Highlights for us were:
- Seeing Iain Archer and getting his new album signed by the Northern Ireland finger-picking guitar guru. The new album is great and is getting rapidly listened too
- Listening to the Ian McMillan Orchestra : the most amazing mix of poetry, folk music, bizarre instruments and northern dialect
- Discovering that I like poetry (Andy)
- Overall the music wasn't too great, Seth Lakeman, MxPx , Beth Rowley and Fightstar were the mainstage exceptions. MxPx show improved as they progressed through their set list, with the bass solo(!) in a swing punk number being highly impressive. However, this is topped by the change of the bass guitars! Whenever Mr Herrera felt the need to change between his yellow and red Stingray bass, a roadie would appear from nowhere and with a fluid rotation, he was back in the game playing the new low-end instrument. However, disaster was lurking when the bass player was located on the left of the stage with a newly tuned bass axe waiting 10m away! Instead of running across with said axe, both roadie and Mr bass player lobbed their resplendent instruments at each other simultaneously. Both flew pass each other with no twisting and Mr Herrera caught his bass with the trademark twist of the body and was playing again within a blink of eye to the amazement of Mr Jeanneret and myself.
- The Mcs on the main stage were shockingly bad, like cringey youth group leaders but worse! Their crowning moment of glory was getting the crowded to chant the star part of Fightstar's name to build up the excitement ... It went like this
- Continuing the Northern Ireland theme was the most Mr(Sure a Dr as he has a Ph.d) Peter rollins from the ikon community/crowd/ring doughnut ... there was lots to unpack from this session and the nice man waited patiently to talk to the streams of people(including us) after his session. Lots of amazing ideas, which are still resonating, there will be more from here later and may even a reflective post!
Mcs: I say Fight, you[crowd] say star, ok?
Mcs: Fight
Crowd: Busted!