Overview

The first ‘Endorse-It Indoors-It's In Somerset’ was a one day indoor festival held at The Cheese and Grain in Frome on Easter Sunday. Arriving at the venue a little early, the nice doorman let us in and we had a chance to find our bearings, meet a bloke in a dress, check out some cool flat tops and had enough time for our daughter to get a temporary tattoo before the large enclosed space got busy.

The Cheese and Grain had been decorated with ‘trees’ full of fairy lights and it was a sizable stage – Magic Skool Bus were doing a soundcheck when we arrived and the PA packed a punch! We briefly met up with some of The Stripey-Jumper Crew and they were looking forward to a good night ahead of them.

As well as the airbrush tattooist there was a Mexican food stall catering for food and a jewellery and clothing stall and two merchandising stalls selling T-shirts and CDs and as Kirky DJ got the soundsystem going, the bar opened up selling the usual drinks as well as local, just up the road, Milk Street Brewery’s rather nice Nicks and Nebula ales both perfect for an all day session.

There weren’t many people about as the first band Magic Skool Bus took to the stage a downfall of being first on there were a few young punks there to enjoy them. Festival Compere Flounder now in a suit, introduced them and welcomed us to the event with his usual lively friendly manner. MSB are a six piece punk/ska band with a horn section and though I said I wouldn’t describe him thus, a bass player who looked like Hurley from the TV series Lost. In my opinion I preferred their ska segments to their punk segments and was much more impressed once their saxophonist took over vocal duties, however the local punks clearly liked them. The second half of their set was much better than the first though that could be down to the bolstered numbers as more people were arriving all the time.



They certainly got everyone dancing about and received a warm round of applause as Kirky DJ returned to deck duties and people got chatting before the start of the next act.

Toupe were a surprise, two bass players! Yup just the two of them some pedals and a demon drum player, Jay on the skins who slammed out complex patterns and fills over the glorious basslines. They’re well worth seeing especially if like me you’re a bass player – at one point I went down to the front of the stage to drool over the Pedulla MVP6 an impressive six string bass worn by singer Grant Sharkey. I was really impressed by this lot and have today been enjoying surfing around their website which includes a chance to listen again to Karl and Grant’s basslines and Jay’s beats with downloadable tracks from the records Alopecia and Burgers. Great set and I look forward to seeing them again.

I briefly leave the venue to take our daughter off to an Easter Egg Hunt and return in time to catch Far Cue and the venue’s looking a fair bit fuller now. This three piece local-boys punk band are loud and abusive and class! Their frenzied punk has us grinning as they thrash out their own standards peppered with expletives as well as covers of ‘Gay Bar’, ‘Ace of Spades’ and the huge sing along to The Proclaimers’ ‘500 Miles’ all this plus loads of glorious trashy punk rock and it’s all starting to get a bit wonderfully messy! Plus they’ve dragged in a fair size crowd now and the place is startin’ to vibrate!

Time for more Kirky on decks as The Belly Dancing Hit Squad make their debut appearance to the surprise of Keef_man who due to an accident at Glastonbury missed most of that festival as well as Endorse-It In-Dorset 2005. So to make it up to him he was treated to a sumptuous feast of belly dancing, lucky bloke, although he looked slightly concerned when the male dancers first turned up!



Cracked Actors are unleashed upon us next the Skunkrockers perform a blindin’ set which has me, my wife and our daughter up and dancing from the off, it all blends into a glorious mix of reggae and punk and takes me back to punk’s glory days. There’s loads of ‘em on stage, at least eight by the sound of it and Birmingham’s finest give us a right old knees up and the crowd are clearly loving them. Crunching basslines and a fantastic horn section, I hope MSB take a few notes as this is how reggae/punk/ska should sound. Glorious!

Carpet Face and the Gooseneck Steppers – sitting here writing this now my first thought is no idea who this was, my mind’s totally blank at this point I think I may have been shot to pieces when the beat box duo were on, my notes say ‘the place was nicely full feeling but still with space to dance’ and that’s it. So I’ve just taken a look at the pics from the night and suddenly I can remember them being on, but not much else! I know I needed beer and fast so I made my way to the bar for a bit of a chat and a chance to cool off, and thus I missed most of Gooseneck Steppers and their dub rapping. Hip hop is not my bag usually but I seem to remember finding them funny, although I’m not sure if it was intentional!



Next up tho’ was not forgettable, the highlight of the night, the mighty Pronghorn and within seconds I’m punching the air and dancing to their mix of cowpunk banjo psychobilly and it’s brilliant stuff, the pace has us leaping and they’re tighter even than I remember them last year. On belting form and their nearly hour long set is over in a blink. Tremendous, made even better by the fact my daughter loves them too, although this could be more down to the young lad on stage with the band, whatever this lot make the Pogues look slow and it’s marvellous! Go see them, you’ll love it. Lead vocalist Lamma with some sharp sideburns and better hair than mine powers out the vocals with intensity while his fingers whirl over the banjo slung low over his natty suit shoulder. Ffi adds her vocals to the mix and has us all dancing and the other six aren’t just there to make up the numbers they’re there to make the most glorious noise. I really must get some of their records, they’re rapidly becoming my favourite band!

Merv beams into the Cheese and Grain, materialising behind the decks the spectacled half of Eat Static floors us with some truly cosmic tunes – I try to peak into his CD collection but he politely extricates it as I foolishly ask him to please return to the Ozrics. Another excellent revelation, my daughter really likes his astral spacey ‘beep beep’ music and dances happily all the way through. The applause at the end makes it clear there is a heck of a lot of fans in, and it has to rate as one of my favourite DJ sets for some time. Pieces of various ‘HyperSpace’ bands were played but nothing I could place before my mind was directed elsewhere but all strangely familiar. I really wish I’d got a chance to see his record collection – that’s something Q should do a feature on.

The night proper is toasted with the mighty Beat! God, how class are these rude boys? Brilliant headliners performing at their best and with an added bonus of Ranking Roger’s son "Ranking Junior" aka Murphy joining him on mic duties! And they still sound fabulous commanding us all to get up and dance! Blimey there are even wheelchair users in the mosh pit! How class is that! It’s a mixture of old stuff re-worked like a smokin’ version of ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ and ‘Rock the Kasbah’ to newer stuff like ‘Muscle Ska’ and ‘How do you do’ and it’s hot it’s sweaty. And my god how well is Rankin’ looking nearly thirty years on?



Behind the two vocalists drummer Everett, keyboardist Blockhead, guitarist Neil Deathridge and bassist Andy Pearson provide the big beats and it really is a master class in ska! They’re performance tops even last year’s Beautiful Days appearance and with Saxa and Mark Hamilton providing the horns it’s a huge sound that whips the crowd into a bouncing frenzy. Still up there as the best ska band in the world! Long may they reign! That brings the night’s live acts to their conclusion and as Kirky DJ returns to the decks the raffle is about to take place. But our daughter was shattered and so we left the happy throng but if number 201 came up we won!

All in all a top, top festival, full of fantastic music, wonderful people and a tremendous atmosphere. No trouble, friendly security and great fun. A big thanks to the organisers for this event and I hope it was successful to take place annually, it can only go from strength to strength. What a way to start a festival season and if this is anything to go by, Endorse-It’s summer event should be terrific.

Right, I’m off to soak me aching feet!

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