Wickerman Festival 14

A degree of sadness pervades as I draft this week’s blog as it details the fourteenth and last ever Wickerman Festival to be held which took place on 24/25 July 2015. There were rumours for over a year around the future of the event, eventually resulting in the confirmation later in 2015 that Wickerman would be no more leaving a huge chasm in my annual gig calendar!

On the bill were the Waterboys, who I recall I first become aware of when they played the Tube on a Friday teatime on Channel 4, also playing were Squeeze whose set I enjoyed. Glasgow post punks Catholic Action and electronic synth band Ubre Blanca, bizarrely named after Fidel Castro’s favourite cow were also in residence, alongside Errors, Belle and the Beast, Beth Fourage, Be Charlotte, Wayne Devre Set, Sister Fox, Vaselines and the grungy Tuff Love.  

The punk contingent was covered by Amphetameanies and stalwarts Eddie and the Hot Rods with their timeless Top 10 hit ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’, their only constant member being singer Barrie Masters, prior to his death in 2019. 

Cellist Calum Ingram headlined the Acoustic Tent and the reggae/ska corner had Jimmy Cliff with his ‘Many Rivers to Cross’. There was hip-hop from Hector Bizerk and main stage performances from Lulu, Stereo MC’s, the ever-impressive Neneh Cherry and Pere Ubu who I did once own one album by, namely ‘The Tenement Year’ however the only song I can recall is ‘George Had a Hat’.  

Neneh Cherry. Image Credit djdmac.com

Folk tones were ensured by Glasgow five-piece Washington Irving, John Bramwell, frontman from I Am Kloot, Chichester’s Tom Odell, Novantae! from Galloway and Rick Redbeard which was the solo performer stage name for Rick Anthony, lead singer for the Phantom Band.   

My notes also inform me that I saw SLUG who were promoting their debut album ‘Ripe’ though I cannot recall their performance. In the last two or three years they have received a lot more attention and received considerable radio airplay from the likes of Mark Reilly.

Aiden Moffett (of Arab Strap fame) and Bill Wells were also on the roster. We also headed over to the third stage to see the excellent Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who I was watching for the fifth and final time before their subsequent break up.

Many of my favourite Scottish bands had played this festival over the years including Teenage Fanclub, The View, The Proclaimers, Idlewild, Aerogramme and The Rezillos to name a few, however the cream of the crop Mogwai had never graced the festival.

This was partially rectified by Stuart Braithwaite, Mogwai main singer appearing for a solo set on the Acoustic stage which we obviously attended. I managed to have a brief photo shoot and chat with him and who knows if there had have been a following year perhaps Mogwai might have played, we shall never know! 

John Dewhurst, Uncle George, Stuart Braithwaite and me replete with dubious festival hat in the Acoustic Tent. Image Credit Mrs Braithwaite.

So, before we depart the South West Scotland amphitheatre permit me, if I may to take you on a final tour of the site. From the initial taxi/bus drop off point you would traverse through the tents to the wristband collection point then onto the main entrance which in reality was a hole in the wall.

Opposite the entrance you could purchase a stage times list before turning left past the funfair, circus or cinema, dependant on what they chosen to incorporate that particular year. Onwards past the Acoustic Tent, behind which in later years there was a craft beer and Mojito tent.

At the apex of the hill was the shop, Third Stage and Solus and Scooter Tents, of which the latter in the early years resembled a Mash Tent where they had stellar DJ’s playing. From here, you had a superb vantage to watch the Wickerman burning at midnight on the Saturday night. I seem to recall one year they had a little mini golf course next to the statue.  

Traversing down the hill rolled you past the VIP area and main beer tent, where occasionally bash em up bands would play. In the natural bowl was the main stage followed by the Dance and Silent Disco Tent. Just in advance of fully circling back to the main entrance you would find the fabulous Reggae Tent which was always erected on an incline. This tent was a regular final stopping point of the evening where you could purchase a hot mug of tea and a flapjack whilst being dually soothed by the Bob Marley inspired soundtrack and stoned by the pungent aroma permeating all around.     

A couple of years later, when in attendance at another Scottish festival, one of the gig brethren said the festival was good, but it is not Wickerman and we all murmured in assent, I can think of no more fitting epitaph than that!

Manchester Venue 59 Sound Control – Part 2

An early blog posting for you this week.

The Sound Control venue is in the perfect classic mould of being located within bumbling distance of the nearest train station. Others to fit these criteria locally are the Star and Garter (Piccadilly), Rebellion Bar (Deansgate), MEN Arena (Victoria) and Kings Arms (Salford Central).

So, much like Esha Ness’s ‘win’ in the Grand National and therefore discounting the ‘gig that never was’ outlined in the blog last week, I have attended the Sound Control Music Room a grand total of seven times.  

My first attendance was on a warm sunny June evening in 2011. On the journey over the train was extremely busy with gig goers and the reason for this significant commuter increase was that the reformed Take That were on a run of comeback dates over at the Etihad Stadium.

Our band of choice that night was the shoegaze gurus Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Now I saw this band five times in total during their career and a couple of those gigs stood out, an initial gobsmackingly fine performance in Chorlton which sat alongside this appearance as an absolute belter.

The reason that this duo of gigs succeeded was that the guitars were ramped up to 10 capturing the intended beautiful sonic fuzz that their sound clearly deserved. The set was in a good way still leaning very heavily on their astonishingly good eponymous debut record, which in my view is all killer no filler. They were supported by a local band called Raffles.  Uncle George had to scoot off prior to the end of their set as he was unfortunately on an early shift the next day, but we stayed for the duration before trekking up and catching the last train from Piccadilly.

Four months later, I saw the Canadian hardcore punks F##&£d Up who with their effervescent lead singer Pink Eyes and surging guitars certainly pack a punch. They are somewhat of an anachronism as their sound could be quantified in the category of intelligent hardcore music and they even start one album with a cheeky flute before the track morphs into something infinitely noisier!

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Pink Eyes in full flow. Image Credit Dreamstime.

Their big energetic tsunami of sound sucked me into the moshpit but that was curtailed prematurely as I toppled over, and I was proper sore and battered in the morning. Some naysayers may say moshpits should be avoided at the age of 43, but I eschew that point of view and eleven years on I will still partake if the mood takes me! Train constraints again meant we missed the tail end of the performance; a pattern was beginning to develop here at this venue.

Mainly due to the ongoing issues around enforced early departures we decided at our next attendance on 01/12/12 to grab a room for the night at Old Trafford Cricket Club, this being in the days when hotels rooms in Manchester were just about affordable, before they morphed into London prices.

The band in question was the rather terrific Raveonettes, the Danish shoegazing duo who had recently released their excellent sixth album Observator and they played a selection of tracks from said record with ‘Young and Cold’ being the highlight. It was a glacially cold night and after the gig we encountered the busiest ever metro in the whole of Christendom when commuting back to the digs.

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The Raveonettes on stage. Image Credit mxdwn.com

At the 2013 Dot to Dot event, we saw a singer songwriter called Billy Lockett from Northampton, who is a classical pianist. He was in the faux familiarity bracket that I can never warm to, in the mould of Newton Faulkner and Beans on Toast and a certain Ed Sheeran who appears to have made a career out of this genre!