And so ends another festival season.
Compared to last year, this year has been very tame re: festival going. Despite having somewhere near 10 events on my wish list, I only managed to do 3 all summer. But Greenbelt 2010 was a surprise addition to my schedule – I only knew 2 days before I left – I hadn’t really had time to study the running order & since I was working for the majority of the festival, it was probably best that I hadn’t.
Nonetheless is a very short roundup of the few acts I did mange to catch over the 3 days I was in Cheltenham.
Nikko Fir
Sunday night was very, very cold & I’m talking near freezing by the end of the night/ early morning – it’s the price you pay for clear skies at the end of August! Consequently it was far to cold to stand around Mainstage to catch the whole set of an artist I was non-committal about to start with (see below)! So I sought the relative warmth of the acoustic tent and got sidetracked en route. The distraction? Nikko Fir. A truly wonderful discovery.
Beverly Knight
It has been a long time since I’ve seen a conventional ‘pop’ act and it felt very weird to be watching someone who everyone else had heard of too! That said, you couldn’t fault the amount of energy she was putting into her set – it was clear she was working very hard to warm up the audience (see above for temperature reading), but still I didn’t stick around for the whole set. Nonetheless, it was nice to be transported back in time as she revisited some of her ‘older’ hits such as ‘Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda’ and ‘Come as You Are’ which actually sampled the 90s one-hit-wonder ‘Feel It’ by Maya [ft Tamperer]. Truly epic!
Megson
This time last year I saw Megson for the very first time at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival. And so how better to celebrate my ‘Megsoniversary’ than by catching their set at Greenbelt. The only act I actually wanted to see at the beginning of the weekend and I was not disappointed. Playing to a packed out Marquee, Stu and Debs put on a wonderful show. My highlights had to be ‘Smoke of Home’, ‘O Mary will you go’ and ‘Take Yourself a Wife’ – all of which I absolutely adore. But it was actually ‘The Longshot’ which stood out from previous gigs. It’s a truly beautiful song – loosely based on the ups and downs of being a Middlesboro’ fan (which, as a Quins RL fan myself, I fully understand the feeling) – and it’s got some delicious black humour woven into the lyrics. But their performance on Friday night was the first time I heard people actually laughing at the ‘punch lines’, which was strangely wonderful. It was just a shame that there was no time left for their traditional set closer ‘Tally-O the Grinder’
For more musical offerings from the festival feel free to check out the media site on their website (unfortunately the stuff I was filming isn’t up yet, but there’s still some amazing material there.)
Post by Mary Stokes - Meet Me
Located in the UK, music has been part of my life for a long time. I'm a classically trained violinist but have a wide range musical knowledge.
