Personally, I can’t stand Morrissey- he’s an obnoxious sixth form poet who had the good fortune to be backed by a bunch of more interesting and talented musicians- but some people seem to like him, so I shall share the news.
Chorlton Green Festival was on Saturday. It was overcast but didn’t rain in the end, luckily for all the stalls that were outside. I chatted to Friends of the Earth and the local Green Party, blagged quite a few goodies and picked up a few leaflets.
Maybe I should demand that the cameraman in the next Spinneyhead production looks like this. Check out the Pride 2007 set on Flickr for many more photos.
So that’s it, DPercusion is dead. Which is a damn shame.
This year’s event was huge. You could feel the 80,000 attendees they’d expected and there were far more stages than you could easily expect to visit. I managed to see most of the bands I wanted to and gave away a transformer and a GI into the bargain.
First up were This I Seb Clarke on the main stage. It’s always good to see a band with a horns section and their set was energetic enough to wear you out just watching it.
Next was The Mekkits on the Kenworthy stage. You’ve got to appreciate a band who tell you their songs are dedicated to reindeer and monkeys. It’s the second time I’ve seen them this year and I quite like them. I had wanted to catch the Ting Tings but their set was cancelled.
Set of the day, as at Unknown Pleasures, was The Whip. Cherry Ghost followed them but were a bit disappointing, though I think that was because of the levels and mixing rather than the quality of the band.
What now? I’m sure there’ll be new festivals to fill the DPercussion shaped hole, but it’ll take a while to do it properly.
It’s not every Sunday you can go to an old mill town and watch one of the coolest bands in the world do a live set outside Woolworths.
I’ve lived in Manchester for a long time but this was the first time I’d been out to Oldham. Various of the landmarks (well, businesses who advertise, anyway) were familiar from Revolution 96.2. We arrived a few hours before the gig, to check out the events of the Festival. The (nearly) naked Australian chef was amusing, briefly, and the Village Disco a bit worrying, but I got the sense everything was winding down before the show.
Huey claimed to have been at his sister’s wedding on Saturday, hence the slightly late start, and paused two thirds of the way through the set to say his hangover had finally gone. Despite self censoring at the end of the first song he didn’t hold back as they worked through the Criminals’ expletive filled back catalogue. An excellent show, made a little weird by ending at half past six. I got some shots on the SLR during “Scooby Snacks” which will look good if they come out. I need to finish the roll of film ASAP to find out.
After some great luck just catching the train back to Manchester we headed to the Eurocultured Festival off Oxford Road. Here we listened to a bit of Czech hip-hop and watched graffiti artists at work.
You learn something new every day. Yesterday I discovered that the chip was invented in Oldham. There’s a local pie called a Rag pudding, which consists of suet wrapped around mince, a bit stodgy and definitely in need of gravy to moisten it. Winston Churchill was MP for Oldham from 1900 to 1904.
I’d like to quickly mention Jazz Jamaica, who played a supporting set of Junior Walker covers and had people dancing in the square.
I’m here for the moves07 festival, for which I won a free pass. It’s all about movement on screen, dance etc. As Memory is quite static, it’s something I should look into for future productions.
Does what it says in the URL. This is an attempt to create a Fringe for the Festival, for those of us who haven’t been commissioned to produce work for it.