Cloud Control: Buffalo Country

We met the band at 9:00 am. Yes, 9:00 am. (What better way to spend the blinking hours of a Sunday morning?) One of Luke Jerram’s Play Me I’m Yours pianos was set up against a flagpole in the center of Taylor Square. Six hours earlier I had walked past the piano on my way home from a night of saintly activity and noticed a team of homeless people banging away at the keys. I stopped to watch for a while, moved by their enthusiasm and uninhibited gestures; it reminded me of Christmas time and the way families gather around a piano once a year to play the few songs we all know how to sing.

Cloud Control: Hollow Drums

By 9.00am this impromptu band of players had moved on and Taylor Square was occupied by a motley collection of tired partygoers, drunks, tourists and junkies. Cloud Control settled in. The piano bore the scars of having been out in the open for a week already, but at least it was in tune. Passersby stopped and stared for a moment before moving on, as Cloud Control belted out a few of their beautiful songs.

- Amelia & Jonathan

www.myspace.com/cloudcontrol

Lightspeed Champion: The Kids

Celebrity Wigs was a little creepy. While Dev played to an audience of blank polystyrene faces, clad in the future headdress of drag queens and lady boys, business carried on as usual around us. Initially he had wanted to play a cover by The Veronicas and together we all tried to remember the lyrics for a good five minutes, but due to poor memory and a little nervousness on his part, Dev instead indulged us in a new track called The Kids.

Lightspeed Champion: Heart In A Cage (by The Strokes)

The sex shop was unplanned. We were happy to play on the street, or in an alley, or in any number of parks or little locations off Oxford St. But Dev was self conscience in public and so suggested an indoor alternative. He suggested the sex shop. He suggested Adult City XXX. Upon entering, it was clear he’d never been in a sex shop before – his shock and awe was real. When offered a latex vagina at the end of the set by the woman behind the counter, the Londoner replied calmly, “thank you for opening my eyes, now they will never close again!”

- Amelia