This was not as olde fashioned and kitsch as it sounds. Here's a brief roundup of the best bands I got to see at Birmingham's top festival weekend.
Chris Wood is one of the UK's top singer songwriters and certainly had a beard to impress. With songs about fish & chip romance and 4x4's, as well as topical gags about Gary Glitter he had the crowd eating out of his hand. His atheist anthem "Come Down Jehovah" had some tongues wagging but no one really minded because he's so grumpy yet articulate- which is what we all aspire to be.
Brummie punk folksters The Destroyers certainly had the locals in raptures but personally I was unmoved. Wide eyed Irish frontman Paul Murphy invited us all onto some kind of apocalyptic carousel as he shouted a load of tosh about a mouse that lived forever and some guy who asked to be buried alive then changed his mind at the last minute. Meanwhile, his 12 piece brass and fiddle collective worked themselves into a right frenzy with fake-swooning and silly poses.
The highlight of the night was undoubtedly The Bees, a six-piece from the Isle of Wight with their impressive blend of folk-rock, psychadelia and funk. Stir in some slide guitar, hammond organ and frequent instrument swapping and you get a pretty impressive spectacle. These were advert-soundtracks stolen by Citroen and Sainsbury's but played here as the good lord intended them. More than makes up for the ridiculous hats: cowboy, gamekeeper, milkman.
Closing the night was Jose Gonzalez- the hottest Argentinian Swede ever to come out of the mean streets of Gothenburg. He barely looked up from his guitar and his 10-minute tuning session irked the cider-fuelled Brummie audience. However, he was quickly forgiven due to his eloquent Swedish accent and a brilliant Kylie Minogue cover to add to his more polished acoustic offerings.
Overall a pretty good festival and good proof that Midlanders also know about culture and stuff.
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