Firstly id like to say I'm not going to be reviewing the bands, I didn't see every one, it was too f**king cold, if anyone wants to drop me a review ill check it and pop it up and you will get the credit. Same for photos, send them too whatiswrongwithsomepeople@googlemail.com
Notamoron arrived on site on Friday expecting a sea of mud after having sneak preview of the site a few days previous and there being nothing but rain between then and our arrival and hearing a rumor of the site being a bog. However after picking a parking spot we thought we could evacuate from quickly we were pleased to learn the mud wasn't actually that bad. The rumor had made it back to barrow though and the head office's of shoe zone and Winfield's will be at a loss as to why there was such a boom in welly sales in the area on Thursday and Friday.
The set up was actually quite good with the 2 main tents (booze and dance) front right as you walked in with some kind of wigwam/yurt before that (we later learnt that the yurt was removed from the site on sat by some pro-active security guards even thought the organisers had asked the yurt to be there) beyond the 2 tents, down the slope towards the sea was the main stage, dwarfed by Black Coombe and the sea it sat looking lonely and abandoned, alarm bells were ringing (metaphorically) so we set out to find one of the organisers to ask a few questions. As it turns out a major sponsor of the first aiders has U-turned on Friday morning and the organisers were still trying to find enough first aiders to satisfy the insurance and the council. plus there was some mix up with the on site ambulance all which lead to a delay of more than a few hours. Spirits were high in the booze tent and sitting in a large marquee drinking Carling from plastic pints seemed enough for a while. Finally the music kicked off just in time as a few people had started getting arsey. The beer tent and the dance tent kicked off first followed by the main stage about half an hour later and everything seemed to be going great.
After the Holloways finished the only option was the dance tent and normally this would have been a good option with the Media Monkeys, Homegrown and DJ Food. we walked in and unfortunately due to an equipment error there was no bass to speak of. Notamoron managed to hang around for an hour or so but we had 2 days left and we were getting tired so we made our way home.
Waking up on Saturday feeling good about the night before we were surprised to read the Evening Mail and its headlines bringing doom and gloom on the festival, highlighting both the delay and a supposed attack on a police officer, plus displaying possibly the worst pictures they could find. Why can't the Mail, in its unique position of being able to talk to the entire town put a positive spin on things and help the Saturday ticket sales? answers on a postcard
When we make it back up to the site its still quiet and the howling wind isn't really helping, its a quiet afternoon and early evening but the night finally gets underway with no major happenings and all in all is a good day. It was just a shame the sound in the dance tent couldn't be fixed in time.
Notamoron is feeling it on Sunday and unfortunately we cannot drag ourselves up Rakesmoor lane again but overall we feel the festival was a huge success, yes it had it problems but its such a massive undertaking it would be ridiculous to expect it to go without a hitch. If there is to be a next year (which we hope there is) many of the problems will be sorted and the festival will be bigger and better,
long live Furness Fest,
3 Cheers for Furness Promotions, Homegrown and the Council.
Boo and Hiss to the Mail, the nameless sponsor on Friday and the Council..
Feel free to add your own comments
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Review - Furness Fest
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14 comments:
Many Thanks to all at Barrow Moron for your support in the months running up to the festival and for playing a huge part in turning around fortunes on an incredibly frustrating Friday in a field.
We were genuinely blown away by the general positive attitude of the people of Furness despite all of the problems we encountered across the weekend. Testament to the spirit of music loving Cumbrians.
It's difficult to address the press we received. The Evening Mail did give us important, positive and welcome coverage in the weeks before the festival and for that we have to be grateful. As for the coverage on the weekend itself, I can only put it down to an exercise in sensationalising events to shift copies.
Once again thanks for your support and hopefully we can come back bigger, stronger and better next year. Thanks and much respect to all you lovely people who came out, partied like demons and made the weekend better than any of us thought it could be at 2pm on Friday afternoon.
Si - Homegrown
Yeah Boo and Hiss to the Mail, as they wrote that tribute band "Guns 2 Roses" headlined on Sunday night giving a "Polished Performance" when actually due to the M6 being gridlocked, half of the band couldn't make it unfortunately and they were unable to play! So I think the evening mail need to start actually attending these things before writing about things that never happened...they look like fools!
Couldn't agree more about the Mail. The piece on Saturday twice said the Friday night was "marred by violence". Well I certainly didn't see any therefore it did not marr anything for me!
And the 'review' on the Monday??? Do we need to be told three times in a short article that the crowds were small therefore there was a lack of atmosphere? Well I thought the atmosphere was great and perhaps the Mail have something to do with the fact that the crowds weren't up to much due to the disparaging article Saturday!?
The organisers could have put a few full-page ads in the paper in the run-up to the event though. A know of people who did not even know the festival was even happening until after the event, or until the Saturday Mail article which then put them off!
Us organisers did consider putting ads in the mail but their advertising costs are astronomical. We did have full page ads in equivalent papers in Lancaster, Morecambe and also the Westmorland Gazette, all of whom gave us reasonable rates as they supported the whole idea behind the event.
To be fair, there were at least 2 or 3 full page articles and one double page peice about the fest in the Mail in the month before and a full page piece the day before...and so I guess that just goes to show not many people actually read the thing anyway.
Si - Homegrown
All I can say is long live furnessfest.
Being a festival virgin I wasn't particularly thrilled at the prospect of standing in a muddy field, drinking warm cider for 3 days, but as my boyfriend promised to buy me a pair of wellies to go in, I hesitantly agreed.
I had the best three days, although I now realise I should have booked the Monday of work. I didn’t see any violence; everyone up there was in good spirits and enjoying themselves. Yeah there were some hitches, and a bit of mud, but so what.....give me a cold, muddy field over that crappy floating disco any day.
I have just bought tickets to Kendal Calling; I am hoping I have as good a time as I had up on Rakesmoor Lane. Will deffo be going next year!
Thanks to everyone involved.
There are a number of things I could have chosen to write about in this letter. I could have chosen to write about how the evening mail's warped historical perspective makes for a consistent if inimical view of racism. Or I might have chosen to write something about the way that its campaigns are not just retroactively ineffective but proactively inert. But, instead, I've decided to devote this entire letter to explaining how the evening mail has bid adieu to objectivity. Let me begin by saying that the whole of the evening mail's money-grubbing worldview may perhaps be expressed in one simple word. That word is "nihilism". Let me explain: I definitely hope that the truth will prevail and that justice will be served before the evening mail does any real damage. Or is it already too late? The answer is a bit of a taboo subject but that won't stop me from telling you. You see, the evening mail would have us believe that we have too much freedom. Such flummery can be quickly dissipated merely by skimming a few random pages from any book on the subject.
The evening mail will probably never understand why it scares me so much. And it does scare me: Its shenanigans are scary, its activities are scary, and most of all, I can say one thing about it. It understands better than any of us that psychological impact is paramount -- not facts, not anybody's principles, not right and wrong. I'm not suggesting that we behave likewise. I'm suggesting only that the evening mail seems to have recently added the word "galvanocontractility" to its otherwise simplistic vocabulary. I suppose it intends to use big words like that to obscure the fact that its stories about scapegoatism are particularly ridden with errors and distortions, even leaving aside the concept's initial implausibility.
If it is not yet clear that by following the evening mail's suggestions, we have become such poor caretakers of the tree of liberty that it has wilted and is sagging dangerously close to the ground, then consider that its methods are much subtler now than ever before. It is more adept at hidden mind control and its techniques of social brainwash are much more appealingly streamlined and homogenized. Whenever anyone states the obvious -- that I must protest the evening mail's use of duplicitous buttinskies to achieve its blasphemous goals -- discussion naturally progresses towards the question, "Does the evening mail realize it's more annoying than a logorrheic lothario?" Personally, I don't believe the answer has anything to do with barbarism. Rather, I believe it involves the evening mail's tendency to convert lush forests into arid deserts. The evening mail has warned us that one day, churlish freaks will dissolve the bonds that join individuals to their natural communities. If you think about it, you'll realize that the evening mail's warning is a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that we must establish clear, justifiable definitions of exclusivism and fascism so that you can defend a decision to take action when the evening mail's brethren permit anti-democratic goofballs to rise to positions of leadership and authority if we are ever to give our young people the values that will inspire them to speak out against behavior and speech that is intended to prime the pump of animalism. Yes, this is a bold, audacious, even unprecedented undertaking. Yes, it lacks any realistic guarantee of success. However, it is an undertaking that we must unmistakably pursue because the evening mail doesn't want us to know about its plans to defuse or undermine incisive critiques of its inaniloquent behavior by turning them into procedural arguments about mechanisms of institutional restraint. Otherwise, we might do something about that. Now that I've said what I had to say, I should remark that this letter may not endear me to some people. Indeed, it may even cost me a friend or two. However, friends do not let friends get trampled by cheeky kooks like the evening mail. The truth is the truth and we pay a steep price whenever we ignore it.
Christ on a bike
i know??!!
I actually agree with most of what himmler says, however the problem is much bigger than the Evening Mail. Although ironic at this point in time, the main problem is that people beholden to the lies are those with the power to maintain them.
I'm going to dig out the zyclon-b for all those journos and their editors. Gits.
pete, you really are attracting a lot of nerds to the blog...good work!
stop talking, pick up a paintbrush and do something different
www.opticalnoodles.blogspot.com
bloody hell!we played furness fest (arficeden)and it was proper good fun,all this shits v.serious on here!we were just pissed off with how shit the soundsystem was in the dance tent!
yeah, that soundsystem was gash, it was equipment failure though so not much could be done about it, the crossover was broken so the bass freqs couldnt be directed to the subs so all the sound was runing through the hi freq speakers
as for the seriousness on here, barrovians, daltonians, ulverstonians and furnessites(?) take partying very seriously indeed.
saying that though theres at least one comment i dont understand
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