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X-clusive: BSP, Thrills Speak At Icecream Sundae Gig

added 08 August 2005 at 09.54

This weekend saw the first ever Ben & Jerry’s ‘Sundae On The Common’ (clever eh?) with performances from British Sea Power, The Thrills, ex-Libertine John Hassall’s new outfit Yeti and a DJ set from Lemon Jelly.

Call it a cynically branded attempt to market product, or simply tons of people eating too much ice cream on a sunny day, but there was no avoiding the line-up on South London’s Clapham Common this weekend (August 7).

Alongside headliners The Thrills, who’d flown in specially from Portugal because they’ll do anything for ice cream (this may not be completely true), British Sea Power and Yeti, the day also featured performances from Zero 7 vocalist Sophie Barker and Alabama 3.

In between dodging the toe-wrestling and the guy in the monkey suit that seemed to trail us for approximately half an hour, Xfm caught up with one half of Lemon Jelly, DJ Fred Deakin, who explained the similarity between the show and their ill-fated cancelled Jellyland tour,

“I enjoyed the rare opportunity to play really loud music in a built up area,” he joked, “Lots of happy faces and a dancing panda in the crowd. Hey, I have my stalker fan, but what can you do. Today’s got echoes of that tour, definitely. There’s something surreal in the air.”

Speaking to Xfm Online, British Sea Power explained the only reason they agreed to do the gig was to bring their dancing bear out of retirement to scare the under-5s,

“We needed a job for a retired, wounded bear,” Sea Power frontman Yan explained. “They won’t let him in circuses any more because of health and safety, so we brought him into rock music.”

“[Sea Power guitarist] Noble’s spent the last week sewing it and bandaging it ready for today because he heard there’d be lots of kids here and he wanted to make them happy…” Hamilton continued, “Or just scare them… It’s okay, kids like being scared.”

BSP were also offered the opportunity of having a cow (basically an unlucky promotions lackey in a cow outfit) on stage with them. However, this offer was quickly withdrawn when one band member asked if they could, “Have the real cow (from the on-site petting zoo)” and another asked if they could, “Let the bear destroy it with one swipe of its claws.”

Elsewhere Thrills guitarist Padraic McMahon explained that while the band are almost “officially on holiday”, they decided they’d make the effort to help raise some cash for charity,
 
“We hadn’t really done much this summer and we’re about to take some time off, but we thought it’d be a nice way to spend the evening,” he said. “We really rushed the second album, so while we’ve a lot of the third record written already, we’re going to go away, enjoy ourselves and then take our time on the next record.

“We’ll be popping up every now and then but we’re mainly going to be recording new material over the next six months. A few select people may get to hear that though, we might do a little fans-only thing and get some people from the website down [for a secret gig].”

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