The rogue's gallery - and thinking about 2018 festivals

I had so much fun putting the first of these together that I was looking for any excuse to do something similar. A cold, wet day spent doing household chores and backing up the computer prompted me to look at more of the pictures of music that I have taken over the last decade or so. In turn this has inclined me to think about some festival plans for 2018.

There is no obvious place to start this but it has reminded me of several artists that I have seen live but not thought about more recently.

Cate Le Bon, Garden stage, End Of The Road 2014.

There is no obvious end to this either. Festivals became something I was curious about.  Therefore I had to go and see why there was so much fuss made about them. That finally happened in July 2007 with a trip to Latitude.
Photography was something that came with that because it seemed a convenient way to remind me what I had seen live. It was thus but it only partly served to overcome my lack of note-taking and the fact that the great majority of acts that I saw were ones that I had never even heard-of, let alone heard live or otherwise at the start of the respective set. Rather importantly I had a great time that weekend despite more than a few misgivings about the venture of solo festival attendance the nearer I got to actually having to deal with it.

In time it, both festivals and photography, turned out to be a greater deal than that. It is certain that the Garden stage at End Of The Road Festival is extremely influential in this.

The same stage three years later...

Julia Jacklin returned. She had played the Tipi stage at End Of The Road 2016. 3 September 2017.

What was this all about?  There's nothing like a band going off on a whim. Particularly if the result is leaving your drummer lost, head-in-hands. It's even better when it unfolds in front of you.

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

Welcome to live music. This is why it is so much fun. Sometimes I scare myself, if only retrospectively. I made a complete dog's breakfast of taking pictures of Holly Macve when she played the Sunday opening slot on The Garden stage at End Of The Road 2016. I got another chance... and possibly I did a little better this time.

Holly Macve - Mountain stage, Green Man Festival, 20 August 2017.

I'm sure that there will be some more trips back down memory lane as I consider festival options for 2018.

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.

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'. 😉

Festivals - from 2016 into 2017

It's time to start thinking about festivals again except of course for Glastonbury 2017; that sold out months ago and I had no desire to even consider it!
I have tickets for a few, no secrets there, and now that the first artist announcements are revealed it has reminded me that these things have - as well as so many options to see acts that are new, or just new to me - a rather likeable sense of continuity and even community.
This is Green Man 2017, as currently revealed.

Of course I want to see PJ Harvey and Ryan Adams headline. I must say that Future Islands is unknown by comparison in my experience, but the forthcoming album 'The Far Field' is getting great previews and I guess that, at least from their perspective, Green Man would count as exactly 'A Far Field' to them!
Of extreme interest are those a little lower down in this list.

Angel Olsen was astonishing on The Mountain stage at Green Man 2014.

I have never seen Micheal Kiwanuka live, and I very much want to. There are others that I have seen live and that I very much wish to see again. Here is one that for some reason I haven't mentioned before and I can't imagine why. She opened the Tipi stage, the smallest regular one, on the Saturday of End Of The Road 2016. It isn't that I failed to pay attention, because I did.

Julia Jacklin. Tipi stage, End Of The Road Festival, 3 September 2016.

Another fine artist hailing from Australia. In 2014 Green Man served up Courtney Barnett and in 2015 End Of The Road bought us Tame Impala.  Julia Jacklin isn't much like either of them. She is another one-off; Australia has strength in depth.

Julia Jacklin - Don't Let The Kids Win (Transgressive Records, 24 October 2016).

Her début album passed me by at the time of release. That annoys me. Clearly I had lost the plot here because it was released only a few weeks after I saw her play live. There is no excuse for that.

Note added 8 February 2017:
Julia Jacklin is now confirmed to play End Of The Road Festival 2017.

A brief hiatus in posts...

Please bear with me because there will be a short hiatus here... it will last until the beginning of the coming week but with it should come rewards, or at least I hope so. In the meantime here a a few more memories from Green Man 2016.  Two acts that call Devon home:

Sam Green and The Midnight Heist, Chai Wallah stage, Friday evening, Green Man 2016.

Ardyn, Walled Garden stage, early Saturday afternoon, Green Man 2016.

The reason for this hiatus is End Of The Road Fesival 2016. This is a picture of a band that is performing there but one that I took at Green Man 2016. 

From Athens, Georgia, this is Mothers. Walled Garden stage, Friday afternoon.
Mothers is a four-piece band; this is Kristine Leschper and Drew Kirby thereof.

It takes a determined attitude to entitle your début LP 'When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired'.

Green Man :: 2016 :: Dyn Gwyrdd - Part 4 - five more acts; all are new to me live.

In three days time I shall be at End Of The Road 2016, so I had better get on with this! Here are five more acts from Green Man 2016 that I had never before seen play live. I have mentioned already that I really rate the Walled Garden stage and particularly in its new configuration. Three of these artists played that stage but I shall start and finish with the ones that played the smaller Green Man Rising stage.

Opening the Green Man Rising stage on Sunday was London's Paradisia, performing as a six-piece formed around the core of Anna (harp), Sophie-Rose (vocals) and Kristy (keyboard and vocals), and much influenced by Bruce Springsteen.

Their set included, as well as their own material, a cover of 'Dancing in the Dark'.

Now we shall head over to the Walled Garden stage on Friday afternoon to catch an artist who quite deliberately doesn't rock.

Trevor Sensor from Illinois just rambles.

It was a shame in so many ways that he played to such a small audience. It was easy to detect the vibe of the audience that was there however. It was like being a guest at a private performance and therefore a highlight of the day or indeed of the festival; totally captivating.

Trevor Sensor, Walled Garden stage, Friday afternoon.

Texas Girls and Jesus Christ EP (Jagjaguwar Records, 2016).

This is the Walled Garden stage on a Saturday afternoon of fleeting sunshine and blustery showers. She commented that it would be regarded as a fine day where she comes from and the flattery worked for the sun shone, albeit briefly, on this performance.

Emma Pollock, Walled Garden stage, Saturday afternoon.

The Magnetic North started as a one-off project with an album of the same name about the Orkney Islands. It could have ended there but in 2016 a second LP was revealed and it had one of the most unlikely titles in recent history: Prospect of Skelmersdale - and yes they really can pull these songs off live  - and the patter was just as good too.
Tracks from both LPs were included, and explained.

The Magnetic North, Walled Garden stage, Saturday evening.

What is less than obvious is that, lurking in the background, there is a string section - violin and cello.

To finish this post we return to the Green Man Rising stage on Saturday afternoon and the artist known as Bryde; the solo project of Sarah Howells who was one half of Paper Aeroplanes. This, however, does not sound anything like Paper Aeroplanes. It is rather more forceful and that might be an understatement.

Dyn Gwrydd :: 2016 :: Green Man Part 3 - new to me live...

This post is going to feature five acts, all of which I have never seen live before, and all but one of them played live on Sunday.
The one that didn't played on Friday and is the artist that, when announced for Green Man 2016, I most wanted to see live and resulted in me committing to buying a ticket there and then. I could have been disappointed but, as I rather suspected, the exact opposite was true.

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, Mountain stage, Friday evening.

The fact remains that were he not performing I would have decided to go to Green Man anyway and still had a great time. Two of the other artists I was well aware of, as regards their recorded music, so that leaves two more; one of which I was faintly aware of and the other not at all. This is exactly why I like to focus on the small stages and the opening artists on any stage at festivals.

Opening the Mountain stage on Sunday was Margaret Glaspy. I have been listening to her recent LP 'Emotions and Math'. I like it a lot but I didn't anticipate quite how she would translate it to live performance. I think that a great many of the others there in the drizzle felt much the same way too. This was yet another live show that it would have been a tragedy to have missed.

Headlining the Walled Garden stage on Sunday evening was an artist from the Netherlands. She plays End Of The Road Festival 2016 too.

Amber Arcades is the performance name of Annelotte de Graaf. The LP is Fading Lines.

Late Sunday afternoon I availed myself of the tented darkness of the Far Out stage to see a band from Canada with whose music I am well acquainted but had never previously had the opportunity to see play live. Its core is Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas and heavy psychedelic rock is what they do but it not necessarily all of the gloomy kind...

The Besnard Lakes:  husband and wife dualling on 12-string guitar and bass in a smoky haze.

Then this, an artist whom I had never heard about until I perused the artist list in the programme on Thursday afternoon. Janileigh Cohen from Bolton has the five-song 'As a Child EP' to sell. That might not appear to be much of a pitch but sometimes you just can't tell...

 Green Man Rising stage, early Sunday afternoon, and a very rare standing-ovation from a seated audience.

Green Man :: 2016 :: Dyn Gwrydd - Part 2 - acts seen live before

Time to get on with the music that I went to see and hear. Where better to start than a band whose career playing festivals almost exactly matches in time that of going to them myself? The correlation goes further - from Latitude 2007 to Green Man 2016, via No Direction Home 2012 and others, it always rains when I see Sheffield's Slow Club play. They have come a long way since first I saw Charles and Rebecca on the 'BBC Introducing stage' at Latitude Festival back in 2008. It involved wooden chairs and empty bottles as percussion. I will have to go back in time and find some pictures of that...

"You look so colourful in your cagoules". Rebecca's comment was true Yorkshire wit.

This post, I've just decided, is going to cover artists and acts that I have seen live at a festival at least once before. This is, I think, the fifth time that I have seen Slow Club play a full set at a festival. That's not a record, in fact it is not even close.

This next band is something of a nightmare to categorise: alt/indie country-rock but (with the exception of a judicious cover in their set this time) all sung in Welsh. This was the only picture that I managed to take that included all six members of the band!

Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog, Walled Garden stage, late Sunday afternoon.

Rhos Botwnnog is a village in the Llŷn peninsular, North Wales from which the band hails. I guess you can translate cowbois yourself. This is only the second time I have seen the band live; the first was also at the ill-fated No Direction Home Festival in 2012.

Thursday aside when it was almost the only place anything was happening, my forays into the vast tented gloom of the Far Out stage were then limited to Sunday. Of all those only one falls into the category of artists that I have seen live before. That is this one and it was a tremendous set. I first saw him play the Tipi stage on the Thursday evening at End Of The Road Festival 2014 and I wrote about that here.

Ezra Furman, Far Out stage, Sunday evening.

All these artists have new releases in tow, which they wish to promote and of course that is just how it should be. That is also true of this next, a four-piece from California that I saw live at End Of The Road Festival 2013.  Rather than focus on the front line this time I took this for it is the rhythm section that keeps the whole show on the rails.  Warpaint was first support on the Mountain stage on Sunday evening, which Belle and Sebastian headlined.

Stella Mozgawa, Warpaint, Mountain stage, 21 August 2016.

Green Man :: 2016 :: Dyn Gwyrdd - A quick site tour.

I week ago that's where I was, in the heart of the Brecon Beacons, so I guess it is about time for some words and pictures about that. I still haven't got any real idea about how to group the artists that I saw and heard into posts.  I'll just start with something else and see whether that leads me to some kind of logistical inspiration.
That somewhere might best be a picture of the (main) 'Mountain stage' taken from a distance and under a glowering sky on Sunday afternoon. For the record the artist playing here is Julia Holter, to whom I shall return somewhat later.

It is true that the weather was less than perfect much of the time but that did nothing of significance to detract from the overall experience. Having started with a scene of the site maybe I should continue the theme for now.

The smallest of the four dedicated music stages is the 'Green Man Rising stage', which principally showcases new, up-and-coming acts.

Here it is viewed from across the pond. I had just returned from seeing Paradisia play there and was on my way back to the Mountain stage. This was Sunday lunchtime and the weather was playing nice at that point.
The Green Man, after which the festival is titled, is a large mythical figure of a different design each year, that is burned just after Sunday midnight. This is this year's incarnation.

Indeterminate weather on Saturday afternoon.

The big blue tent is the 'Far Out stage', the only dedicated music stage that is fully undercover and with a capacity of several thousand standing. Whilst the setting of the Mountain stage is arguably only rivalled by the Garden stage at End of The Road Festival, my pick of the bunch at Green Man is the Walled Garden stage and here it is.

Friday midday. The band is Welsh three-piece Plu.

Not only is it intimate and characterful but it has some of the most interesting artists, at least for my money, gracing it.

The layout at this stage (and indeed elsewhere throughout the festival site) has been much enhanced since last year, which was also rather wet. It's not possible to engineer the weather but it is certainly possible to mitigate the worst of its effects. Another change in the Walled Garden stage is this.

The bar has moved to the back of the garden and changed radically. Now, as well as a handful of beers and the usual other drinks, it hosts an array of thirty draught ciders all brewed in Wales. The seventy draught beers remain for sale in the Courtyard Bar, which is just a minute or two walk away. The result was that both bars were far less overcrowded.

Next I shall turn my attention to some of the music. That is after all what I was there for.