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Live music, gigs, and concerts discussion.

Love Sparks since I got into them and saw them at the Albert Hall in Manchester a few years ago and then the Philharmonic in Liverpool a year later. The Edgar Wright documentary about them is fantastic as well.

Annoyed I missed them in Manchester because I'm on a coaster trip (same with Dua Lipa (and originally Billy Joel) at Anfield) but they play Wolverhampton in a few weeks so if my finances are OK I might go to that gig.
 
A little local festival yesterday, Lazy Days in Southend. The line up was right up my nostalgic street; Badly Drawn Boy, The Lightning Seeds, and Embrace.

I was supposed to see Badly Drawn Boy about 12 years ago at another festival, but that was in his 'take all the drugs and have a breakdown' period, so unfortunately he pulled out of that one. He only did half hour, just him singing and on the guitar, piano and mouth organ himself. He is incredible, what he did was superb, but he did play an odd set that in half hour could have been filled with crowd plaasers but included some slightly more obscure stuff. I imagine he keeps it interesting for himself rather than trotting out the exact same stuff every time he gets on stage, which is fair enough. He ended with Once Around The Block, which was a bit of a beautiful moment for me.
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Next up were The Lightning Seeds, who sounded awesome and gave the crowd exactly what they wanted by smashing out every hit they've had. The highlight for me was Perfect, which is one of my all time favourites and made me have a little cry heaing it live. Less of a highlight was finishing with Three Lions, amusing that Ian Broudie even apologised for playing it but said they get shit if they don't 😆.

Embraced followed, and were alright. Their sound is their sound, but that is to push everything through the middle in a way that ends with a slightly indistinct mush which was really stark after the crisp sound produced by the Lightning Seeds. The bassist may well have not plugged his guitar in. The crowd seemed to like and they had a couple more songs that were familiar to me than expected, but not my pick of the day.

We'd always planned to leave before the evenings acts, of which I was pretty gutted not to see The Coral, and less bothered by missing out on Peter Doherty. Of a few less known acts Ellur, Pip Blom, and especially The Milk were all great.

The festival itself was a superb set up for a small local thing, lots of children's entertainment and free activities like circus skills, rick climbing and mocktail making on a bike powered blender. Nice to see the kid on my shoulders on a video put out by the festival today, that's her smack in the middle with her arms in the air!
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It was the first time taking the 6 year old as a bit of a test to see if she'd enjoy it and push on to a 'proper' festival next year. We've got the thumbs up for that!
 

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Saw We Are Scientists last week at the Jacaranda Baltic. Part of a short tour to promote Qualifying Miles.

Did just over an hour playing stuff off the new album interspersed with some of their best known tracks.
 
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