For one weekend in May each year, the seaside city of Brighton becomes the destination for hundreds of bands, thousands of fans and trainloads of music industry folk. They all come flocking southwards to check out the three-day showcase of the hottest acts from around the world who are on the brink of breaking the big time. Each venue in Brighton transforms into a stage for the event and impromptu guerrilla gigs take place in mysterious places like down in the tunnels below the pier, publicised by text messages which circulate around the punters.

Deciding who to see is the trickiest part of The Great Escape as queues and long walks between venues are to be avoided if possible. We started off with These New Puritans on the Levi’s ”Ones to Watch” stage where they played to a small, but packed-out venue and set the tone for the weekend with their onslaught of tribal beats and live horn section.

The following afternoon saw the Cribs play a secret acoustic set down on the beach which was being filmed for MTV, an hour-long wait in a queue was well worth the experience of being within touching distance of former Smiths guitarist, Johnny Marr.

A text message then summoned us all back to the Levi’s stage where The Futureheads treated us to a surprise gig. Songs such as ‘Heartbeat Song’ and ‘Decent Days And Nights’ went down a treat in the afternoon sunshine and reminded everyone just why these Geordie rockers have gone from strength to strength over the past ten years.

As dusk descended, we headed to catch the last half of Sky Larkin’s sweaty set and then headed over to see Chew Lips, a band who have been causing a lot of excitement for us Brits since their album ‘Unicorn’ came out earlier this year. They were in top form and singer Tigs took full control of the crowd and kept us mesmerised until the very last note.

We then ran over to The Hope to catch French lovers John and Jehn who have more electricity between them than ever before. Jehn has transformed from plain Jane into femme fatale and stole the show as she blasted outnumbers such as ‘And We Run’. We rounded off our Great Escape in a sea of bodies and neon strip lights as Delphic marked a euphoric end to a great weekend by the seaside.

Although this years event was somewhat lacking in huge headline acts and there was the usual misjudgements about which band to put in which venue, 2010’s Great Escape proved to be a memorable one and is always worth escaping to the seaside for.



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