Thursday, September 07, 2006

If I was in Scotland last weekend...


…I’d have been at the Indian Summer festival. I’ve not been back in the homeland all year, but this could have been a good reason to go back. But I didn’t. However, BBC 6 Music were onto it, and spent the weekend covering the festival. So I spent a good chunk of Sunday cooking and listening to live music from the West End of Glasgow.

There’s all this talk about ‘boutique festivals’ this summer. The absence of Glastonbury seems to have encouraged even more festivals to be staged. Except they’re not going for the millions of people in a huge field thing. They’re much smaller affairs, for 5,000 to 10,000 people. A bit like my favourite Summer Sundae. In recent years Bestival has come along. This year, there’s been Indian Summer, Latitude and End of The Road (plus no doubt loads of others).

Now banish all thoughts of middle class-ness and hampers, these small festivals are a good thing! What would you rather have? Watching bands on a video screen from two miles away, whilst surrounded by 100,000 crowd, thick with thieves, arseholes and drunken kids being sick on your shoes? Or a close-up view of your favourite artist in pleasant surroundings, with a decent amount of time for them to play? Maybe if you’re 16, exhilarated at your first trip away from home, or only listen to music on daytime Xfm, the former may seems like the only reasonable choice. Me, I’ve long given up on the big gigs, let alone the big festivals. Plus the smaller events avoid the usual boring main stage line-ups and give newer and less well-known artists the chance to play higher up the bill. The fans are surely winners all round.

Anyway, enough blether from me, let’s have some music from Indian Summer. If I’d had been at the festival, I’d have been watching these guys:

Download: Camera Obscura – Lloyd I’m Ready to be Heartbroken (live)
Download: Tilly & the Wall – Bad Education (live)
Download: Tilly & the Wall – Reckless (live)
Download: CSS – Pony Money Honey (live)
Download: CSS – Off the Hook (live)

Colin from Let's Kiss and Make Up... was actually there.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice to see my Tilly picture on your site.
It's one the blogs I visit often.
Indian Summer reminded me a lot of Summer Sundae which I visited last year to see The Magic Numbers.
Tilly were as good as always with Guillemots,CSS and Gang of four my other faves.
Camera Obscura would also be up there but the singer was the most miserable creature I've seen on a stage for years!!
Love the album though.
Any chance of a link to my website in your post?

www.lornethomson.com

I'll be uploading my Indian Summer pictures alongside more Tilly fairly soon.

The Daily Growl said...

Sure thing Lorne

I took the photo of the 6 Music website, which I don't recall having any credits. However, I may be wrong, so I'll stick a ref to your site in. I always do this if there's any obvious credit to be made...

I'm sure Traceyanne Campbell is lovely. I saw her signing autographs on someone's back at Summer Sundae this year. It did look like she was having fun. She may even have cracked a smile...