All The Way From Mayfest

The Mayfest set was a blast. It's official - the Stealer has Landed! You can see the whole set, divided into six easy pieces; here, here, here, here, here and (of course) here.

Martin Dixon. Rock, and, furthermore, Roll.

Thanks to our man Peter Sutton for wielding the video camera. Stealer would like to thank everyone at Tracks @ The Railway for their kind hospitality - Barbara, Brian, Becca, Martin and all their friends and relations for making Mayfest such fun. We're looking forward to seeing you again on 9th June.

The quality of the bands on Saturday Afternoon (there were bands on Friday and Sunday too...) was quite something.

I was sad to have missed Vex as I discovered - too late - that it featured two of my favourite young musicians, Jake Graham and Luke Graham, sometimes of Stone Pony.

My Cocoon

I did arrive in time to see My Cocoon, purveyors of atmospheric and heartfelt doom, featuring my pal Dan Coyle (usually of Up Against Us) on drums.

Next up was The Dying Breeds, bringing back the fun of the happier side of punk - they reminded me very much of The Damned. Very much to be recommended. A band I'd like to see again.

The Dying Breeds

All the bands up to then suffered somewhat from the unfortunate fact that they were competing for attention with the F. A. Cup final. This finished towards the end of The Dying Breeds' set, after which everyone piled in, just in time to witness the epochal return of Stealer.

Paul Noon opens Stealer's account (pic by Martin Dixon)

I like to think that we'd be very hard to follow - but it took a band of the calibre of Shock Hazard to do it. A worthy winner of a recent Battle of the Bands contest and tipped to do well in a national unsigned bands contest, Shock Hazard play raw hard rock with a tinge of AC/DC, but make the kinetic Angus Young look languid.

Shock Hazard. They're blurry because they were moving around. A lot.

Bad Touch

They launched into their set like men possessed and kept up the pace right to the end. Amazingly, they did this after having already played a gig that day - and they were (or so I heard) on their way to another. Honestly, all I did was twiddle my knobs for 45 minutes and I was knackered, but then I am very old. Shock Hazard is a band that'll go far. I bought their CD Danger Of Rock and look forward to listening to it, cup of cocoa in hand, between The Archers and Gardeners' Question Time.  Closing the night was Bad Touch, who gave it some rock'n'roll swagger in the style of Thunder or Bon Jovi.

We Stealers were struck by the energy of the bands with whom we shared the billing. Such youth! Such vigour! We were old enough to be their Dads. However, I'd like to think that we older and arguably wiser types showed those young whippersnappers a thing or two. Here's hoping...

Now, back to the Secret Location to rehearse the full-length set in time for O'Grady's in Yarmouth on 19th.