Credit: Found On Internet

8 July 2006
Finsbury Park

Good causes are like a class of primary school children putting on a Nativity play – no matter how badly they balls it up, no-one really wants criticise them too heavily. After all, they’re doing good works, and like that gang of carol-singing pre-teens, they’re at least trying to put on a good show.

Which is why it almost seems churlish to criticise the organisers of the Rise Festival for the poor sound quality that plagued the day. After all, they’re putting on a half-dozen stages, for free.

Despite the sound issues, Killer Kela gets off to a strong start, demonstrating why he’s one of the UK’s premier human beatboxes. With a masterclass in just what human vocal chords can do when…erm….in the throat of the right person, it’s an energising ride over lunchtime.

The Duke Spirit have had their sonic tails docked even before they pick up their instruments. Maybe the lazy weekend sunshine has sent someone in the sound booth to sleep, but when the band take to the stage, the only sound that comes out is from the monitors. Slowly, as the set goes on, the main sound is restored seemingly one instrument at a time, with Liela Moss’ vocals being one of the last to be fully restored.

But by now the crowd is looking bored and shuffling its feet, with even the indie aficionados who only show up for the most Cooler Than Thou acts looking disinterested. A shame, as even with the QOTSA-lite “Cuts Across The Land” and PJ Harvey-esque “Love Is An Unfamiliar Name”, their blues’d out slice of Saturday afternoon rock was being largely, and unfairly, ignored.

Graham Coxon suffers a similar fate to the Duke Spirit, in that the sound mix is so skewed that he sounds tinny and somewhere in the next postcode. But by the time the band are rollicking through future single “I Can’t Look At Your Skin”, Coxon’s sneer of “cause it’s doin’ me in!” has just about reached full-sneer.

Looking like a cherubic Elvis Costello in a black beret and grey tanktop, the ex-Blur man knocks out a brace of tracks from “Happiness in Magazines”, with the good-time punk riffery of “Freakin’ Out” being the obvious standout moment. Closing with “People of the Earth”, the audience decides that they’re in on the joke when Coxon declares “people of the earth, you are bland, you ain't even got a decent band”, and the bespectacled six-stringer gets the loudest cheers of the day so far.