HW: Celebration Fest

[Nick Lee]

Lovely little festival yesterday at Bicester.
We arrived in time to catch the last couple of songs of Adensum's set.
Seen 'em couple of times before supporting the Assassins, suffice to say
they're improving.
Bruce's Spider were up next and provided a pretty entertaining set
(though not necessarily for the right reasons!), it was very much
unreconstructed Prog, musically pretty good but vocally fairly awful.
Somewhat Spinal Tap, complete with cape-wearing keyboard player.
Didn't hear too much of Anomie as I'd popped off for some supplies.
Dr Brown played a very nice, laid-back, bluesy set, the first time I'd
heard them for some years, the last being at Glastonbury (2000?).
The One-Eyed Bishops carried on in a similar vein with some great blues
standards.
Huw's set was a blinder, easily better than any of his performances on
the last hawktour.  He seemed very relaxed and put on a great show and
was joined by the Assassins for his last number, Hurry On Sundown which
segued into their set.
A bit tight on time the Assassins played a very tight set. Joined by
Ben, as at Hawkfest last year on wind and violin, they ploughed through
Utopia, Brainstorm, Uncle Sam's On Mars amongst others finishing off
with a wonderful version of High Rise (complete with some lovely violin)
followed by Motorway City.

All in all a lovely day out. Great weather, good crowd and a very
sociable day.
A big thanks to Dave (and a belated happy birthday) and everyone else
who put the effort in to make this work.

Nick
PS got a roll full of pictures waiting to be developed.