusty, and when they tour
(autumn, maybe) they expect to be more together. I hadn't noticed any problems.

Eventually we left for the station, got back to flatland, I walked home, went to
bed at two and woke up tired. But I've still got that setlist. If I'm feeling
especially sad I may have it framed. But I will have to feel especially
sad.

The folk festival starts today. I'll be going, but I'm at work at the moment. The roads near the house have been gridlocked by campers arriving. Getting out of town was very interesting.