National Grand Final, Guildhall, Portsmouth

Chichester hopefuls 900 Spaces and Platform 13 didn't come away as winners at this year's Live and Unsigned grand final.

But they more than held their own in a very strong field on Saturday night, showing exactly why they made it down to the final 15 out of thousands of entrants back in January.

On the night it was The Loaded Dice, an unsigned five-piece indie/rock band from North Wales, who walked away with the top prize – a recording and management contract with up to £20,000 investment to release their single with Future Music.

Me And The Beast, who probably should have won, came second. But at least they made it through to the final five, which mystifyingly neither Chichester act did.

Platform 13 maybe weren't quite together for their Stevie Wonder cover, but were blisteringly good with their own material; and 900 Spaces, last band on, showed their strength – and just as importantly exuded a sense of fun lacking in so many others on the night.

Huge credit to both for getting this far; they should have gone further. But it was still a great night, with every band deserving to be there.

Live and Unsigned is a concept which works – and the organisation on the night was great, a top compere keeping things going seamlessly through the efficient and rapid set-ups for the succession of bands. Big-screen projections added to the atmosphere.

A couple of tricks were missed, though. At the end of the performances, we really did need a Eurovision-style ten-second-per-band reminder of all we'd seen; and the whole thing fell flat when the winning band weren't called on for an encore – though maybe the sad booing from some of the disappointed fans of some of the other bands might have been a factor here.

The finale also needed a few words from the judges on stage to say just what it was they had seen in The Loaded Dice; much fanfare was made of having Malcolm McLaren on the panel. He was barely called on to say a word.

All this would have contributed to a rather more memorable final few minutes – after all the months of build-up. In the event, we were rather too suddenly out on the street.

Phil Hewitt

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