The Great Escape - Day Two Friday 18th May 2007

Day Two and up with the larks (if larks get up at 10.36am and watch Homes Under The Hammer these days). Lady Baron went off to meet Lady Baron Senior, I followed up a lead from the text message thingy and found myself watching an interview between Mr Fat Boy Slim and Sir Rob Da Bank. The audience was pretty sparse for this one, but it was quite an interesting chat really. Rob (who must be one of the most laid back dudes around) and Fat (who's had a fair number of emotional ups and downs by the sounds of it) nattered away for nearly an hour. Not much new to report, except Fat's doing Glasto again, is busy-ish recording a new album which might be released under any one of his many guises and his last remaining ambition is to do the soundtrack for a film...ideally by Spike Jonze, who I know is a regular reader so, how about it Spike? Right...

With the chat finished (for now anyway) I settled down to a trio of French artistes kicking off with Barbara Carlotti (classic French female voice, slightly 60's, a bit like listening to a glass of red wine...I'll leave you to ponder that one). Dominique A was next. Powerfully voiced bald mo fo who did that thing where you record bits of yourself then multi layer it so you end up, in essence, playing with yourself...stop giggling. Can't find a My Space page for him and his site is all in French (quite reasonable really), so I can't track down a track for you to listen to...but if you can...do. I imagine he's more of a live force though. The final artiste Francais was the delightfully named Emily Loizeau, which I think means bird. She has the voice of a bird too. A nice one...a songbird...not a crow or Lesser Spotted Black Backed Gull. She looked as fragile as a bird as well, but, on her last song she came to the edge of the stage and, sans microphone, kept us entranced with a track called I'm Alive. One of those hair on the back of the neck moments. C'est fantastique.

Next one of the funniest and most bizarre interviews in history. Howard Marks (legendary drug smuggler and all round nice guy...no, seriously, he is) and Shaun 'I ingested Factory Records' Ryder. Howard makes his living chatting nowadays but could he get a word out of Shaun...could he bollocks. They spent most of the time looking at each other, once in a while Shaun (who is now 'clean' for reasons he wouldn't divulge) would say 'yeah' or 'dunno' whilst Howard tried every trick in the book to get him to open up. They're good mates so Shaun wasn't being awkward...I just think he hated the whole get up on stage and talk about yourself bit. Very funny for all the wrong reasons.

Young Soul Rebels next (another 'street' gig) this time in Traidshop (a sort of Oxfam). Couldn't see a great deal and old men's cardies don't really do much for the acoustics. They seemed ok. A little ska punk-ish in places. Hard-Fi wouldn't be a bad comparison.

Dashed over to another venue (Brighton just has loads of 'em) in time for a bit of The Pistolas. Like Bloc Party lost in the K-hole. Dancey art punk is, so it seems, the way to describe their sound. Good, strong set, well worth seeing again. Tipped for 2007 too...

Across town to a pub for Sex Panther (sounds like some kind of fetish club for people who dress up as cats and lick cream from...places). Fearsome female punk four piece from Oz who have a delightful track entitled Cuntstruck...one for your granny there. I really liked the Panther, but then I have a thing for girl bands, especially the punk variety. Fair dinkum.

Lawks...this is taking ages to write up...time to employ...ONE LINE REVIEWS! Hurrah for all concerned!!

Help She Can't Swim...no, not an incident off Brighton Pier...a band. Sparky, Bis-like and bouncy, bouncy.

Johnossi...all male White Stripes from Sweden. Rocky, bit blues...very impressive actually.

The Hat...hippy-ish, rap-ish, trip hop-ish, zappa-ish...bits of everything-ish really. Couldn't totally get right into it on the night but warming to it more now, especially the track Open Hearts. Probably not the right venue for them (big crowd of slightly drunk dancey folk). A grower I'd say...balls..that's a lot more than one line...

Finally, for Day Two at least, Kitty, Daisy and Lewis (pictured above). Teenage Anglo Asian 50's rock n'roll band featuring their mum and dad. No, seriously. Sounds bloody weird...is actually bloody great. How people this young get to be this good is a mystery to me. Kitty is now 13, Lewis is 15 and Daisy an OAP-tastic 18. They all seem to be able to play each other's instruments. In fact almost every track saw someone swap something. Listen to Mean Son of a Gun and tell me it doesn't stand up to any of the great early rock n'roll tracks...awesome.

Coming soon...DAY THREE! (can you contain yourselves?)