The one about the retro music festival just up the road – part 1 (Saturday 5th August)
Said festival is Rewind North – mainly an 80s festival, held in the grounds of Capesthorne Hall in Cheshire, with 20,000 people in various costumes and various levels of alcoholic intoxication. We know there were that number attending because Jenny Powell (yes, the one that used to present No Limits) said so, and she was the compere for the day. She is a couple of years younger than me and Mrs TGG, and my other half couldn’t believe how good she looked for her age.
We’ve been attending this for a number of years now (since the lads were old enough to be left on their own for the day, basically). What follows is a list of who we saw and may be of interest if you’ve not been to this sort of event before. I don’t intend to dwell too deeply on set lists unless there’s a reason to do so and as I type this I’m far from decided as to which track or tracks I will share a link to. Hopefully that will become clearer as I plough through.
Format-wise, the first four acts each gets around 30 minutes and will be a band that’s provided all of its own musicians. Then the hard-working house band comes on and backs three acts who just get a fifteen minute slot each (this usually coincides with tea-time and one of those acts will invariably be one I don’t mind missing in order to queue for a halloumi burger or whatever). Then we’re back to 30 minute slots again, but now with the house band accompanying and finally the headline act gets an hour, which may or may not see the house band pressed into service yet again. There are obviously gaps between the acts which gives Jenny Powell something to do and a few tracks get played from artists from the 80s who are not performing there over the weekend.
So who did we see?
Disco Inferno – A disco covers band. Good musicians, predictable set of songs, warmed the crowd up.
I didn’t mention the rain, did i? It rained a lot and I mean a lot. Not that it really dampened anyone’s spirits, but warming the crowd up was very much needed.
The South – Some ex-members of The Beautiful South and some other people. I saw The Beautiful South a couple of times and I’ve seen Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott. At least with the latter you get some Housemartins songs thrown in as well. Rude version of Don’t Marry Her is performed. Children are present. Edgy.
From The Jam – Bruce Foxton and his chums doing some of the old favourites. Good to see them being performed by someone who was involved with recording them. David Watts is their earliest release played in the set and The Eton Rifles probably gets the most enthusiastic crowd response.
UB40 – This is the Robin Campbell version, which I think makes it what’s left of the original band. This is commercial UB40, so lots of their cover versions with an ironic inclusion of Sing Our Own Song thrown in for good measure. I’d have liked Rat In Mi Kitchen, but didn’t get it. Food For Thought was played though.
Art Of Noise (VJ set) – First of the 15 minute acts and as a mate that I bumped into said – “not exactly essential, was it?” Nice to see Max Headroom on the screen, but yes just a romp through their canon of hits all spliced together.
Heatwave – Correctly guessing that the one song I could name of theirs would be played at the end, we went to get something to eat (spotting that the pizzas were in proper boxes with lids this year and given the incessant rain, the choice of food was a no-brainer). Their other tunes were something with a lot of “Oohs” that I didn’t recognise and some dirgy ballad that I vaguely recall. Two original members perhaps. Boogie Nights is a great song though.
Toyah – Bonkers as always. Three of her hits and a cover of Echo Beach (which research tells me she took to #54 in 1987). Given that I can’t think any festival would fly Martha or indeed any number of Muffins over to perform their one UK hit, it was good to hear it from someone who can, in her own shouty way, still hold a tune.
Nick Heyward – Last time we saw him was supporting Squeeze in the mid-90s where a heckler yelled “Where’s your jumper?” as he was about to start his set. None of that today though. No sir. Instead Jenny Powell revealed that as a kid she’d had a poster of the Haircut 100 front man on her bedroom wall (possibly the same one that my sister had). She was clearly delighted to be temporarily sharing a stage with him and there was a big hug before he kicked off with Take That Situation. We got the other two big solo hits and the three big Haircut hits as well.
ABC – Martin Fry can still pull off that gold suit look. He can also still deliver a polished ABC set. We saw the band last year performing The Lexicon Of Love album with an orchestra and thoroughly enjoyed it. On Saturday, we got the big hits, a couple of lesser ones and 2016’s Viva Love – which is as good a song as any to share.
Martin Kemp (DJ set) – Smug 60-something bloke who used to be in a band that had a few hits plays some predictable 80s bangers. Even less essential than Art Of Noise.
Andy Bell – The guy from Erasure, not the one from Ride. With Vince Clarke not currently performing for personal reasons, the Saturday headline act is the half of Erasure that is getting out there. And it was all a little odd. As he launched into the first song (Drama) Mrs TGG and I exchanged a glance because he did sound a little out of tune. This carried on throughout – tuneful bits and the occasional less tuneful bit to go with them. Also odd was the attire he wore – jettisoning the cowboy hat and jacket, he spent most of the set wearing a white T-shirt and sparkly hot pants, which would have been fine, but he has gained some weight since the last time I’d seen him and he did keep lifting up the shirt to display his midriff for no apparent reason. Even odder were the long rambling bits between each song where he seemed out of breath, talked in a silly voice, lost a ring, mislaid his spectacles necessitating him lying on the floor to read the set list and wittered on about all manner of random stuff. Quite a few people were leaving early. He also played what were to me at least, some unfamiliar tunes – Hey Now Think I Got A Feeling and Nerves Of Steel, but at least he introduced them thus unwittingly helping a local blog writer. We did get to sing along to the likes of Stop, A Little Respect and Love To Hate You (which he introduced as “a shit song”).
So that was Saturday. Sunday looked to have the stronger line-up and was supposedly going to be less rainy. You can find out how that played out in due course.
To be continued.
TGG
Wasting time in the study 
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