On Friday 30th June 2023 a small outing was had for this year’s Birthday. After the extravagance of the 40th last year, this year was always going to be a smaller affair. However I was more than pleased to be going back to the Camp n Furnace to see The Double Band take on two of the greats.. The Doors and Led Zeppelin… I mean it didn’t help that all week I was listening to Dylan songs to try to.. recognise some tracks, when all along it should have been The Doors. Oops! Before the gig however I was made up when Jane, Chris and Sean could join John and I for some food and drinks at The Baltic Market. It was good that some of my friends could make it again this year and was nice to see them all again. We got some food and drink and then Jane & Chris headed home while Sean, John and I got soaked walking over to the Camp n Furnace.
When we arrived the venue was fairly empty and on the stage was what we thought was a warm up group.. It kinda was, they played some covers from different artists, but we thought it was a bit odd, as they don’t usually do that. I think, thinking back now, perhaps it was literally just to warm up the crowd a little, because the venue was so light on people at that point. I think the rain had put some people off coming out.. A shame really, as the venue is indoors anyway! Eventually people started coming in and by 9pm when ‘The Doors’ came on the stage there was a fair sized crowd. It wasn’t packed like other gigs in the past, but there was good coverage of people. The doors covers were all good, on point and turns out.. I really kinda like The Doors. The frontman was in to character with the way he was dressed and his mannerisms. Surprisingly, The Doors section was only 40-45 minutes or so. They did about 6 songs in total and they were gone. No encore. We were all left a little disappointed I think. We actually wondered if that was it for the whole night! I think a lot of people did.. I think a lot of people actually left! We were on the way out when we decided to sit at a table for a bit. I am glad we did because it wasn’t over.. Zeppelin was next.
After a short break the band returned with a different frontman – the guy who did the warmup singing again.. The Zeppelin lead was.. on the other hand.. not at all in any kinda character and was seemingly completely himself, and you know.. that was better. He sang better, he had more stage presence and generally gave a much better experience to the audience than the former Doors performer did. All in all, this guy just loved singing and performing! The music performance along with the singing was as tight as The Double Band ever are, they didn’t disappoint. But still the overall set length was a little shorter than previous times we’ve seen The Double Band, but at least we got an encore from the Zeppelin lot.
The Camp n Furnace seems to have had some upgrades since the last time we were in there. New lighting down the walls, a new sign above the stage and some TV Monitors too. It’s a good venue and should be used more. Afterwards it was still quite early, around 11pm, but I think we’d had enough and with the rain still falling we played the spot the taxi game and went home. All in all another good night out, would do it again too. Big thanks to my friends for braving the weather and coming on out.
