The Great Escape Festival

OK, it's about time this went up on the site as all the Early Bird tickets have gone and I need to get my 3 day ticket.

To those who don't know, The Great Escape is the best 3 days of music in Brighton and the most fun 3 days too. A 3 day festival where you can sleep in your own bed. It's a 'new music' festival which has around 350 bands and artists from all over the world and it takes over every venue in town. You will have heard of some and not heard of most of them but over the years it's the one's I'd never heard of and stumbled across that have been the best bands I've seen.

There will be no set plan but there will (I hope Hamber) be more co-organisers and we will give out mobile numbers and arrange certain times and places to gather. More details to follow but....

It's well worth taking the 2 days off work if you can as the daytime is relaxed, you can easily move from venue to venue and see bands that will be hard to get into in the evenings.

Even if you can only make the evenings get a 3 day ticket.

Don't worry that you haven't heard of most of the bands. The best experiences I have had was stumbling across Suuns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5VyA60qpoo) one year and Trust (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqgv65j3uBo) the next and immediately realising I won't see anything better over the next few days. Everyone else has the same experiences.

Note that Trust and Suuns are obscure and Canadian. Much of the best music is sadly not from these shores. For me it's about discovering bands I've never heard of and most of all having fun. Highlight of last year was five of us dancing 'til 4 in the morning on Thursday night in a club on the seafront to the best techno set I'd heard for years (thanks Peter F).

Anyway get a three day ticket if you can. The day tickets are a rip-off, particularly Saturday. Here's a link to the Great Escape site (http://mamacolive.com/thegreatescape/) where you can buy tickets but you save a fiver if you get them from Resident (http://www.resident-music.com/tickets)

We will arrange a pub meet the week before so those new to the festival can meet those of us who have been before and know where to go and what to see (joke by the way, but the randomness is the fun of it). All I know for certain is that I will be at the Canadian showcase on the Saturday lunchtime/afternoon as the bands are always good and and they had some free Mooseburgers or something last year which were very tasty.

-Andy