Summer madness - and why it makes sense.

So I haven't written much these last couple of months. That is true. What is certainly not true is that I haven't been both listening to and reading about music! Indeed the fact that I have been doing so is in part the reason for the lack of writing. That is likely to remain the case until early September but for a variety of reasons.
It is less than a fortnight until my last outdoor festival of this summer. It is going to take some planning to maximize those acts that I wish to see and hear. I wouldn't want it to be any other way...

  

I haven't really thought about the detail and, more than likely I will not do so until I am there on the Thursday afternoon: there is a distinct boundary between general preparation and detailed battle-planning.
Here, as a slant on my current thinking, is an (alphabetical) list of just five of the acts that I have never before seen live but really want to:

• Daughter
• Deptford Goth
• Golden Fable
• Warpaint
• Widowspeak

The other thing about this time of year is that I become focussed on the music, live and recorded, that I have already heard and that which I anticipate to do so during the next four months. More about that soon. I am also thinking about the many festivals that might warrant my attention in 2014...

EOTR (almost certainly), No Dirction Home (if it happens), Maverick, Wilderness, Truck... who knows?
I have a far better knowledge base on which to draw than I did when I first embarked on this in the early summer of 2007. This, most importantly, is not only based on the festivals that I have attended in the last six years but also those that I have been given first hand reviews of from others in the festival community which, although it sounds like some hippy cliché, is on occasion as blunt an object as it needs to be.

So eight months without live music, then?
Not likely! Here is an example...

• 25 September  ---  Acoustic+  (Cheese & Grain, Frome)
• 26 September  ---  North Dorset Folk Festival  (Marnhull Village Hall)
• 27 September  ---  Frome Blues Festival (Cheese & Grain, Frome)

The events at the Cheese & Grain, and many more too, are taking place while the venue is early in the throes of a £500k overhaul to make it not only more fit-for-current-purpose, with better public facilities - toilets, café, and box-office all included - but also the artist-facing facilities that are sorely needed in order to propel it to the status of a major player in the league of regional arts and community venues.

These are exciting times indeed.