Truck Festival 2014 - Guitar bands, and all that...

I think that it is fair to say that Truck Festival leans towards guitar bands, especially electric ones. This is exemplified by the head-liners; The Cribs (Friday) did the honours and White Lies (Saturday). That is just fine by me and I shall return to that later. I have never really been one to choose my festival choices by dint of the headline acts --- Arcade Fire at Latitude 2007 being a huge exception and sine qua non the reason for my festival going renaissance.
The point here is that, being typically Richard, I didn't actually see any of either set last weekend and purely out of choice. I have seen both on the main stage at Latitude Festival in the past, enjoyed them hugely, but I just felt it was time to turn my attention to music on other stages. It wasn't something I had planned in advance. It just turned out that way.
The first message here, I suppose, is that it would be wrong to consider Truck Festival to be hidebound in that regard. I am of the opinion that much of the best that the vibrant festival scene has to offer is to be found by looking at the artist list entirely the other way about: as though in a mirror, starting with the first artist on the least significant stage.

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop."

That sound advice, as well as being in this case an apposite Oxonian reference, is truer of festivals than Lewis Carroll could possibly have known when writing in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.  The Cheshire Cat and The Mad Hatter's* tea-party aside --- Truck and all other festivals have robust policies that militate against the use of illegal substances --- but to be fair they weren't proscribed when he was writing.
That, however, is history. There is speculation, of course: maybe Fleetwood Mac will headline Glastonbury 2015, maybe they won't. That is a discussion for another day. This is all about the music that actually happened on a farm in Oxfordshire last weekend.

I'll tell you something about this.  The little digital thermometer on my camera strap was reading 39ºC (102ºF) inside the Market Stage early on Saturday afternoon and I was wilting whilst just watching.
Guitar banditry this most certainly is not. 
   

Accompanied only by sparse, but therefore also very effective, keys and acoustic guitar - Ella Martini.

Recording status: unsigned.
Category: urban (the kind of urbs that Romans, and us too, would aspire to).

*The Mad Hatter was actually a victim of hydragyria, mercury poisoning, and as a result of the felt making process. That affliction was also well attested in Roman times but as a result of the use of mercury in other applications.