The Annual Icklesham Village Beer Festival 2009

The Icklesham Village Beer Festival is a small but long-established beer festival, sited at the rear of the Robin Hood public house in the village, which rarely fails to produce.  Xango!´s Undercover Gig Pig visited on the Saturday of the four day event and had an excellent evening of top beers and great local music.

The organisers did a fantastic job as ever offering a huge range of real ales at good prices with plenty of enthusiastic staff onboard to make sure there was no waiting around to be served!  They completed the evening with some top local music acts...

The evening kicked off with The Shed Men who did a good job in getting the evening going with some nice tunes and a couple of clever reggae inspire Pink Floyd tracks.  Then came Dirty Scarlet who once again did themselves proud... With their usual hard-rocking, crowd-pleasing and infectious set they got the crowd moving and the marquee filling.  As ever there was fantastic vocals from Kate Maunsell, brilliant guitaring from Chris Rhoades, sublime bass playing from Steve Hazelton and thunderous drumming from Darren Barnes all of which set the atmosphere up for the main act of the evening and probably the 4-day event... The Lost Boys!!! 

The Lost Boys took to the stage for the second time since reforming and playing The Carlisle in Hastings on 15th May, 2009 (see our review) and once again they did not disappoint.  Many bands would have found it hard to follow the likes of Dirty Scarlet but The Lost Boys are not just any band!  Yes they have been away with other projects and yes they have only played one gig prior to this in 13 years BUT, they are The Lost Boys!!!  There set was fantastic and caused the majority of those still outside the marquee to pile in and for most of the crowd to join in with Pete Prescott´s vocals.  The rest of the band in Alan McCleave (guitar), Graham Gillett (bass), Jez Gillett (keyboards) and Mick Burt (drums) were all at their usual cracking best. The set consisted of largely 1980´s big-hair, American pop-rock from bands like Foreigner which suit Prescott´s vocals to a tea.  The Lost Boys are still the best local act in the area and set the standard for all others - we are lucky that locally there are many bands that are close to this standard in Dirty Scarlet , Dead Calm, Cushty and SLAM, etc, etc... However, I think most people will agree that The Lost Boys still own top spot and we want to see more!!!

From what Xango! saw on the Saturday night, the Icklesham Village Beer Festival was, once again, a great success and we are waiting to attend again in 2010, so watch their site (http://www.ivbf.co.uk) for the dates and meet us their next year.