Spent a pleasant weekend at Cornbury Festival. We weren’t doing Melomania this year (only three of us could make it, and there weren’t any giants or singing plague victims, so it wouldn’t have been much of a procession. Fortunately, Ducklington Morris were dancing on the Saturday, so I was still able to get in without having to pay.
One nice thing about going to Cornbury is that I get to see bands that I normally never would. I’d never, for example, have set out to go and see The Proclaimers, particularly not if I had to pay. But I quite enjoyed seeing them at Cornbury the year before last. Of course, sometimes there are also acts on that I would go and see anyway, like Bellowhead last year, or Robert Plant a few years back.
So we started on Saturday with the morris. This was difficult, as the temporary floor that had been put down for us to dance on was too close to the Riverside stage, so that it was difficult for the music to be heard. We tried moving along a bit, which helped with that problem, but were now dancing on grass, which is difficult (grass is not a surface well-suited to dancing). After a while, some music started up on the Second Stage, which we were now close to, and so we went back to the original spot and made the best of it.
Once the dancing was done, and our free tickets earned, I was able to spend the rest of the festival as a regular attendee. The first act I saw was Peter Green, who was good, but his vocals were too quiet in the mix, so they were hard to hear. I also saw The Magic Numbers, Teddy Thompson and The Damned, all of whom I quite enjoyed, but none of whom were outstanding. The last act on Saturday was Scouting for Girls, who were crap. This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has actually listened to their records, but I hadn’t. Or, at least, not knowingly; I think I had heard them on the radio, but they hadn’t really registered on account of being too bland and unmemorable. So I listened to them for about a quarter of an hour before giving up and calling it a day.
Saturday began for me with 3 Daft Monkeys. I saw them at Oxford Folk Festival last year, and wasn’t very impressed. The sound had been fairly poor, and so I wasn’t sure whether they’d actually been rubbish, or just let down by poor production. I was pleased to discover that it had been the latter. Next I caught some of a set by an electric blues band called King B, who were fairly entertaining. Came back to the Folk Festival stage for Coute Diomboulou, then when they finished I headed over to the main stage to catch the end of Imelda May’s set. I wished I’d done so earlier, because she was really good, while Coute Diomboulou were pleasant, but not brilliant. She was on both days at Cornbury last year, but I missed both her sets then, too.
After a bite to eat, I went and saw Eddi Reader, then avoided The Lightning Seeds and instead went over to the Riverside stage and saw a ‘flamenco rockabilly’ band called Mano de Dios, who were really good. Then went back to the Folk Festival stage for Mary Coughlan, who was quite good. Particularly memorable was an interesting cover of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. After that, I went and saw The Pretenders on the main stage (they were very good) and then came back to the Folk Festival stage for the band I’d most been looking forward to: Peatbog Faeries. Their live performance focusses more on live instrumentation than their records, which have more in the way of electronics. They were most excellent.
The headline act on Sunday was Sugababes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn’t bother staying to watch them, and headed home instead.
There was some rain on Saturday, but it wasn’t too bad, and the weather on Sunday was glorious. All in all, a good weekend.