Looking forward... 2015 and all that.

Only yesterday evening, while writing my little piece on forthcoming lists and then touching on festivals in 2015, did the bigger picture start to coalesce in my mind. I must have kept thinking about it too as I woke up whilst dreaming about it  --- and so I never did get to find out what the denouement of this really very curious "festival" was. That the whole thing was devoid of real-world viability was beyond any doubt.
It has however made me turn my attention to some more of those 2014 festivals that I attended and the ones I might be anticipating a visit to in 2015.  I shall start with the upcoming announcement of (almost all) the line-up for the second edition of Behind the Castle Festival, Sherborne, Dorset, 13 June 2015.  It is to be announced on 27 November and, while currently embargoed, I'm quite certain that it will not disappoint. It will also be featured in an article in The Western Gazette.
Tickets go on sale on Monday 1 December. It is also one of the first festivals to declare any, yet alone the majority of, acts for 2015. Ticket prices remain essentially as last year but various new options are available.
Yesterday I mentioned the poll of 'UK Blogsound 2015'. It coincides with the BBC 'Sound of 2015' list, with which it often shares a degree of commonality - George Ezra and Royal Blood, two acts that arguably share little other than popularity in common, appeared in both lists in 2014 -  and both long lists will appear at the start of December with the top five in each announced in early January.
Here is an artist that featured on the 'UK Blogsound 2014' that I subsequently saw live in 2014. Only after this did I decide to seek out the LP 'Mirrors the Sky' (Sub Pop, 17 March 2014).

Lyla Foy - Garden Stage - End of The Road Festival - 31 August 2014.

It is also just one example of why, once again, my lists of 2014 will be dominated by artists that I have seen live or those that I am determined to ensure that I see (for the first time or once again) in 2015. The surprise factor, both artists and audience, that festivals provide is one of the aspects that most appeals to me. That said you might regard this next as just thirty years of wilful ignorance on my part. I'd never real bothered to engage with Pavement and so Stephen Malkmus' post Pavement career had also largely passed me by until, for a reason that was not pre-planned and I can no longer recall what provoked it, I suddenly decided to make amends. I discovered that I enjoyed it a whole lot and I totally appreciate their stance, which is to not to dwell on the past at all and eschew the playing of any Pavement material whatsoever.

Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks - Woods Stage - End of The Road Festival 2014.

Before that, in early February, I have a ticket to a gig that requires just a brisk ten minute walk from home to attend. Fairport Convention. Cheese & Grain. Frome.

What happens at festivals can change the course of bands too, as this very recent review indicates of Saskatoon-based 'Slow Down Molasses'. The revelation, or so the band would have it, was playing at End of The Road 2011. I'll tell you something about that too - it was awesome.

Not all band members are in the picture. Slow Down Molasses, Tipi Stage, End of The Road Festival 2011.

End Of The Road 2014 - more highlights

Over the last day or two I have pondered whether to try and theme my further thoughts on End Of The Road 2014 by genre, chronology or stage. In the end I concluded that such divisions were largely immaterial. What really matters is this - more of the acts that I really liked. There are plenty of them and therefore this might cover two posts in time.
To start with is Lau, whose members I have all seen playing live at least once but never together as such. The link above reads like a textbook exercise in hyperbole until, that is, you see it happen live. Here they are, Garden stage, Saturday afternoon.

This is of course one reason that, in the ten years Lau has existed, it has taken away the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for 'Best Band' four times, most recently in 2013.
Whilst on the subject of quality, another thing to note is that of the printed EOTR festival programme; it is absolutely worth the price (£6) and that is nothing new. The writing, the editorial style and the layout are top notch. The only mistake I noticed was that it said that Cate Le Bon's performance, again on the Garden stage on Saturday, was her EOTR début: it wasn't, she played the same stage in 2010 but no matter.
That was before the release of her first full LP 'Me Oh My' and she was clearly someone to watch. 'Cyrk' was then followed by her latest, 'Mug Museum', and she just gets better and better. More importantly people both here and in the US (she now divides her time between Wales and California) are starting to take notice.

Someone very accustomed to both the Garden and Tipi stages at EOTR is Jocie Adams. That was however with Rhode Island indie stalwarts The Low Anthem. This was her first EOTR outing fronting her own band Arc Iris here as a four-piece and which, as her tradition dictates, played both stages on Friday.

Lunch time, Friday, on a rather breezy Garden stage.

All four in the frame. Tipi stage at the very end of Friday evening.

On the basis of this you might be thinking that I never even visited the Big Top stage. It is true that in comparison with previous years I spent very little time there but one of the few occasions was to catch part of the Pink Mountaintops set.

It is probably true that I spent less time at the Woods stage than in previous years, though I have already mentioned Jenny Lewis playing there. For all my pre-planning I always end up reinventing much of my schedule on-the-hoof and I will continue to do so. This next band was not, pre-festival, particularly on my radar. It just goes to show how very wrong I can be...

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Woods stage, Friday evening.