Indietracks 2011

Another year, another Indietracks. This year's festival was probably my favourite one so far. Not only did I get to play in a packed church, I also saw some of my favourite bands play amazing sets.

On Friday we arrived just in time for Suburban Kids With Biblical Names.

It was the first time I'd seen them play with a full band and they were amazing. I couldn't have hoped for a better start to the festival. We all sang along, danced and drank ourselves silly. Then we kept dancing to a Sacred To Dance DJ set in the shed.

It was a great start to the weekend.


On Saturday it was time to panic a little about our set. I had been worrying about being the first band on for quite some time. I shouldn't have. The church was packed by the time we soundchecked and people were standing outside peeking through the windows. It was an amazing feeling.

The show went well…we didn't even mess up that much. Well, The Monkey and My Princess kind of imploded in a heap of "Aaah I can't hear the drums and have no idea where in the song we are". But, that's all part of the Moustache experience.


After the show, it was time to plug Album Of Death to the merch-hungry crowd. It all went surprisingly well. In between stints at the merch tent I managed to catch a bit of Dignan Porch in the church and they were absolutely ace.

I really need to check them out further.

In the evening, it was finally time to relax and just enjoy the festival. Then the generator at the main stage blew up. This could have been a disaster, but instead it meant The Hidden Cameras could perform a truly special totally unplugged mini-set.

I've never seen such a large crowd stay so quiet in order to hear the music. AMAZING!

The band played a "normal" set later on in the shed, but the earlier one is the one I'll always remember.

Then...

DANCING!

DANCING!!

DANCING!!!

DANCING!!!

DANCING!!!

The rest of the night was spent with the lovely Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, first freestyle rapping to a very confused taxi driver about his "awesome style", then drinking beer and eating Monster Munch until the wee hours. A lovely end to a great day.

Sunday came and surprisingly I didn't even feel sick. Travelodge is clearly the way to go. Anguish Sandwich in the church were absolutely brilliant.


They are one of my favorite UK bands at the moment and you should definitely grab their name-your-price download EP on bandcamp. Get it HERE.

Whilst doing another stint in the merch tent I caught MJ Hibbett doing a short set in the merch tent to a completely captivated audience.



It's such a lovely place to just walk around, so many friends and happy faces everywhere. You'll never know who you'll bump into...

An Allo darlin' smiling...

...a Monster Bobby singing...

...a Ballboy sitting...

...or a naughty Tigercat smoking...

Happy Days!

Also on the Sunday afternoon, some of the Fika artists played a few songs each at the Fika Tea Party.

Horowitz

Red Shoe Diaries

Moustache of Insanity

Lisa Bouvier

Evening time and a triple-bill of awesome headliners. Jeffrey Lewis was absolutely brilliant in the shed.

Few people can turn that stage into something utterly awesome, but he managed. Herman Dune joined the band on stage for a few songs, which only added to the magic.

The second Jeff and Co finished it was time to run to the main stage for Withered Hand.


The band looked a bit nervous at first, but in the end it only added to the intensity of the performance.

Time for a little break until Herman Dune hit the main stage. It's quite a responsibility, closing the festival and personally I think they chose a rather strange way to do it.

Instead of playing a set of hits mixed with new stuff it was pretty much exclusively new material. Two songs from the previous two albums and a Sonic Youth cover. That was it. No 'Not On Top', no 'I Wish I Could See You Soon'. In the end the cover of 'Dirty Boots' was the highlight of the set, with Jeffrey Lewis' band returning the favour from earlier and joining the band on stage.

We had a final couple of beers, a final dance in the shed, before saying our goodbyes and making the emotional final train journey back.

A massive thank you to Team Indietracks and all the volunteers for making it happen and reach new levels of awesomeness year after year!

We'll be back in 2012. I'm already counting the days. Assuming that it starts on 27th July there are only 358 days to go! yay!

INDIETRACKS!!!

It's finally time for Indietracks! Three days and nights of pop music, ale and trains!

There are so many great bands playing...some of the ones I'm looking forward to especially are...

ANGUISH SANDWICH!



SUBURBAN KIDS WITH BIBLICAL NAMES!



Hmmm....who else...Withered Hand, Ace Bushy Striptease, Jeffrey Lewis, Herman Dune, Berlin Brides...it just goes on...

It's gonna be awesome...see you next week!

Indietracks memories

This past weekend wasn't just the Indietracks weekend, in a way it was also the end of an era. I used up most of my final pack of Polaroid film and I doubt I'll ever use that format ever again. Yeah, I know there's the new Impossible Project instant film, but in the end it's just too expensive. I have one picture left in the camera and when that's gone it's gone. Any suggestions? What/who should be the subject of my last ever Polaroid picture?

Anyway, Indietracks. With such fond memories of last year's festival, could it live up to expectations and again be the highlight of the festival summer? Well, we'll see. There's still End Of The Road to go, but Indietracks is always gonna be hard to beat.

Here's some thoughts and observations from Indietracks 2010.

FRIDAY

We got to the festival site just in time for Allo Darlin's soundcheck, leaving me in charge of solo tent construction. Our tent is a bastard to put together, but the friendly souls next to our pitch helped out, so it was easier than expected. Then, with an electricity plug conveniently located in the handicapped toilets I even managed to sort out the blow-up mattress without resorting to lung power. Hurray!

Music o'clock. First band on were the lovely Veronica Falls. Not everyone had managed to sort out tent and festival wristbands that early, so it was a bit empty by the stage, but they soldiered on, playing a great set of oldies and newies....well, as old as a band that young can.


Actually, the turn-out probably didn't bother them a huge deal. They were playing the 1234 Festival in London on Saturday and Truck Festival in Oxfordshire on Sunday, so they had a pretty impressive festival weekend ahead of them.

Second on were Allo Darlin' and by now the crowd was much bigger. The band was on top-form as usual and it was lovely to see them on such a big stage. Definitely one of the best AD shows I've seen, up there with the album launch at The Lexington and the early lunch show at The British Music Embassy in Austin, both of which are hard to beat.


The ale started taking its toll and despite being very excited about seeing Eddie Argos and Everybody Was In The French Resistance...Now! I can't remember much from their set. I do remember talking about them beforehand about how they should play a cover of Art Brut's 'Formed A Band' and call it 'Formed Another Band'. Surprisingly, they did cover that very song, but decided to change the lyrics to "Formed A Side Project", which surely must have been far more difficult to sing.

Then...DISCO TIME with two competing indie clubnights playing in two different tents. Again, the memory is a bit muddled, but I do remember the people in the big tent playing The Moldy Peaches, so they win the song of the evening competetion. For atmosphere and general awesomeness you couldn't beat the Come Out 2Nite kids in the small tent, so they win the overall fun competition. Hurray!

There was dancing!

Posing!

And...erm...more...dancing?

SATURDAY

Some people didn't feel so good in the morning.

Personally, I saved my own 'I think I'm gonna die' morning for Monday.

My fIrst band of the day was Red Shoe Diaries, who we played with in Nottingham and who are great. Unfortunately, I could only watch a few songs before I had to rush for the train, where Jam On Bread from Manchester was playing. The carriage was absolutely packed and Steve played a lovely set, with the moustachioed fella from Internet Forever on knee-drums and melodica.

It was a great start to the day. Jam On Bread has a new record out and the packaging is pretty awesome. You should look him up on myspace. He also recommends listening to Moustache of Insanity in his liner notes, which is very nice of him and came as a complete surprise to us.

Feeling a bit better, Dan got the privilege of being the subject of my final Indietracks polaroid.

So that was it, in Polaroid land anyway. The festival of course, carried on.

After Jam On Bread I had a bit of a break and helped manning the merch tent. Then eventually I headed to the indoor stage for The Just Joans. They were great as usual, but that stage never does anyone any favours....unless it's raining. After they finished I cought some of The Smittens set on the main stage. Again, despite missing my favorite song of theirs, 100 Roses, they were awesome.

Another break before heading over to the church to catch David Tattersall. Despite not feeling very well and telling us in detail of all the vomiting he'd been doing during the day, David played a beautiful set. It was the perfect way to end the evening and in fact that's what we did. I know nothing about The Primitives and what I heard didn't really spark any interest, so we went to bed. Yes, that's right. In bed before 11 during a festival. Rock n'roll!

SUNDAY

Despite being woken up by the sounds of the disco tent on the camp site at 2am, I woke up feeling fresh as a daisy.

We headed over to the festival site, where the drummer from Ballboy was getting married. Smiles all around and a lovely way to start the day. Winston Echo was the first band on what was my busiest day. Winston was awesome. Awesome!

Internet Forever were great, but again, that bloody shed stage ruined a bit of the enjoyment.

The rest of the evening was spent in a drunken mess by the main stage, watching Standard Fare, Shrag, Slow Club and finally The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. All were great.

My evening finished somewhere half-way through the Pains set. I then woke up the following morning in my tent with a drawing of a cartoon lion on my shin. I deserved to feel like shit and I really did.

I did take alot of photos during the weekend, but thought I'd just use the polaroids for this post. You can view my Indietracks set on Flickr here.

Bring on Indietracks 2011!

Indietracks memories

I got a Google alert this morning saying that some Moustache videos had been posted on youtube. It's the first footage I've seen of our performance and it made me smile. We had such an amazing time.

Both clips are from our second, quieter set on the train. The first video is of Imagine.



The next video is the rather shambolic end of I Like These Shoes.

Haha. Aww, the memories. A nicer version of I Like These Shoes will be on our next EP, which will hopefully come out before the end of the year. I've also recorded a bleepy laptop version of the song myself. This can be found on www.myspace.com/fulhast

If anyone has any more footage from either of our sets, I'd love to see it.

Also, I wonder what happened to clip 2 of 3. Hmmmm?

Indietracks makes me want to rock out!

That's it. Indietracks 2009 is over. Three days of far too much booze and not enough sleep...but also three days of amazing fun and great music. I must say I was a bit worried beforehand, with Elefant Records being involved and all that. I guess I feared that with bigger names on the bill, it just wouldn't be as nice and cosy this year. But, in the end it was pretty damn awesome again. Sure, I missed some things, but then some things were improved, so you know...you win some, you lose some. I missed the spontaneous late-night platform gigs from last year, but we did them in the marquee instead, so it didn't really matter. And no tea tent (meaning no tea tent gig surprises) either. Anyway, it was an ace weekend.

Some personal highlights...

Friday is a bit of a blur, but I did have an awesome time. I remember catching bits of Au Revoir Simone and they sounded lovely. Caught up with the Smittens gang and we all danced like loons to cheesy 80's pop classics in the shed. I went to the bathroom and heard Dream Bitches' Maniacal Mechanic being played in the marquee, which made me develop a giant cheese-eating grin. I love that song. In there, I remember drunkenly wondering whether the flourescent tubes on the table in the marquee were tubes of sherbet or glow sticks. I soon found out that they were full of sugary goodness. Oh and Silke gave me a Pop Kombinat tote bag. Yay! Back to the tent for drinking and funness.

Saturday was when it really started. It was hard leaving Little My in the middle of their set, but I just had to see Let's Whisper on the train. And they were awesome.

Dana and Colin on the platform before the show.

I'm sure they get awfully tired of always getting requests for the ice cream song, but it still makes me so happy.

I LIKED YOU BETTER WHEN YOU WERE EATING ICE CREAM!! LALALALALALA!

The rest of the Saturday went by quickly. The Lovely Eggs were rather brilliant in the church, despite the fact that they didn't play their amazing Christmas song. I guess it was July. Tender Trap were great on the main stage. Watched from Camera Obscura from afar whilst eating a yummy curry.

The Tender Trap gang

Malcolm from Eagleowl (who were sadly not playing)

After working a bit on the merch stand and watching Emmy The Great, it was time for my highlight of the day, the "secret" marquee gig. Members from One Happy Island, The Smittens, The Just Joans, Allo Darlin and Moustache of Insanity took it in turns to play a song or two to a packed tent.

This was seriously amazing....

Afterwards we headed back to the campsite and finally managed to get into the disco tent. Dancing, dancing, drinking, drinking....then eventually...sleep.

Sunday and I started getting nervous pretty much immediately. What if nobody would show to our train show?

Bill Moustache in front of the wheely thing.

Anyway, we watched a bit of The Smittens and headed to the platform. To our surprise the place was packed. The train was early but we all piled on. Our set seemed to go down well. When the train came back to the platform, we realised we had taken the wrong train and there was even more people waiting for us.....so we stayed on the train and played another set for them. It was much quieter, but also really nice. All in all I think we played for one hour and ten minutes and got through 19 songs. That was quite some PRS form to fill in.

Sadly this meant we missed the Talulah Gosh set, but you know....these things happen.

After the giant set we dropped of our stuff I got back to merch tent and realised that pretty much all our records had been sold. Woo zaa!

And then....one of the big highlights of the weekend. Art Brut in the shed. AMAZING!

Elizabeth and Pete

Elizabeth and The Smittens trying to decide whether to brave the rain for Teenage fanclub.

We were a bit wimpy and had an early night...no more dancing.

Elizabeth playing football with Little My.

Monday....all over....brekkie...packing up a soggy tent....

365 days or so to go to the next one.

Thank you Stuart and everyone involved for an incredible weekend.