Monday, May 15, 2006
The Come Together Festival was brilliant
That's what a festival should be like.
Earlier in the year I'd decided not to go to "The Carling Weekend" this year. In the end it sold out before I knew the tickets were on sale anyway, so that was lucky. Last year's was a bit too souless, although I still had a great time and Maiden were amazing. I don't know if these things are related but as the tickets sell out faster and faster you seem to get a much more homogenous crowd. I'm sure I remember the attendees having a much more varied age range when I was a pesky kid. Anyway, that coupled with the insanity on the last night put me off going again this year.
Instead, the plan for this year was to try and go to several small (and free/almost free) festivals. Even so, I nearly missed the Come Together Festival in Henley-on-Thames. I only really went because I knew lots of people playing, but I'm definitely going to try and go next year too. The atmosphere was brilliant, really nice mix of people. It was much bigger than I expected with several stages of music. Main stage, acoustic stage, the stage in the bar, er... a drum and bass thing, some guys holding a kind of turn up and play bongos exhibition (I expect Rob will post a comment telling me what those drums are really called).
Paul C and I had the wonderful experience at the bar of ordering 4 pints of scrumpy, having the barman warn us "be careful with that..." and responding by changing the order to 8 pints. I also had some excellent curried goat. Mmmmm.
Oh yeah, and the bands were good too. I'll post some pictures when I can get them off my phone.
Next cheapo/free festival I'm planning on is Ashton Court in Bristol, but if another one comes up in the mean time, please let me know!
Earlier in the year I'd decided not to go to "The Carling Weekend" this year. In the end it sold out before I knew the tickets were on sale anyway, so that was lucky. Last year's was a bit too souless, although I still had a great time and Maiden were amazing. I don't know if these things are related but as the tickets sell out faster and faster you seem to get a much more homogenous crowd. I'm sure I remember the attendees having a much more varied age range when I was a pesky kid. Anyway, that coupled with the insanity on the last night put me off going again this year.
Instead, the plan for this year was to try and go to several small (and free/almost free) festivals. Even so, I nearly missed the Come Together Festival in Henley-on-Thames. I only really went because I knew lots of people playing, but I'm definitely going to try and go next year too. The atmosphere was brilliant, really nice mix of people. It was much bigger than I expected with several stages of music. Main stage, acoustic stage, the stage in the bar, er... a drum and bass thing, some guys holding a kind of turn up and play bongos exhibition (I expect Rob will post a comment telling me what those drums are really called).
Paul C and I had the wonderful experience at the bar of ordering 4 pints of scrumpy, having the barman warn us "be careful with that..." and responding by changing the order to 8 pints. I also had some excellent curried goat. Mmmmm.
Oh yeah, and the bands were good too. I'll post some pictures when I can get them off my phone.
Next cheapo/free festival I'm planning on is Ashton Court in Bristol, but if another one comes up in the mean time, please let me know!
# posted by Mike @ 10:09 
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I don't know. I enjoyed playing (it was one of the most enjoyable gigs I've done), but it has the potential to be 10 times better than it is.
I get the impression that they spend all year saying "we're going to have a massive festival", and the last two weeks saying "shall we get some bands then?". As a result, the line-up isn't really up to scratch for something of that size, and doesn't even get put on the website.
From an artist's point of view, the carparking situation, and lack of communication between promoter and sound engineer (from both band and engineer's point of view) etc is beyond absurd.
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I get the impression that they spend all year saying "we're going to have a massive festival", and the last two weeks saying "shall we get some bands then?". As a result, the line-up isn't really up to scratch for something of that size, and doesn't even get put on the website.
From an artist's point of view, the carparking situation, and lack of communication between promoter and sound engineer (from both band and engineer's point of view) etc is beyond absurd.
# posted by 
: 12:54 AM
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