Now & Then/Frontiers Gods 2003 Festival - Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 24-26, 2003.
Pennington's / Bradford, UK.
FRIDAY
The Gods 2003 ..
The much loved Gods 2003 kicked off with a pre-show party – or general excuse for a get together – Friday night, at Pennington's 2, the small pub inside the larger venue.
Playing tonight were Raine and Deadline, plus a general all rock n roll music-fest between bands.
Last year this pre-show event was packed to the point of being uncomfortable, but tonight not that many were there. Numbers varied through the evening, but a hundred and a bit would have been the max at any given time.
I'll do my best to not compare this show and last years at other points in the review, as the shows were quite different and given last year's massive line-up and anniversary status, the whole weekend was never expected to top that.
The evening was most enjoyable - especially meeting up with some old familiar faces and more so some new faces from the site and the Noticeboard that I hadn't previously met.
It was nice to have the room to breathe in the venue this time, but it was still a little hard to carry a conversation over the volume of the bands and even the DJ.
But no one was letting that spoil things. Especially cool to see the guys from Pride, Talon and Stan Bush stop by for beers and a little meet and greeting. There's one rumor that had Stan Bush dancing on a table towards the end of the night, but that remains unconfirmed!
I spent most of the evening with Phil, Sue, Kieran and David and the Raine boys, not to mention the Noticeboard Mafia – Goddess, Britny, Andy and co.
Raine's set was excellent. These guys play every week in NY and it shows. Very tight, very polished and I think it went over pretty well. Their new material is kind of different and certainly not your average hard rock fare, but hopefully they impressed with the quality of their warm-up set.
Deadline also put on a good show. They are a nice bunch of lads that are trying to break into the scene and have been working hard to get there.
As with Raine's set, it was more a case of entertaining the drinkers rather than a group of people that had some to see the band's especially. It was more a friendly get together than a gig. That's would be tomorrow.