Ramona
Tuesday 5th October, 2010 live @ Madame Geisha, Brighton
Another month and it’s another music festival in Brighton in the shape of Brighton Live, now in its seventh year of showcasing the best up and coming bands in this happy seaside town of ours.
Covering 18 venues and featuring over 100 local bands it’s another free event to warm the cockles and get one out on these cool autumnal evenings. Doing the honours on the festival launch night were Ramona, who have been making waves locally for a short time now.
Kicking things off with “Bowie” was a keen indicator of the 1970s musical references that pepper the set, albeit infused with a new wave sensibility of short, energetic songs. The current single, “How Long”, confirms early thoughts with its distinctly New York punk feel, by way of a hefty nod in the direction of Blondie and, of course, the Ramones. There was certainly an echo of Blitzkrieg Bop in there and the fact that the set later contains a song called NYC would seem to make such a comparison somewhat obvious I’m afraid.
Given that there is a definite style to Ramona it could be said that the material can seem a bit samey but a few songs in and it was time for Karen Anne to take off her guitar and get a bit more spirited in her delivery. This developed into a full-on routine for “Break Away”, another number in a CBGBs vein. Very much the focus of things Anne is indeed a striking figure, as the evening continues at a high tempo. She finished things off with “Steve McQueen” telling us that the song was inspired by the said actor’s cock, no less. No-one batted an eyelid. It was a short and sweet set to kick off four days of Brighton’s best young acts.
