Sheffield Tramlines: Ed Balls to camping!!!
At least
once every summer, I will voluntarily forgo basic amenities and any form of
comfort and pay upwards of £200 to live in a manner that quite accurately
recreates the squalor and inhumanity currently imposed on millions of men,
women and children in the atrocious Syrian refugee camps; something akin to a
21st century Down and out in
Paris and London.
Not this
weekend, no, this weekend we spent a festival in the heart of a South-Yorkshire
metropolis, where our accommodation was erected Two Hundred and Thirteen years
prior to our arrival, where a shower is reality and not just a distant memory.
Tramlines,
now in its fifth-year of existence is spread across a post-industrial municipality,
which, even after suffering the hate-filled Thatcherite purge of Northern
England, in no-way resembles the violent, dystopian vision laid-out in a Kubrick
masterpiece and birthed into reality by a Neo-Liberal monster.
The line-up,
not as ‘star-studded’ as previous efforts, is more a shop-window for potential
rather than noticing a family air-loom pilfered in a traumatising home-invasion
being evaluated on The Antiques Roadshow; and thank Jesús Navas is sans Craig
David.
Admittedly,
from what my memory will allow me to recall, we didn’t actually get to see all
that much music – our time was mainly spent concentrating on drinking - and
drinking at prices so reasonable, that if offered the same beverages for an
equal amount at Glastonbury, you would naturally assume they had been poisoned
by an individual who would be later hunted down, wrapped in plastic and brought
to justice by the fictional serial-killer Dexter.
The First
act we caught a glimpse of was that of Bolton-on-Dearne troupe The Sherlocks - young enough to make me
jealous of youth and good enough to one-day be a household name or at least a
regular name muttered amongst the musically-discerning – their influences are
apparent for all to hear, a pinch Monkeys (the Arctic type) and tablespoon of
your uncle’s Courteener(s) – which judging from the atmosphere in, The Hop,
should be in no-circumstance be viewed as a disparaging critique.
Over on the
main stage and after the most mouth-shatteringly-fantastic pulled-pork sandwich from
Red’s True Barbeque:
Fenech Soler or whatever their preposterous name
is, don’t deserve the column inches – they manage to combine two facets that I
despise ferociously and equally, namely cheesy-euro-pop-dance and
pseudo-impassioned-that-gimp-from-The Frey-style-vocals. During their ‘performance’
a drunken memory of meeting them while waiting for the cash machine outside 53
Degrees in Preston about three-years ago came flooding back, as did they memory
of them handing us some badges - had we of heard them at that time and realised
the musical crimes they are capable of, I would have been inclined to refuse
the badges and invoked the spirit of Malcolm Tucker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al7XJxlDoyQ
(This section has been heavily edited)
Quite
frankly, Lianne La Havas didn’t have
much to live-up-to after the previous shower of shite – her lovelorn ditties are
poignant and beautifully crafted – her smoky soulful voice would have even the
most devoted Millwall ‘fan’ feeling something other than anger. Ultimately
though, she is no headliner, her music is perfect for a sunny afternoon sat
drinking but what you really want in a main-stage headliner is someone more visceral
or who can at-least provide a cathartic mass sing-along.
Later and
what I mean by that is, after a lot of whiskey, we find ourselves at the
Leadmill, there we find Feral Blood as-well-as
Charlie and the Voyeurs, both of
which I believe were somewhere between okay and fairly good, I believe; by that
point I was in a state of intoxication that anyone playing actual instruments
would have come across as palatable.
The next
morning after the haze had dispersed and food had been consumed, we sat in the
Peace Gardens – which treated us to a group whose vocal abilities were fairly reminiscent
of my own.
Finally it
was time to see the band I was here for, fellow misanthropes Veronica Falls, whose brand of
dreary/dreamy noir-guitar-pop strikes a chord – I would find it intrinsically hard
to dismiss any band who not only name a song Beachyhead but film a video at Karl Marx’s grave.
Perfectly-pale and austerely-dressed, they jangle through a (what appeared to be forced) shortened gem of a set - stopping to dedicate Misery to a girl wearing a Smiths T-Shirt – I was overtly-impressed with every hypnotic song from Found Love in a Graveyard to Teenage (The video for which is viewable at the top), so-much-so that I will endeavour to go and see them at a club venue, next time they are in the vicinity.
Constrained by hangovers, impending work
commitments, and restrictive public-transport it was time to bid Tramlines and
Sheffield, adieu.
Closing
thoughts…
Festivals in cities are the future; they combine comfort with the kind of atmosphere usually reserved for European holidays, which makes for a great weekend. Also, and this is where Ed Balls should be taking notes, city-festivals should be encouraged just for the economic benefits alone, after-all, it is a scientific fact that drunks spend more money.
