Big D Review

We arrived early, and watched the soundcheck of a certain Chesney Hawkes (but more of him later) and returned from a quickie at the Charles to see Half a Dog.

Lead singer Julia Skiba has a real stage presence. They're a band I meant to see a million times but never got round to it. Unfortunately for me it was the last time I will, unfortunately for them the room was nowhere near full, which is a shame as they were great.

Any band that has brass, keyboards, guitars, drums and a belting lead singer should be witnessed, especially when they did some great covers that should really have had some illegal dance moves going on.

Half a Dog during their amazing set

There were performances from DanceSoc who did their Street and Jazz routines with their usual charm and Samba Band who were their usual yellow, noisy yet rhythmic selves.

Next up we trod over the damp grass and attempted to watch Pendulum (an act who I won't lie, I've never listened to). We joined the queue, where the Christian Union distributed sweets and cake to amuse us but rather annoyingly Doorsafe had to inform us we weren't able to get in because of the queue. So we gave up, trekked back across the even wetter grass and went to Langwith for a drink.

Samba await the stage

We popped in to the main room to watch the live feed from Derwent and whilst the music was quite good and we had a bit of a dance, I think it was all in the atmosphere. The crowd in Derwent seemed to love it and seemed to be having a great time. Kirsty, our Arts Ed had by this time passed her judgement, "I could listen to this on CD", their final words were "York, you're sick". I've heard York called a lot of things but that's not one of them...

Determined not to miss both of the big acts we staked out our territory in Langwith readying ourselves for Chesney Hawkes. Having heard him soundcheck we knew what was coming, but it was another one that was going to be all about the atmosphere. It was tense, hot and very very sweaty (just ask the boys who felt the need to strip).

Chesney did an hours set that he seemed to enjoy immensely, we also did due to all the covers, classics such as Summer of '69, Jumpin Jack Flash and Don't Look Back in Anger which to say there were many graduating students there raised a few tears, plenty of arm swaying and stolen glances to friends across the room.

He may be a student God but he got the crowd going like no other act

He was very aware of why everyone was there. He announced, "Here's one of my singles" to raputous applause, then he said, "No, not that one...I excuse you if you've never heard this single. It was a flop, but I'm proud of each and every one. That's going to be my next album, 'Chesney Hawkes: The Flops' which to be honest is the sort of honesty we wanted unlike our friends from Pendulum.

He said: "This could be musical suicide, but I hear it's your Uni anthem" (Cue a few puzzled faces) but once he launched into "You're just too good to be true..." there were cheers, more waving and a few more tears welling up (or maybe it was sweat...it was too hot to tell). It may more accurately be a Derwent anthem (he was apologetic afterwards that he didn't know to change the words and said he would have if he'd known) but still got us all going.

The inflatables draw the crowds once the rain eases

After his set there was a mass exodus of people to go outside to get air. By this time the inflatables were all inflated, meaning that the ticket price was being justified...there was plenty of good cheer and the decorations made the event live up to it's Mar D Gras title. There were gripes from many that they couldn't get in to see Pendulum who had been a main draw for many but the most disappointing thing was the weather...but we're in Yorkshire, we can't really rely on that, can we?

• Fri, 27th Jun 2008 5:32pm - Deleted by the author

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