Why festivals matter - a photo gallery.

I have been thinking about 2018 festivals of late and that has, in part, been responsible for reminding me about all the artists that I saw in 2017 that, at least in some cases, I have never mentioned before. This is a case of 'Live With No Comment'. I have added the act/artist and the stage to each photo but that is as much as you get.  
All of them were taken by me at End Of The Road Festival 2017 and I own the copyright in these pictures. Feel free to share away but please give credit to the artists. These pictures are in no particular order, by date or any other criterion. I flicked through the photos I took in an haphazard way and simply chose the ones I wanted as and when I found them.

Even more importantly please listen to artists, buy their music, go and see them live.

Julia Jacklin, Garden stage, 3 September.

Goat Girl, Big Top stage, 1 September.

Lisa O'Neill, Tipi stage, 1 September.

Shovels & Rope, Woods stage, 1 September 2017.

Tasseomancy, Tipi stage, 2 September.

Jens Lekman, Garden stage, 1 September.

Girl Ray, Tipi stage, 3 September.

New Music 2018 - Part 7 - Cat Clyde - Ivory Castanets

This is another release from 2017 that has just appeared on my radar and it is the debut full-length from Cat Clyde who hails from Stratford, Ontario, Canada.

Ivory Castanets - Cat Clyde (RED distribution, 5 May 2017).

Cat Clyde - Ivory Castanets:

• Sheets Of Green
• The Meadow
• Running Water
• Like A Wave
• Heavy Weight
• Mama Said
• The Man I Loved Blues
• Move Along
• Walkin' Down The Road
• Chimes In The Night

I have listened to the album end-to-end three times this evening.  This is fairly unusual behaviour even by my own standards.  It is certainly somewhat old-time but that's not really the issue here because the combination of voice, guitar (sometimes slide-acoustic) and keyboards is sublime. The production is not lo-fi but neither is it polished to a point that it might impact on the experience.
I'm not going to select a track from the album just now. Instead, and because I suggest that it indicates her desire to push on, this is a track that has been released since then.

The River - Cat Clyde (November 2017).

 What we need now is to see her touring over here in the UK.

New Music 2018 - Part 3 - Laura Cannell - Hunter Huntress Hawker

I mentioned this yesterday. Towards the end of 2017 I started a Friday spot on Facebook in which I mention a music release that has captured my attention. I'm planning to revive that idea after the break for Christmas and New Year although perhaps not every week. I rather like the idea of more blog posts but the two are not incompatible by any means.  To date it has been a very recent release but I'm thinking that this should not always be the case.

Hunter Huntress Hawker - Laura Cannell (Brawl Records, 20 October 2017).

This album (it is actually her fourth) is one that, while I mentioned it on Facebook, has not appeared here before. You may find it challenging but I'm not going to apologise for that. It has two key-words that might be used to describe it that tend to put people off  -  experimental and improvised.
It was recorded live in a ruined church (St. Andrew, Covehithe, Suffolk) that is the only significant structure that remains of a one-thriving fishing community on the east coast of England, the rest of which has now been almost entirely claimed by coastal erosion.
Half-an-hour of truly haunting over-bowed violin playing might just make the cold and damp of early January seem rewarding. I have wavered about choosing a tune (for they are all thus, there are no words). I decided on this:

The penultimate item on the collection - Nordhalla.

The rogue's gallery - a live music journey in 2017.

To break up the infernal list-making, much as it appeals to me, I have decided to have a bit of fun. The artists that make it on to the lists aren't necessarily those that I have had the most fun watching live. Nor, for that matter, are the artists that are not featured in lists any less deserving of attention. 
I have posted a couple of "road trips" in the last year or so. They were virtual and very rewarding to compile but also hard work.
This one, and I'll be compiling it over the next couple of days, is put together from a very different perspective. It is what I saw; vitally it is what I pointed my camera at.

It is sometimes possible to catch acts sound-checking; rarer still to capture the rituals that accompany this and so that is where we shall start. I have to say that if there is a theme here then you are probably going to have to identify it yourself.

Hinds - Far Out stage, Green Man Festival, 18 August 2017.

Two long delays, both on Sunday evenings, provided the material for these photos of acts very late on stage. This first was due to the total failure of the sound board for the stage monitors.

Marika Hackman - Tipi stage, End Of The Road Festival, 3 September 2017.

Owing to the set being delayed by six hours because of extremely adverse weather this next gig became virtually a private show for the couple of dozen of us that turned up to see it. By this time most of the potential audience had thrown in the towel and gone home wet, muddy and dispirited. I had no real reason to leave early. It also had the advantage that it no longer clashed with anything else that I wanted to see. This is amongst the very best live sets that I have witnessed in 2017 and that now numbers over 150.

Billed as Michele Stodart but The Magic Numbers in all but name. Nest stage, Truck Festival, 23 July 2017.

There is also a situation, and I guess artists feel this too, where the question is 'can it work like a dream?' I had exactly that issue with 'Hurray For The Riff Raff' at Green Man. On one hand I wanted thousands to come watch. On the other hand I wanted to be right at the front of the Mountain stage come what may. 
Even given the positive reception of 'The Navigator', Alynda Segarra took a big risk and played a full-on, politically-liberal set. It could have gone horribly wrong. It was another of the highlights of 2017 for me because it was beyond what, even in my wildest imagination I had thought it could be. The crowd swelled to a surprising size. Then the crowd started singing to her un-encouraged. It was a wonderful place to be and the sun came out. This is the point at which she couldn't really hear her own vocals any longer. Priceless.

Hurray For The Riff Raff, Mountain stage, Green Man Festival, 18 August 2017.

My Music in 2017 - Albums - Part 2

Is it easier to continue something than to start it?
I'm not quite sure where this is heading; hopefully straight to the heart of music that was new and important to me in 2017, or at least in my mind.

• Ags Connolly - Nothin' Unexpected
• Jason Isbell - The Nashville Sound
• Margo Price - All American Made
• Paradisia - Sound Of Freedom
• Scott H Biram - The Bad Testament
• Secret Sisters - You Don't Own Me Anymore
• Slowgold - Drömmar
• Steph Cameron - Daybreak Over Jackson Street
• Vukovi - Vukovi
• Wildwood Kin - Turning Tides

This list is possibly more eclectic than the last. Of the ten four are British, four are from the US and there is one each from Canada and Sweden.

Of the acts/artists I have seen seven of the ten play live at some point in the past. I have seen one of them live five times but not once in 2017! Only one of them have I seen live in 2017 and that was a serendipitous mistake on my part.
Leaving my lair that was The Saloon Bar stage I braved the mud but paddled to the wrong stage at the right time.  I saw this band, a four-piece from Scotland...

Vukovi, The Nest stage, Truck Festival, 21 July 2017.

I'd never heard Vukovi until this happened. A good result I have to say. As for the band that I was intending to see and were playing the Market stage, well that worked out for the best later in the summer in any case. That was 'Goat Girl'.
Vukovi was however far from the only remarkable gig of Truck Festival 2017. Tired now, late on Sunday evening, who could imagine a full band set in the Nest stage with just twelve of us in the audience when it started?

This was the time to forget about Monday morning and how I was going escape from all of this and return to something approaching normality. Sometimes you need to dig deep into the moment.

I think that would be a suitable subject for another post. This idea has got a hold in my mind now.

My Music in 2017 - Albums - Part 1

Right then, the time for year-end lists is with us once again. This led me to consider that it is my twelfth year of doing such things. The first was posted on 10 December 2006 and that was just three months after starting this blog. It was also before I started attending music festivals. It was to be the driving force for that, and attempts at music photography soon followed.
That list of ten albums from 2006 is here.

The rules have changed little since: there will be several lists of albums as well as other categories. All entries in each list are alphabetical by artist and inclusion in a first list does not imply that I regard these releases to be superior to those in a later list of the same category.
Why do I do this? The answer to this question, which I have been asked surprisingly often, is that it serves to crystallise my thoughts on all the music that I have heard in the past year. That is more important than ever. I don't have exact numbers but I am in no doubt that in 2017 I have listened to more music than in any previous year. That includes approximately 150 live acts.
Music by artists that I have seen live at some time or another continues to have a profound effect on my listening habits. To make that point this list consists only of albums released in 2017 by artists that I have also seen live in 2017.
The reverse is also holds true; I have made an effort to see a number of artists in 2017 as a result of falling for their music in recorded format. John Moreland is a very good example of that. His LP 'High On Tulsa Heat' was on this list last year. The follow-up 'Big Bad Luv' is on this one and therefore here he is...

John Moreland, Garden stage, End Of The Road Festival, 2 September 2017.

• Angel Olsen - Phases
• Courtney Marie Andrews - Honest Life
• Holly Macve - Golden Eagle
• Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator
• John Moreland - Big Bad Luv
• John Smith - Headlong
• Otis Gibbs - Mount Renraw
• Pumarosa - The Witch
• Rosie Hood - The Beautiful and The Actual
• Stevie Parker - Blue

Less than an hour later...

Courtney Marie Andrews, Garden stage, End Of The Road Festival, 2 September 2017.

I guess it is fair to say that I have rather indie-traditional leanings in the music I favour but in fact I have listened to a surprising amount of pop and electronic music this year too. I'm neither proud nor embarrassed about that.
The highlight is possibly that the last few years of political turmoil have re-energised the whole gamut of narrative music based on protest, hardship and (voluntary or otherwise) displacement.

My first attempt at seeing Pumarosa live, at Truck Festival 2016, was entirely successful. Taking photos was not however, thanks to a tetchy memory card. With a new memory card and as it happens a different camera I fared somewhat better in 2017.

Pumarosa's Isabel Munoz-Newsome, Walled Garden stage, Green Man Festival, 18 August 2017.

John Smith, Tipi stage, End Of The Road Festival, 2 September 2017.

If there is a curve-ball it is the inclusion of 'Phases' by Angel Olsen because it is in a sense a compilation. My reason is this. I first saw her live at Green Man 2014, knowing next to nothing of her or her work, and was blown away. In great part by the music but also by her faintly diffident approach. Three years on, and after the release of 'My Woman' in 2016, she returned to Green Man in 2017. I was interested to see what might have changed. Quite a lot to tell the truth and much as I expected to be honest. Totally amazing and still playing that 1979 Gibson S-1.

Angel Olsen, Far Out stage, Green Man Festival, 18 August 2017.

North Dorset Folk Festival 2017 - a preview

So you thought that the 2017 festival season is over now? Well for the most part it is...
You might still be able to snag a ticket for this, the 6th edition of North Dorset Folk Festival and probably Britain's smallest festival - less than 100 tickets were available at the start of sales - if you get on it quick. The food is to die for too.

TICKETS: here (£29 + £2.61 booking fee)
This is the poster:

I shall be adding details of the artists during this evening and tomorrow. I hope to see you at Marnhull Village Hall in less than three weeks time. I'm super excited for this because, although I am one of perhaps a dozen people other the organisers and crew that have been to all five previous editions of The North Dorset Folk Festival, five of the seven acts are ones that I have never seen live here or anywhere else. In that sense it beats any of the previous five!
The two artists that I have seen playing full sets live before actually have what I think are the two most challenging slots here: Tom Clements opening and Megan Henwood as first support.

Headline artist Lisbee Stainton released her fifth album in the spring of this year so rest assured that she has no shortage of quality material from which to choose for her set. 

Lisbee Stainton - Then Up (Active Distribution, 21 April 2017).

Megan Henwood is not likely to have that problem either and she is a veteran of NDFF. Her third album is due for general release on Friday 27 October. No promises, but it's just possible that you might be able to purchase it person-to-person a few days early. Signed. If you don't ask you don't get.

Megan Henwood - River (27 October 2017).

From Somerset, Kitty Macfarlane and an artist that inexplicably I have managed to avoid seeing live for no obvious reason at all. That is despite the fact that her EP Tide & Time is well known to me and I wrote about it last year!

New Music 2017 - Part 28 - Top Floor Taivers - A Delicate Game

This has nothing directly to do with the festivals I have been to over this summer. It has a great deal to do with the variety of music that garners my attention. It is also a possible pointer towards my change of direction when it comes to festivals that I'm considering visiting in 2018. I'm almost certain that I have never seen any of the four artists that form the core of Top Floor Taivers live in any of their many and various other guises. This is their first album together as such. Their recorded works as individuals or other bands are a however a different matter and I have listened to them.

A Delicate Game, Top Floor Taivers (TFT Records, 28 February 2017).

Recorded it is a slightly different consideration - as a trans-Britain-and-Ireland collective this is quite something. It treats traditional songs with grace and pressure, but also includes versions of modern folk songs such as Richard Thompson's '1952 Vincent Black Lightning'. The best comes with some new compositions such as 'Jeanie and the Spider' that rate alongside anything else here.
If you want my opinion then it is that this album is under-rated. The version of the traditional Scottish song 'Johnnie of Braidieslee' is as good as it could be. The origin, and age, of the song is anyone's guess; possibly 17th century in approximately current form but it might have origins older than that and have been updated and reconstructed to suit the times. It really doesn't matter that much.
For the curious, here is the track-list:

Top Floor Taivers - A Delicate Game:

• Johnnie of Braidieslee
• Princess Rosanna
• The False Bride
• Everybody Knows
• 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
• Jeannie and the Spider
• Campfires
• Ramblin' Rover
• 10 Little Men

I  don't think that I could leave you hanging, with nothing to listen to, so here are a couple of tunes that are not on the album.


'Captain Ward' (traditional) and 'The Porterhead Reel' (Gráinne Brady).

End Of The Road and all that...

So why have I written nothing since I returned from End Of The Road 2017 a week ago? Well I've been busy at work for a start, catching up on my sleep too and thinking about all the things I saw that weekend. Assisted by, and whilst working through, all the pictures that I took.
I've also been listening to a whole lot of new, some even forthcoming, music and started thinking about those many great albums already released in 2017; equally those still anticipated. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to intertwine my memories of EOTR 2017 with some of these forthcoming things and, also, a few releases the first nine months of 2017 that I have not mentioned up to now for whatever reason. That this will keep me more than busy is something of an understatement.

Le's start with something from last weekend and an artist that I have wished to see live for some years now.

 Lucinda Williams, Garden stage, Friday 1 September.

This stage is unsurpassed in atmosphere in so many ways so I shall stick with it, and a diet of artists from the US, for this post. Of the four artists here this is the only one that I had seen live before at EOTR 2015 but on the Woods stage then. The picture above was taken after nightfall.

Ryley Walker, Garden stage, Friday lunchtime, 1 September.

When the greatest stage light of all, the sun, is in play the Garden stage is unimpeachable. It was to be so again for much of Saturday.

Courtney Marie Andrews, Garden stage, 2 September.

Opening the same stage at lunchtime the same day was an artist from Oklahoma whose recent albums astound me only slightly more than the lack of appreciation that he garners. Yes there was a fair gathering here, certainly a very appreciative and dedicated one as the songs-sung-back attested. It caught a few others by surprise; some of these songs are devastatingly bleak but curiously hopeful rather than depressing.

John Moreland, Garden stage, 2 September.

Dyn Gwrydd :: 2017 :: Green Man - Part 4 - three vital bands on Friday.

I have said that I wouldn't go to a festival that I didn't believe had strength in depth. Green Man and End Of The Road tick that box with abandon. Here are a few more acts that I saw at Green Man and that come highly recommended in my humble opinion.
The first, and one that criminally I have failed to see live twice before, is a world away from the more "serious" music that some might think preoccupies me. From Madrid, with garage-rock attitude and a pop sensibility to match, comes all-female foursome Hinds.

Hinds' Ana Perrote. Far Out stage, 18 August 2017.

This is a move to a different stage and a very different artist. One that I seen live before but never at a festival.

Stevie Parker, Rising stage, 18 August 2017. Her first album 'The Cure' is out now.

Another act known to me but one that I had never seen live was Cobalt Chapel, touring their self-titled LP. Let's face it all three acts here were on my must-see-live wants list and this is yet another reason that festivals such as this work for me.

Cobalt Chapel, Walled Garden stage, 18 August 2017. (Klove Records, 20 January 2017).

Cecilia Fage fronts the show.

Green Man :: 2017 :: Dyn Gwrydd - Part 3 - vox pop

Some people choose festivals based in large measure on the main stage headliners. I have to say that I have never been one of them and on several occasions I have been to multi-day festivals and not seen a single one of said acts. This was not true last weekend and I saw much of Ryan Adams' set and all of PJ Harvey's magnificent closing act on Sunday.
There are no picture of these because I don't want to spend hours, and in the process miss artists on other stages, to be near the front. I'm happy just to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy a grandstand view from the back --- something that the topography of the Mountain stage at Green Man means that it is surprisingly easy to do.
While that set was indeed a true highlight of the weekend it was also the culmination of the work of many others. One artist I was delighted to see on the list - the one that prompted me to buy a ticket, some six months back and just before the release of the latest album, was Hurray For The Riff Raff.

When I first saw Alynda Lee Segarra and her band live at End Of The Road 2012 they were almost unknown, almost totally so in the UK. It occurred to me then that were there any fairness in the world then that should not remain true.  2017 LP 'The Navigator' saw a change of direction, more reflecting her Puerto Rican heritage, and with a largely new band. Following on from 2014 album 'Small Town Heroes' not everyone saw this as a positive development. 
Almost five years on and this was an artist that I was willing to take time and effort to see live at close quarters. Time and circumstance have conspired to make Hurray For The Riff Raff one of the live acts of 2017 --- and one cause of that is a growing sense of injustice about fundamental issues of human rights; in particular the selective application of them.
The crowd was already rather larger than I might have suspected. The moment she walked onto the stage on Friday afternoon I knew that I had made the right decision.

She had the audience round her little finger from the get go and both parties knew it. Stood by the barrier between audience and stage while trying to take pictures that made any sense of the circumstances was doubly interesting. Long story short, this was a humanist rally, combined with a concert, spontaneously happening in South Wales.

The greatest achievement is that although done with serious intent it was never preachy or indeed overtly political. It simply didn't need to be.  

We got to hear pretty much all of the album 'The Navigator' and the band does it proud live.

This was for people to enjoy - these folks had paid for tickets after all - and now the vox pop was singing Pa'lante back to her, swearing and all. This was amongst the most remarkable live sets that I have ever had the fortune to see close up.

The undisputed star of the show.

Dyn Gwrydd :: 2017 :: Green Man - Part 2 - Three to see (again)

Festivals are a chance to see new music as I mention often and it is a subject that I will come back to soon. After a while they also become a way to catch up and see acts again. This post is predicated on that theme. Three acts that I have seen before at three different festivals between 2012 and 2016 revisited at Green Man 2017 each playing on a different stage and on a different day.
I shall start with the one that I first saw at live Green Man 2014 and playing the Mountain stage that year. Back then she was touring her  2014 album 'Burn Your Fire For No Witness' and was one of the most impressive artists but also one that I knew rather little about at that time. This time she is touring on the back of the 2017 LP 'My Woman'.
She is also an artist never known to make the photographer's task easy. Once you know that it counts in your favour.

Angel Olsen & her '79 Gibson S-1, Far Out stage, Green Man Festival, Friday 18 August.

This next artist is someone that first saw live at End Of The Road Festival at the end of last summer. She opened the beautiful Garden stage on Sunday and I messed up almost all of the pictures that I took then but the music was great. I had to try and do something to redeem myself this time... and as luck would have it maybe I did. What is beyond question is that the artist has grown into her rôle too. In the time between these festivals Holly Macve released her début album 'Golden Eagle' on Bella Union Records.
That is a great record but this song isn't on it because it is a brand new one. It is also the only song in the set on which she played electric guitar.

'Iris', Holly Macve, Mountain stage, Green Man Festival, Sunday 20 August 2017.

Last but not least is a band from Scotland and one that I have not seen live since the one-and-only No Direction Home Festival in 2012. Their latest release is 'Wide Majestic Aire' (2016); tongue-in-cheek the title may be but the band goes from strength to strength. A broken guitar string only added to the spectacle, but I'll come back to what happened then sometime later. All I will say is that it made me even more in awe.

Trembling Bells, Walled Garden stage, Green Man Festival, Saturday 19 August 2017.

Two of these acts also share a single person as a musical collaborator in their canon of work.

Green Man :: 2017 :: Dyn Gwrydd - Part 1

It is time to begin my commentary on the time I spent at Green Man Festival last weekend - and the 15th edition of the same. It is appropriate to start with this year's incarnation of the eponymous figure, burnt at midnight on Sunday he is reincarnated in a new guise the next year. This year he had a companion animal too, y ddraig goch (what else?)

Around the bonfire and the red dragon. Early evening Thursday 17 August.

The Green Man, a little before midnight. Saturday 19 August.

The best festivals have a sense of identity that is a combination of location, setting, careful curation - from the choice of music and other entertainment, to the food and drink choices on offer. If successful in time the audience that is attracted becomes an integral part of the festival itself. This is where independent festivals win over the corporate kind.

Now the music. On Thurdsay evening there is a limited offering based around the Far Out and Chai Wallah stages, both of which are tented.
One of the best things about festivals is being taken by live music that one was completely unaware of until the moment happens. This first happened last weekend on Thursday evening at the Far Out stage.

Anna Meredith, Far Out stage, Thursday 17 August.

The instrumental lead-in was enough to arouse my curiosity and not least because it put me in mind of Mary Epworth (see here). I have since determined that the track 'Nautilus' is epic on record but it is quite astonishing live - particularly the percussion.  It may be a highlight but the rest is snapping at its heels.

Anna Meredith 'Varmints' (Moshi Moshi Records, 4 March 2016.)

It occurred to me then that if Thursday evening has me thinking like this then it is either going to be quite some weekend or, on the other hand, it might wind up as a huge anticlimax. Suffice to say that it most certainly did not and I will post about why that was soon.
The next instalment should be up here tomorrow, probably sometime in the evening (UK time).

Thinking about festivals...

It is raining hard as I write this late Monday evening. In 72 hours time I shall be camping for the first of four nights and this time next week, all being well, I shall be back here at home in front of the computer writing about Green Man 2017.
It will be my fourth visit to Green Man in South Wales in successive years since 2014. All those so far have been accompanied by rain to a greater or lesser degree. This one looks like following the theme, yet it has not spoiled any of them thus far. I'm hoping that the same holds this time.
The thing is that, at least to some extent, I know what rain during Green Man involves when it comes because it did in both 2015 and 2016. Truck Festival 2017 was a surprise however, as I had never been to one (four actually) that were bothered by more than a few sharp showers. The deluge was survivable, I'm used to camping in less than ideal conditions, but I certainly don't wish to have to deal with mud like that twice in four weeks. 
I imagine that I would do so however.
There is a limit somewhere, cancellation of the festival being an obvious one, but I'm hoping not to discover it. The thing is, if one were to dwell on all this too much you'd never buy a ticket. These festivals are sold out, weeks if not months in advance, and there is a reason for that. 

So what am I looking forward to...

You might spot that I'm unlikely to be left short of choices. In fact the clashes are likely to many and various. I'll try and add some of my ideas over the next two evenings if only for the fact that it will help me decide some kind of priority. Any suggestions are of course most welcome and I know full well that, once I'm actually there, much of the planning will go out of the window because it always does!
What is not included here are artists appearing on the Green Man Rising stage; new artists that auditioned in a competition for a gig at Green Man, and if the previous years are anything to go by I shall be there on more than a few occasions.

Many are the artists that I have seen live before but would love to see again. There are plenty and then some that I have never seen live.
Several further options are available as there are a number of artists here that are also appearing at End Of The Road Festival 2017 a fortnight later. One of those, that I am absolutely determined to see (at least once), is Gaelynn Lea. She is without doubt one of the finest fiddle players of her generation, and there are plenty of challengers for that crown I'm happy to add.
The perfect description of what being at a festival is actually like was inadvertently provided by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:
"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know."

OK. It is now the aforementioned tomorrow evening,  so what has changed?

I am cautiously optimistic concerning the developments in the meteorological prognostications, which is a pleasant change from the situation this time four weeks ago and a few days before Truck Festival.
Another consideration is what balance to strike between seeing acts that I have already seen live and enjoyed, those I am aware of but have never seen in a live setting and those that are essentially unknown. This is a re-working of Rumsfeld's Ruse in a festival setting. My response is, I suspect, much like his. I will spend much of the next two days thinking about all the options and how they might pan out.  Once I'm actually there and things are happening for real I suspect that will mostly go straight-outta-the-window; I'll do exactly what seems a good response to the circumstances of the moment. I'll come back to some specific acts of note shortly.

Last summer at End Of The Road I saw a number of acts that, had I not already been inside a tented stage when the rain came pouring down, I would never otherwise have done. I strongly suspect that several of them were actually rather more interesting than those that I sacrificed by staying put.

The other question, that of right now, is what to listen to at home in the two days before a festival? I should possibly do a little on-line homework regarding the unknown unknowns.  I will certainly not listen to anything by the artists that I know about whether or not I have seen them live before. I've tried that before and it is in my experience a complete waste of time; like revision just before an exam it sows confusion instead of clarity.
I will for the most part listen to things that are of no direct relevance to the forthcoming festival that are either entirely new to me (hello, Spotify!) or might possibly serve as a frame of reference during the weekend.
To finish this evening's thoughts (the lists are arranged alphabetically)...

Five artists to see live for the first time:
Aldous Harding
Cobalt Chapel
Michael Kiwanuka
PJ Harvey
Ryan Adams

Five artists to see live again:
Angel Olsen
Hurray For The Riff Raff
Pumarosa
Sunflower Bean
This Is The Kit

Here is the latest (no Rising stage listing here, that's all secret).  That's it until tomorrow evening and I have changed my mind again.

Wednesday evening thoughts:
It's pouring with rain just now (9:25pm), which is actually a good thing because it suggests that the weather systems are currently running to the predicted timetable.
In music, it is very tempting to go and see St. Etienne again, not least as this will be featuring songs from the latest LP 'The Home Counties', which is of course just lovely.
Also lurking somewhere in the line-up is Frome's very own Stevie Parker, promoting her 2017 début album 'The Cure'. 😉