End Of The Road 2014 - something old, something new

One thing that I have left unmentioned thus far is the 'limited programme' provided on Thursday evening. It was instituted a few years ago for the then small proportion of festival attendees that arrived on Thursday afternoon. All indications suggest that this fraction is rising year by year, probably exponentially.
This all took place on the Tipi stage and comprised four acts from 6:15pm. The last, and easily the pick of them, was Ezra Furman. He also played the Garden Stage Friday evening (which I did not see, but apparently excellent too.)
Here he is on the smaller stage on Thursday evening. The easiest way to categorize him is to say that I can't. I think that this might be key to his seemingly burgeoning appeal. He would have it that he has made greater inroads in the UK than in his native USA (originally from Illinois). It's rock albeit of a more-or-less pop persuasion, it is certainly camp (his band is The Boyfriends), it is clever and knowingly so, but surely we have seen all those things combined before?

That is probably true but if we took that approach more widely then we would have nothing left to listen to. NOTHING. AT. ALL. The majority of the tracks came from his 2013 LP 'Year Of No Returning'. The point is that it was everything it should be; unpredictable (not least the self-deprecating asides), sometimes challenging but above all it was hugely enjoyable. What's not to like?

In some ways the next artist tells, through his songs and his career, an equally unlikely story. From an icon of the UK folk-rock boom in the late 1960s to, more than four decades later, being held in the highest regard in the US as one of the totems of the Americana/roots explosion. Richard Thompson made his recording début as a founder member of Fairport Convention in 1967.

His latest LP 'Acoustic Classics' (2014) is less a greatest hits, though of course they are, but more an attempt to regain his own songs that in many cases are now better known by many people via the cover versions of others. He played this set on the Garden stage, Sunday evening solo and acoustic except for the finale for which he was joined by his daughter and son in law.

The next is an example of how live music plays out in other ways to that which is recorded. The LP 'Rain Plans', by Israel Nash, has been recommended to me more times than I am inclined to count yet still languished in the "saved for later" section of my on-line cart and I never committed to purchasing it. That situation was very conveniently resolved. Without any on-line dealings!

Israel Nash, Tipi stage, Friday evening, End Of The Road 2014.

When Futur Primitif appeared on the Garden stage on Sunday morning there were plenty of comments concerning his new, jacketed visage and that was quite understandable. 

I'm happy to say that he retains his maverick streak but only the early birds amongst us, and we were quite numerous, really got to see it (during the sound check). Any which way the songs are so good.

Green Man 2014 (again) and an End Of The Road preview...

Right. Just over 36 hours until it is time to head out again for another long weekend of festival fun at End of The Road 2014. At the moment the weather is looking reasonable, and importantly the remnants of Hurricane Cristobel shouldn't play a part in the proceedings. I'm hoping for more of the same meteorological good fortune that accompanied my trip to Green Man 2014 the weekend before last. We shall see.
I shall start with a picture of the band that were first support on the Mountain Stage on Friday evening and that I first saw live on the Garden Stage at EOTR 2013.

Daughter, or here just Elena Tonra thereof, Mountain Stage, Green Man Festival 2014.

So then, what's cooking at End of The Road 2014 and what do I particularly want to see?

Let's start with just eight of them that I want to see live for the very first time. Here listed alphabetically:

• Arc Iris
• Jenny Lewis
• Lau
• Lily and Madeleine
• Marissa Nadler
• Pink Mountaintops
• Richard Thompson
• Stealing Sheep

I chose the particular links to each above based on those that I feel best explain my reason for wanting to see the act or artist live.

There are plenty that I would be delighted to hear again, including two or three from just two weeks back, and many more besides. As my recent post about First Aid Kit mentioned it is interesting to see just how artists develop of the space of a few years. This is another example of that. It is third time I have seen her live and while she was good then she has really grown in stature and confidence. I was blown away the second time, at EOTR .

Anna Calvi - Mountain Stage late Sunday afternoon, Green Man 2014.

Sometimes it takes a lot longer for me to to catch up live. Blue Roses - Blue Roses was one of my favourite albums of 2009. I even wrote about it in January of that year. It has taken more than five years to see her play live, now under her own name, Laura Groves. She played the Walled Garden Stage and it was a perfect foil on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Luck had it that conveniently scheduled not to clash with the above.

Laura Groves, Walled Garden Stage, Sunday, Green Man 2014.

Astonishing though the Mountain Stage is, the Walled Garden Stage is as good as any with the possible exception of The Garden Stage at EOTR. If you know me then you will realise that this is high praise indeed.
This consideration has made me decide that, if I get around to it [before this coming weekend], then the next post will be about Green Man other than the music - the ambience, facilities and all other things that make a festival more than just the line-up. If I don't write it before I return from End of The Road 2014 then maybe my detention homework will be a compare and contrast assignment!

August and onward.

A one day festival (Behind The Castle) in June. A two day festival (Truck) in July. 
That was just the warm up. In two weeks time I shall be resident in Powys, Wales at Green Man Festival and it will be my first ever visit, which is exciting. Two weeks later comes my annual pilgrimage, since 2009 at least, to End Of The Road (EOTR). There are so many more... this weekend is the 50th Cambridge Folk Festival  and 21-5th August is the 50th Towersey Folk Festival. In an ideal world I would have quite happily gone to all of these and many more too. I have to say that one that has piqued my interest for a couple of years now, although it is in distant south Suffolk, is Maverick Festival. I could list many more that have caught my eye but seven links in the first paragraph is way more than enough. It is time to focus on those that I am going to and what I might wish from them.
It might be leavened with shorter posts on new music.

I'm thinking that this post is something I shall add to over the weekend and it will be thoughts about the acts that I want to see most at Green Man or EOTR and why. Reviews such as this certainly don't hurt. Ezra Furman is playing EOTR. Never seen him live nor heard his music that I am aware of.
I'll tell you one, from EOTR, that is right at the top of my list - Richard Thompson. I don't need to justify that.

In my eight years of festival attendance the changing balance is to be struck between artists that I have heard before and those new to me. As my recent posts concerning Truck 2014 may have made clear, my liking for seeing new artists, or ones that are merely new to me live or otherwise, remains undiminished. There is now a new category too - artists in new acts/guises. Maybe that is where, probably tomorrow, I shall start this discussion. I have two in particular in mind right now and, echoing the recent comments of Robin Seamer at Breaking More Waves, I have also been thinking about those end-of -year lists too. I rather suspect that the début albums by both will feature on mine.
Here is an observation that is just mine: in 2007 I started my end of year reviews with EPs and mini albums because that was easy. The weren't many and fewer still that I felt worthy of mention and I said then that I had felt it was a dying format. I suspect that in fact I had caught it just reviving from its death throes. It is true that much of this has to due with the ascendency of digital music but that is only part of the Lazarus story. Even in 2007 EPs were starting to appear on vinyl, 7", 10" and 12", and the story continues to grow to the present. This is a more recent, but you would not guess it, example of a single:

It was released physically only on cassette tape.

I could tell you about more worthwhile EPs from the first six months of 2014 than from 2007-9 in total. I don't think, for one moment, that this is simply because I am better informed, although I am. It is much more significant than that.

What this post does lack is photographs but that is an interesting demonstration of a cascade of consequence.
When I started to blog a problem soon became apparent - I needed more original stuff to write about. The obvious answer to that was to go to festivals. Festivals are about live music, which is an intrinsically visual medium too, so I needed pictures of what I saw and heard.