Beer Garden Party

Just by chance, we found out on Friday that Man-Machine, a Kraftwerk tribute band (the best according to their poster, the only one in Europe according to one web source) were playing in one of our local pubs the following night. My websearch also taught me they were playing Bestival and supporting Chemical Brothers (ironically enough!) and Pet Shop Boys. Well, we thought, this could be great or it could be terrible, but we had to go and find out for ourselves.
We tried rallying the troops but to little avail, although we did manage to convince some very nice people that we had just met to give it a try. We took up our places in the beer garden as the band set up their technology complete with laser displays, under the covered patio. They gave us a good show with the usual favourites including Autobahn, The Robots and The Model, as well as some lesser known tracks.

Predictably, after a relatively nice day, it started to rain and they feared for their equipment and finished hastily on a few tracks from other bands including Faithless. Bravely we stuck it out, marvelling at how pretty the raindrops looked in the lasers – like green and red glitter – a bit like Christmas!

We could tell they were wondering (as were we) what on earth they were doing playing in a pub beer garden in the north of England, and at one point said 'we've never played at a garden party before'. It could only be Britain couldn't it? Sitting outside in the rain listening to electronic music! We had a chat to them as they were packing up, and I asked them what brought them up here from the Isle of Wight. It turned out that one of their wives ran a Punch tavern pub and did an article for their magazine, and they were interested in the band and asked if they could advertise them for hire to Punch pub licensees, hence why Liz, landlady of the White Swan, ended up with them in her beer garden.

Very surreal. Very fun. You can check the band out on myspace, and if you get chance, go see them!