ComEnts

Has anyone ever been to a battle of the bands that didn't end in controversy?

Last night saw Nokia bring their Rock Up and Play night to the Fez Club in Reading. The idea of Rock Up and Play is that Nokia set up a "Nokia Raw" stage at some of the summer's big festivals and bands who are attending can turn up at the stage, sign up and get a slot playing. All equipment including guitars etc. is supplied so that festival goers who might not even have a plectrum can turn up and rock out. In practice the stage last year got booked up within about 30 seconds of the gates opening each morning, but at least that proved how popular it was.

The idea of the Rock Up and Play tour (other than advertising Nokia products of course) was to allow bands in a few of the towns near the festivals Nokia are playing to come along and just turn up and play. It was also a competition, so the winning band would also win tickets to the festival and a slot on the Nokia Raw stage. So far, so good!

The only downside was that a few bands were selected in advance by sending in demos and got to play 3 song sets, and were able to bring down all their friends whilst anyone who rocked up on the night to play only ended up with a single song set. The judging was then done on "crowd noise" so the bands who had advance notice to bring fans did noticably better. However they'd judged it the result would have been controversial, but it'd be nice if all the bands got an equal shot at it.

In all it was a fantastic night of live music. Almost all the bands were of a very high standard, and it really showed the talent that's around the area at the moment. Two that I hadn't seen before impressed me. I thought Audio Runway were a lot of fun and I'd class The Kicks as one of the top few Reading bands after only three songs. If nothing else, it was a great way for The Kicks to introduce themselves to Reading.