Tag: Genesis

Electric Fields Festival – Part 1

Previous subscribers to this blog will know that I was a major fan of the Wickerman Festival and had great fun at the 14 annual shindigs that were held. Since the last gathering in 2015, our gig crew have been hunting for a comparable event and the nearest we have achieved since was the Electric Fields Festival we attended in September 2018. With that historical context I thought this would be appropriate content for my 300th blog and as the words flowed it resulted in additionally being my 301st!

The festival slowly built from an initial friend gathering into a fully fledged event in 2016 and the chosen location was Drumnlarig Castle in Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, about a 90-minute drive from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Carlisle. It utilised the bonny grounds of the category A listed castle which was built in the late 16th century which carried the name of the ‘Pink Palace’ due to the finely hewed glinting red sandstone exterior.    

Drumnlarig Castle. Image Credit sobt.co.uk

It is apparently very grand and ornate on the interior with the small matter of its 120 rooms, 4 towers and 17 turrets. It also contains the Buccleuch Collection which houses a rare Rembrandt of ‘An Old Woman Reading’ and renowned 17th century French furniture and silver. They did also have a Leonardo Da Vinci painting that was stolen in 2003 but recovered in 2007 from an address in Glasgow.

There is also an old roman fort in the Southeast corner of the grounds which was featured in the Time Team programme, and it has been used as a filming location for the TV series Outlander. The estate is rarely opened to the public, but they did provide permission for the festival to be held there between 2016 and 2018.

The nearest conurbation to the site is the sleepy village of Thornhill with a vast population of around 1500 inhabitants which lies on the edge of the River Nith. It contains a couple of pubs and the seemingly obligatory Chinese takeaway alongside a small cottage hospital.

Famous ‘Thornhillians’ include the explorer Joseph Thomson who has the eminent Thomson’s gazelle named after him, which are also sometimes referred to as a ‘tommie’. Another is ex-professional golfer Andrew Coltart who is now a respected commentator on Sky Sports.

A ‘Tommie’. Image Credit animalcorner.org

Since 2012 the Thornhill Music Festival has been staged there, with the original event being instigated by the long-standing Scottish blues combo The Lewis Hamilton Band (not the Formula 1 driver!). That particular band are still active and are regularly on the road.

The festival is still on the roster and the 2025 version took place on the May Day Bank Holiday at the Farmer Arms in the village. One of the headliners was The Cherry Pinks who I saw in 2024 when they played the Wickerman Fringe event. The pub coincidentally won the Dumfries and Stewarty CAMRA branch pub of the year for 2025.  

Thornhill Music Festival flyer. Image Credit facebook.com

After three successful years in Drumnlarig, Electric Fields organisers made the ill-fated decision to relocate to SWG3 in Glasgow due to logistical challenges and increasing costs. However then due to complaints from attendees and ticketing issues, the festival folded, and the 2019 version never took place, and it has never been rebooted.

I could not attend the 2017 carnival as we were in the process of relocating to Manchester that very weekend. Nevertheless, in my absence the boys headed up there to make a debut appearance with Jesus and Mary Chain, Car Seat Headrest and Pins amongst others on the bill.

They lodged at ‘Dewhurst Towers’ in Kirkcudbright and utilised the old Wickerman nemesis of Mr Allen’s taxis for the commute to and from the site. The one downside they referenced was that it was a long way to travel as it was forty miles and over an hour each leg of the journey.   

I ensured there were no ‘life events’ disbarring me making a pilgrimage up to the 2018 gathering. Travel lessons were learnt from the previous year and lodgings were sought in the vibrant town of Dumfries.   

In 1306, Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries was the location of Robert the Bruce, the future King of Scots, slaying his rival John Comyn III of Badenoch and during World War II the Norwegian armed forces in exile brigade was based there. Loreburn Hall, known locally as The Drill Hall has held concerts from Big Country, The Proclaimers and Black Sabbath.

Famous ‘Doonhamers’ include in their ranks Henry Duncan, founder of the world’s first commercial savings bank, J.M Barrie, author of Peter Pan, John Lawrie, Private Fraser in Dad’s Army, musicians Ray Wilson, once lead singer of Genesis and Calvin Harris. The final ex-resident is Kirsty Wark, the excellent broadcaster who undertook the heartbreaking interview of my favourite author Iain Banks shortly before his premature passing.

Glasgow Venue 5 – Hampden Park

My overriding preference of venue would always be the smaller one man and his dog establishments where you are more liable to catch lean and hungry bands on their way up, though very occasionally I have to bite the bullet and attend larger auditoriums and stadiums to be able to see certain special bands who only play at that level. Neil Young is one such act and I first witnessed him in 1987 at the soulless Birmingham NEC, the other two times I watched him were fortunately in festival settings.

The other combo is AC/DC who I am a huge fan of despite them essentially being a two bars blues band at heart, but they do perform it with such volume and aplomb. I first saw them at Manchester MEN Arena in 2001. Their next British tour was eight years later in June 2009, and we dawdled when the tickets were released, and the tour ended up being sold out. The gig gods were smiling on us though when additional tickets were available for the Glasgow Hampden Park date, and we summarily snapped them up.   

Hampden Park. Image Credit urbanrealm.com

The first challenge was to locate a bed for the night as no city centre accommodation was available, thus resulting in our digs being a train ride and a further mile walk away (it is always further away than it looks on the map!). We visited a couple of bars down Stockwell Street near the River Clyde and the city’s pubs were highly populated as 52k gig goers were in town.

They were unsurprisingly playing AC/DC on the jukebox in the Scotia Bar, and we then frequented the Clutha & Victoria Bar, the pub where four years later there was the horrendous police helicopter crash resulting in ten fatalities. Thankfully the establishment was rebuilt and is thriving again.

Clutha and Victoria Bar. Image Credit blogspot.com

As the stadium was about three miles out of town, we hailed a taxi, which due to the heavy traffic could only reach the outskirts of the arena area. On disembarking the cab, I suddenly had an overwhelming crippling urge to spend a penny, I am sure you have all been there! I picked up pace, but the ground never seemed to arrive and then somewhat inevitably we discovered our entry gate was on the far side of the stadium. Finally, access to the venue was achieved and mission accomplished to enable me to actually think clearly again.     

The original Hampden Park was built in 1873, taking its name from the nearby Hampden Terrace and the first international match there in 1878 was a 7-2 win over England. In 1883, the national stadium was moved a few hundred metres east and then again further south in 1903 to its current site, always with the same name. The original site is now covered by railway lines.

The current Hampden (Pairc Hampden in Gaelic) has a population of 51,866 and over its timeline there has been a plethora of different sports played there including rugby union, athletics, tennis, baseball, speedway, boxing and American football. The first music concert was Genesis and Paul Young in 1987 and U2, Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones have graced the stage there.    

Having booked late tickets, we expected to be in a corner or in the gods, but we were astonished to discover terrific centre stage seats with a superb vantage. The Subways were supporting and did a sterling job with their high-octane performance; however, they were always to be outdone by the main act as they possessed their own individual sound system.

AC/DC opened with a thunderously loud two-minute cheeky video before launching into their current single ‘Rock N Roll Train’ off the Black Ice album, the whole sold out place literally erupted. At that very moment I almost saw the benefits of a stadium gig with the shared communal atmosphere, but only almost.

For over half of set, they were spellbindingly good and even at their advanced age were still kicking the butts of many younger wannabe acts. Towards the end there some spinal tap moments, but that is only me being slightly picky. ‘Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be’, ‘Hells Bells’, Dog Eat Dog’, Highway to Hell’ were glorious, with the highlight being ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.

After we left the stadium there was a claustrophobic passage of old thin alleyways which brought back slightly unpleasant memories of football crowd crushes in the 1980’s and I was glad when we had navigated through that area. We considered catching a train, but local station Mount Pleasant was absolutely packed to the gills, so we undertook the hour walk back into the city.

We had a further drink in the Clutha beer garden as it was a balmy summer’s evening before a late drink in Nice and Sleazy on Sauchiehall Street. The final venue of the day was a Noodle Bar across the road before a cab back to the hotel completed a rather fine day.