Article by Jennifer
Thanks to Jennifer for this rundown of the first official Oceanborn meet up followed by a set by Season's End at The Fenton in Leeds - 05.11.2005
We'd just like to thank everyone who came to the meet up and made it an excellent day out and not forgetting Season's End who performed another excellent set in the evening! - Mary & Dave
This superb gig was the finale to an awesome day out.
It started for Neil and myself (my Nightwish buddy mentioned in my previous reviews of Metalhammer Golden Gods and Helsinki Nightwish) with a great drive up to Leeds from Huntingdonshire listening to lots of hard rock such as Sonata Artica, After Forever, Edguy and plenty of Nightwish.
This proved a blessing during the hour we got lost in Leeds centre trying to find our hotel. Never known a city to have so many motorways through it, and ending up at Leeds football ground on a Saturday afternoon during an “at home “ match was not great for traffic either, however we settled in our hotel and got a taxi to the bowling alley for 3pm where we met up with friends.
These friends consisted of mainly Mary (the uk fanclub lady), Dave (the other organiser), Chris (Mary's awesome brother) Dave from Seasons End and many other great dudes. This day was organised by Mary and Dave (with help from Danny) as a meet up of any fan club members and there was about ten of us. They will be organising more of these over the UK, so look out for them!
2 games of bowling went on (but Mary and I stayed out of the game chatted lots instead) until the second game where I was offered to participate-and I wasn't as bad as I thought but I think I was aided by the spirit of Dave, the keyboard player from the band Seasons End who played with us. He had to leave half way through the second game to set up (bless him) and graciously gave me the rest of his balls to pay with (so to speak!). I didn't play in the first game as I suck too much, but actually I did pretty well and got our mutual score to 104. Now considering my previous bowling score years ago was about 34, I think I rocked!
We then went to have a lovely burger and catch up and photo taking session at Whetherspoons and a good time to catch getting to know our new buddies.
Our possy were a friendly bunch and as previously mentioned, rock music brings people together who automatically just “get along great”.
We then found out way to the pub venue and met the band in the bar, drinking, cool lads (and girl- Becki lead singer) and I caught up with my bowling mate Dave.
When the time came we went upstairs to witness the gig. I had never seen this band before and never heard them either, It was Mary during our Helsinki trip who convinced me to see them. Glad she did.
In front row I had great view of all of them and was impressed by the musicianship, and also by how all of them got into it, gelling as a team, especially Dave on the keyboards who was headbanging whilst playing, I love that in keyboard players, its so ROCK.
Not knowing any of their songs was a bit strange but I got into them immediately and the last one they played was my favourite, it is called Forever-(something – sorry guys I forgot!) but it is a new song that will be out on their new forthcoming album.
