The Dolmen Grove Land Fund Benefit Event

Toni and I headed off for deepest darkest Rochford to attend The Dolmen Grove Land Fund Benefit Event. Our interest was sparked when we had seen The Dolmen at Witch Fest back in November last year. It was an eight hour event with bands, belly dances and burlesque acts and all to raise funds for The Dolmen Grove to purchase land.

As we arrived we were greeted by the tribal drumming of....


THE PENTACLE DRUMMERS



Next up were an Irish folk three piece who had nothing to do with Ireland at all LOL


THE BLARNEYS
These guys were quite entertaining, playing a few well known traditional folk songs and some more obscure stuff



Following The Blarneys we were then treated to a huge variety of bellydancing and burlesque routines by:
Tribal Unity
Hannah Mi
Moirai
Miss Trixta
Lapiz Lazuli
Mystic Hips
Robin Goodfellow
Pauline Qu & Asif
Qu Tu
Crystal Tips
Zsa Zsa La'Hore
Bodhaia Tribal
Imagica

Here's a few pics:





See all the bellydancing and burleaque pics here:
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After the visual delights of the bellydancing and burlesque was the raffle where we won absolutely naff all and then came the main bands...........


TORN ASUNDER
We are no strangers to Torn Asunder having seen them do an awesome set supporting Faster Pussycat last year. Things have changed a bit now though and tonight they gave a less than impressive performance. As they were sound checking the new bass player had a stab at the bass intro for Sweet Child Of Mine (Guns N Roses) but didn't quite get it right, I figured he was just goofing about..... The set started well, the sound was good and Loran belted out the vocals with full gusto. After a couple of songs she then decided to vacate the stage and spent the rest of the set on the floor level with the audience. It was a strange move and seemed to make it look like she was distancing herself from the band. Torn Asunder have some excellent material that really suit Loran's voice so I was surprised when they threw in a few covers. First up was Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer which didn't really suit her. Next came Knocking On Heaven's Door but unfortunately it was based on the Guns N Roses version and so Loran tried to imitate the Axl parts which will never work unless you are Axl rose. Finally, to my complete astonishment, they then did Sweet Child Of Mine. Given that the bass player couldn't play the start I thought it was mad that they even attempted this but attempt it they did and he still didn't get the intro right, poor bloke. Speaking to Loran afterwards it appeared that she was tired from a 2 hour gig the night before which might have accounted for why she seemed a little uneasy tonight. Torn Asunder aren't a bad band but they have their own good material so should ditch the covers and stick with their own numbers. I don't like doing bad reviews but this performance tonight was a million miles away from when we had seen them previously.





See all the TORN ASUNDER pics here:
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And last but certainly not least came...


THE DOLMEN
The Dolmen are amazing live, they whip the crowd into a dancing frenzy and never let up. I had wanted to dance tonight but Toni hadn't seemed too keen to start with but by the end even she couldn't resist their mystic rhythm!






See all THE DOLMEN pics here:
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All in all it was a fantastic night and over £1,300 was raised for The Dolmen Grove Land Fund.