The opening act was Ellie Ford. She has a lovely open personality and a clear and unaffected voice that flowed through her songs like a stream picking its way through the landscape of arpeggios and staccato chords that she plays on her harp. It is a luxury to see and hear a harp player who writes their own songs. Living in the 'burbs means that every so often that bloke sits outside the supermarket with his backing tracks, box of CDs and cheesy harp tunes, doing the instrument a massive disservice. Rescued by America's Joanna Newsom and England's Serafina Steer, the harp has become a setting for respectively, wildness and suppressed fury; here, however, the harp is part of a conversation which is partly sung and partly played by an artist whose gentleness belies an ability to draw the audience into her own emotional space and make them really listen to her. It could be very difficult to be the opening act for an exciting and busy day like this one, but Ellie carried it off with aplomb, and I think everyone who watched her felt the same delight at being there early enough to catch her set.
And of course, The Charlie Tipper Conspiracy had arrived. Whenever they arrive or depart from gig, I am reminded of John Peel's description of Captain Beefheart's band getting off the coach at Eastbourne the first time he met them, when he was there to do a DJ set. He described them clambering off the bus one by one, each one a different character, and being mesmerised by the quantity of people in the band. There are seven Charlie Tippers and they are a bit like an enormous family always at risk of losing one member, or leaving one behind (coming from such a family, I know what I'm talking about). They have their own world, the Charlie Tipper world, and every so often you see one of them drifting off on a mission, always mysterious but never evil. As soon as I saw them on Saturday, I stopped being nervous about playing and felt that everything would be OK, and it was.
The festival was really well-organised: band in the big room, followed by a band/artist in the small room, with the audience getting into a rhythm of moving between the two.
In a strategic coup, David Gedge had scheduled his band Cinerama to play next, and we flowed into the big room into an atmosphere of 1960s film music, a huge soundscape of female harmonies with flourishes of organ and punctuated by David's authoritative voice. There was no chance of slipping away for fish and chips: the music was far too good to leave, and at the end of the set there was a funny little section that was almost showbiz (maybe I'm sensitised to this because Bruce Forsyth has just died), where the raffle was announced and a chap called Andy, who had won the raffle last year but not stuck around to collect the prize, and who has apparently never forgiven the band for re-drawing the ticket and awarding the prize to someone else, was reminded that if he won this year, he would have to collect the prize in person. Ha ha! The informality was really endearing, and you could feel the crowd relaxing and getting into the spirit of the afternoon.
I can't write about everything that happened and every band I saw, but here are a few highlights. The Popguns, on the big stage in the afternoon, were great. Years ago, I did a gig with an acoustic line-up of the band at the Prince Albert, and earlier this year in Congleton played on the bill with just Wendy and Simon as a duo. I had never seen the full band before. They are a proper 'songs' band and Wendy sings absolutely flawlessly and with complete honesty and lack of affectation. She has a truly lovely voice reminiscent of Sandie Shaw; there was not a note out of place, yet she sang with a huge amount of passion. 'Bugger off, Britney', I thought, perhaps rather uncharitably, but there is nothing like hearing a singer who is authentic and strong and devoid of fakery.
It must be noted here that the sound engineers in the venue deserve a prize. It would have been so easy to mess things up faced with such a different array of line-ups and instrumentation, but boy have they got good ears! Back in the day we used to suffer a lot from engineers who had what our driver called 'ears of cloth'. Add that to crappy PA systems with bust speakers (it was the era when heavy metal was giving way to punk rock), it was a miracle if you ever sounded good live. At Concorde 2 we had in-house engineers on a mission to make the sound work, and they made it work for every single act or artist who played.
Let's move on to the Charlie Tipper Conspiracy. Sound-check time was necessarily short, but probably after the experience of the 15 minute sound check at The Cavern for a band with seven people, the business was done in nanoseconds and they went on to play the best set I've ever heard from them. The audience loved them and I felt a sense of sisterly pride from the sidelines! We had all been asked to cover a Wedding Present song and they did a cover of Dalliance (the Popguns had also done a version earlier) and the audience sang along which was incredibly endearing. Their guitarist was wearing a pull-on hat and was the butt of an 'Edge' joke as he looked suspiciously similar to U2's guitarist. Luckily I had a similar hat that I could wear to sing Femme Fatale so we were double-edged (sorry).
Flowers played next, in the big room, and it was possible to catch a tiny bit of their set after a sound check. Through the doors I could see the audience listening with rapt attention; I want to go to see them properly soon because their sound was wide, sparse and very exciting.
So we start up as the band next door finishes; I was ready, and despite finding that it was for some songs one of those occasions where somebody else's fingers attached themselves to my arms, I really enjoyed it. What a friendly crowd! Even the guy with the mohican was tapping his feet, everyone helped out with Yeah Yeah Yeah (my cover) which was good, because I bloody needed it; and when it came to The Sea I took Jerry Thackray's advice (he had come along as my guest, only the second time he'd been out to a gig this year) and invited people to sing. Whoosh! They charged in, in full voice! Oh, it made me so happy! It is scary going to do gigs on your own with no 'infrastructure'; in the morning I had been so anxious I'd almost decided to give the whole lot up and just be a person living in a house and watching TV and eating. I am not an extrovert and I have no idea what drives this urge to go out and sing to people. But on this tour I have experienced such friendship and support that the adventure, in spite of flat tyres, late trains and alarming bunk-shares with male French cyclists, has been hugely positive. I plod into unknown venues with the guitar on my back and never know what is going to happen; what happened on Saturday has filled my heart with happiness so much that I'm still smiling.
To cap it all, the Wedding Present played an absolutely storming set. Bravely, they started with two songs that were really soundscapes, and that again showed off the vocal harmony skills of the group. They played their 2016 album Going, Going... in its entirety (more about the album here: https://scopitones.co.uk/going-going) and proved their authority as one of Britain's leading indie bands. They are well-rehearsed without being so slick you can't catch them, and hugely powerful sound-wise yet they can switch from that full-on rock sound to absolute delicacy in moment. There are so many ingredients to play with: those voices, two guitars, keyboard and drums: and songs!
You got the impression of a great sense of playfulness behind the arrangements, although this never materialises as quirkiness; it's more that observation of life has translated seamlessly into music and song without cleverness kicking in and spoiling the show. Somehow David drives the whole experience, without overpowering the band with a rock-star's ego, which is a skill in itself. By this time there must have been more than 600 people there and the atmosphere was electric, even at the very back of the room. I loved the encore-that-wasn't-an-encore. It was such a pity that it all had to end!
Thank you so much to David Gedge for inviting me to participate, and to the Charlie Tipper Conspiracy for putting my name forward, and thank you for the friendliness everyone, from Jessica who does the Wedding Present's merch stall, through the staff at the venue, to the other bands and to the wonderful audience who came with open minds and happy hearts. It was an unforgettable day, and nice to see Jerry out and about too: I hope the good start of a new phase in your life.
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