Glorious Victorious – a sunny Friday in Southsea

Festivals can get by with grey skies and drizzle but it’s hard not to enjoy bands when it’s blazing sunshine and blue skies. Friday at Victorious Festival is a bit of an intro day with a mid-afternoon start with the main Common Stage and not much more starting up until Saturday. First up for me …

How many gigs have you been to then?

I never used to count but when I cranked up the gig going a few years back it was a question I was getting asked. I thought I’d better have an answer, for myself at least. But what counts as a gig? Yup, it doesn’t matter but as a gigaholic I think you need to …

Victorious Gems: Part 1. Slow Readers Club.

Headliners at the Victorious Festival (August Bank Holiday weekend, Southsea Common) are usually ‘very experienced’ and appeal to the more mature end of the broader festival going crowd (myself included), but with so many acts there is still always the chance of a couple of new gems. A couple from 2017 that I really enjoyed …

Victorious Gems: Part 2. Crows

I was drifting across the Castle Stage area at Victorious Festival in 2017, early afternoon, with friends on the way somewhere and we put the brakes on when we saw CROWS. I hadn’t heard of them. They hadn’t released much at all at that point – just a few tracks available. The lead singer was …

Killing Joke back on home turf

KILLING JOKE + Radical Dance Faction at Subterania, Ladbroke Grove 10.8.19 A more intimate gig for Killing Joke, if Killing Joke can be intimate, in the club under The Westway which holds less than 500 I’d say. No wonder this one sold out so quickly. Apparently they used to come down here when they were …