Oldham


Stick 'em up punks, it's the Oldham Festival

Oldham Festival
Oldham Festival,
originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

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.

All Flickr photos tagged Oldham Festival

All Flickr photos tagged Eurocultured

Jazz Jamaica’s latest album- Motor City Roots

Music by the Fun Lovin’ Criminals.

Oldham in Wikipedia.

Originally posted to Spinneyworld 29/05/06 by Ian

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