I was quite surprised that they hadn’t got round to soundchecking before the doors opened. That’s one thing that really bugs me. I don’t want to hear a band soundchecking just before they go on; it screams of unprofessionalism when you have to hear the neverending avant-garde poetry of the stage-hands – “one, two, two, two, two, check, check, check, check, two, two, one, two”. Anyway, the lights went down, everyone whooped and on came Lost Alone.

These were a very likeable band with fashionable haircuts, catchy emo/pop-punk songs and lots of energy. I especially enjoyed their original 3-part harmonies that were absolutely spot on, smooth and zipped around in contrary-motion, which coming from a 3-piece band is always impressive. For a 3-piece band also to come out with a sound so rich and full gives testament to their skill of setting up their instruments correctly and arranging their songs well. A great set that put me in a great mood for the night. So I went and bought some over-priced, watered-down lager. 7/10

I’d read a bit about Street Drum Corps briefly before I went to the gig, and it sounded a pretty impressive idea, experiment with mixing various percussion things with punk rock. So their slot began (after some more tedious sound checking) and 3 masked guys were hitting some upturned bins with sticks along to some backing track. Now, as a spectacle, this looked impressive, as they were bang on in time to the backing track, but everything was mimed, these bins weren’t even mic’d up, which made the whole little charade seemm like it would be more at home on Britain’s Got Talent than a punk rock show. I’m certain that it would still have sounded pretty cool if we could hear what they were actually doing.

They then started to get down to business, which is essentially rock and roll with a punk edge like Randy or Electric Frankenstein. The percussionist at the front had an array of floor toms, oil-drums and cymbals, which again was a good spectacle and was something different to see in a punk band, but you couldn’t hear a single thing he was doing apart from the odd cymbal crash. Not even when he was hitting the oil-drums with a baseball bat could you hear it as there was not a single section in the music that offered some space for this percussion. Whether it was the cheesy, over the top backing track chock full of synths and electronic drums or the main drums themselves, it made the percussionist at the front nothing more than a dancer who hit things. Take away the entertaining image of this on-stage chaos and the great stage presence of the camp frontman and what you’re left with was a badly mixed, mediocre sound that I’ve seen and heard a million times at local venues. 5/10

I saw 30 Seconds To Mars at the Give It A Name festival in 2008, and they put on a real good show then. Since then of course commercially they’ve gone from strength to strength, so I expected they’d have even more money to burn from their record label and would put on a mind blowing performance. I wasn’t wrong. Happily, the reason for their good performance was the way they structured the whole show, which demonstrated a superb thought process into what would give the most entertainment. Some of these structural effects were the way the curtain came down before their slot to hide their preparations, their quick transportation right to the top of the seated audience to do a couple of acoustic songs, the moving to a stage in the middle of the floor to give everyone a new angle on the band (which, incidentally didn’t stop the moshpit at the front from going crazy with some good-natured circle pits) and getting loads of audience members up on stage to sing their encore of Kings and Queens alongside some inaudible (as always) military drumming from the Street Drum Corps (see the video above that I recorded). I’m glad they spent all their time preparing this performance with truly effective ideas such as these rather than gratuitous special effects and props. A superb, enjoyable gig. 9/10