Yorkshire Battle Of The Bands, Semi-Final: Overboard + Edison Medicine + Inside Eve + Novacain / Greenside Arms, Waterloo, Huddersfield

We won our heat of the 'Yorkshire Battle of the Bands 2001' at the start of June and here we were in the semi-finals. We hadn't taken the competition that seriously when we entered, we just thought it would be something to do and we wanted the cash from ticket sales/winning our heat to put towards a future recording session, but as soon as we arrived at the Greenside Arms we were drawn into the whole silly business. We were determined to get through to the final at the end of the month and had been working hard in rehearsal to polish our performance.

The night didn't start off particularly well. Mike, Suggy and I drove to the venue with our gear but Sug was late, which meant we had to rush through soundcheck. We then had to pick out our position on the bill from bits of paper in a hat and Mike managed to get us the 'first on' slot. Awesome.

In the event though, things turned out rather well. Going on first meant we were fresh from soundcheck an hour or so earlier and, despite a couple of minor mistakes, we played better than we had in months.

It was great to be able to relax and have a few drinks after we got off stage. We played so well that we were all fairly confident we'd done enough to go through to the final no matter how good the other bands were, which took a bit of the edge off the irritating competitive attitude we'd exhibited at our earlier show.

Inside Eve followed us and played a solid set of emo pop-punk. Musically they weren't particularly to my taste, but they were very professional and much better than the acts we'd played with in our heat.

Next up were Edison Medicine. It quickly became clear that they were going to be our main competition. Unlike the rest of the bands we'd seen, they gigged regularly on the same Leeds circuit as Novacain and were vastly superior to us in performance terms. One criticism we frequently heard was that, while Leigh was a good singer, he wasn't a very engaging frontman. He frequently turned his back on the audience, rarely said anything during gaps in the set and really just sang the songs without commanding the stage. In fairness he worked on this and got much in the last year or so that Novacain were together but Edison Medicine's singer Oli was a natural. Their songs were overlong, but otherwise good, like The Wildhearts with a hint of Therapy? and Faith No More. This was going to be tough.

Luckily for us the final band, Overboard, weren't very good. They played punk without any of the style or songwriting talent of Edison Medicine and, as the saying goes, they didn't trouble the scorers. As two bands from the night went through to the final we were relieved, although not surprised, when it was announced that Edison Medicine and Novacain would be returning to play the following week.

Mike used my set list from the semi-final for the final, hence the crossing out and notes.

Set list (Novacain)

1. Gibbsy's Street
2. Cull
3. Heads You Lose
4. Now You've Got It, Use It
5. Quick Release
6. One For The People
7. Echo
8. End Of The World