Sheftival 2012: Saturday 4th August

Words cannot describe how excited I was when I was told about Sheftival. I'd never heard anything about it, then my mate said 'oi raven, Toots and the Maytals are playing sheffield in a couple of weeks'. I couldn't believe it! Toots is a bloody legend, he is credited with inventing the word Reggae in the song Do The Reggay, he's one of the pioneers of reggae. To find out he's playing not far from me for only a tenner, was amazing! Couldn't miss it. There was loooads of people on the line-up, but I only went for Toots, and The Selecter.

I was very hungover from the night before - this was the day after the Skints, and I only ended up getting a couple of hours sleep anyway - so i almost, almost considered not going. But, I put Toots + the Maytals on the stereo, and it gave me the strength to power through my hangover and get the bus into town. I met Max and Alex, and we got the best hangover cure there is:

More Beer. Which quite frankly made me feel extremely ill, along with the train shaking about. But I just about managed 2 or 3. Anyway, we arrived at Don Valley Bowl where the festival was, about 6 o clock. It was the first time i'd been to DVB since the Arctic Monkeys homecoming gig last year (which was probably the best gig of my life).

It was weird seeing The Selecter. I saw them when I was about 3 years old, and it's probably my earliest memory. I remember being held by my mum whilst they were on stage - I don't remember the music, I just remember it being them. So to see them live nearly 15 years later was pretty weird! They managed to get the crowd going pretty well - lots of old Skinheads were skanking! A couple of people were definitely off their head aswell, haha. Their set was only short, 40 minutes at the most, but It was good. James Bond was probably the highlight of the set, along with On My Radio and Too Much Pressure.

After their set, we made it over to the Juju World Music stage. Macka B was on the stage, someone i'd never heard of, but was pretty good. He sang a song about what food he liked to eat, which was bizarre but pretty funny. There was a pretty long wait between Macka B and Toots, so we sat down for a bit and chilled. When he finally came on.. it was so so so so so good. He opened with Pressure Drop, which is a beautiful song!! One of my favourite Reggae songs ever. His set included the classics Monkey Man (famously covered by the Specials), 54-46 Was My Number, Louie Louie, Funky Kingston and many more. It was a great set and i'm so happy I can now say I've seen both The Wailers and Toots + The Maytals live. Arguably the 2 biggest reggae artists ever!

The Skints are my NEW FAVOURITE BAND!

On Friday Night, I go and see one of my favourite bands The Skints, then on Saturday i'm going to Sheftival, to see legendary reggae band Toots and the Maytals, and iconic ska band The Selecter. I'm too excited! Tramlines proved to me that the best day out is just one with music, your mates, and beer. That was one of my top days of the summer holidays, so i'm hoping this weekend will be just as good. I'll probably end up posting about the weekend on Sunday, or Monday if i'm hungover.

The Skints are a great band. Marcia Richards, Jonathan Doyle, Joshua Waters Rudge and Jamie Kyriakides are 4 insanely talented people. If you see their live show, Marcia can be switching between Keyboard, Saxophone + Vocals all in one song. They play Reggae/Dub/Ska music, and also a bit of Punk on their first album and first EP. They're just so cool and write so many catchy songs, if you're into reggae at all then I'm pretty sure you'll like them. One of me favourites from the new album is 'Live East Die Young' which is mainly Joshua on the vocals, but it's very catchy and very lively and i'm praying they play it live so i can skank out a bit. Having said that though, there isn't a bad song on the album - 'Ratatat', 'Ring Ring', 'Rubadub', 'Lay You Down' and new single 'Rise Up' are all amazing songs. I definitely recommend it to lovers of the genre.

Here's the new single - make sure you show it to your mates, its a tune :)



..aaaaaand here's a live performance of theirs, a cover of Stop That Train by Keith and Tex - just shows what a talented bunch they are. Check out that harmony:




Link to buy the album.. think the previews alone are enough to tempt you to buy it. http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/part-parcel/id501957297

http://www.theskints.co.uk/

@theskints

The Skints Facebook

Tramlines Festival 2012

On Friday, Me, Max and Alex all trekked down to tramlines in sheffield. It's basically a free festival that pretty much every venue in sheffield takes part in, they all put bands on and stuff. And they always get a couple of well known band's/artists playing on the main stage, and a few local ones. Tbh, we only went for 2 bands, the day was more just about dossing in sheffield and having a day out. But it was well good.

We met up in town about 2 o clock. After my footlong bacon egg cheese and sausage subway (which is sort of becoming a regular thing for me now), we all went Tesco's to get our booze for the day. We ended up getting 24 can's of Carling for 16 quid. It.. wasn't very nice. Warm and flat, bloated you a lot, made you burp a lot, and we were all on the brink of vomiting at some point in the day.

Anyway we got our train and had a couple of cans each on there, then arrived in sheffield about half 3. None of us actually had a clue where we were going so we just wandered around. We got to Dev Green (main stage) about half 4ish, and they told us we'd have to drink all our booze before we went in. And we still had about 14, 15 cans left so we couldn't waste em. So we thought we'd just trek around sheff for a bit. We bumped into this guy called Slam - he was about 45, some old metalhead guy. But he was sound as a pound. We got chatting and he was like the coolest possible guy, he shared his vodka with us and everything. We literally just dossed around drinking with him until the gates opened at Dev Green, but we didn't even go in. We sat outside this bloody middle class bar finishing all our beer off. Don't think they liked us, we went in about 7 times to use their toilets. I had to run in at one point cos i almost threw up :( my mouth went watery and i went very light headed and my stomach was turning, it wasn't the nicest experience.

We went in Dev Green anyway, after we'd finished all but 3 of our beers., after that Violet May band which were a bit average by the sounds of it. We got approached by some very friendly lasses who Max was sure they fancied us, but they were definitely just blagging a pint off us because we had ID. Anyway, at this point we lost Slam :-( he said he felt like he was third wheeling so he left us. What a Lad. Anyway the ladies buggered off so we watched most of Dead Son's set - we missed most of it, but Shotgun Woman was amazing. I'll post a few links here now, they're a sheffield band, sound very Arctic Monkeys influenced.





very good. Great band and i proper wanna see em again. After about half hour, Reverend and the Makers were on. And they played an absolutely incredible set. I'd seen em before but they were a support act and i'd never really listened to em, so i didn't think it was great. But this was bloody amazing. Everyone there loved em, theyre a proper yorkshire band. Atmosphere was incredible, there was pits for every song. It was a bit rough but if anyone fell over everyone helped eachother up which was alrate. They opened with Bassline which is alrate but the rest of the set was so much better. You can see me bopping about in this video of it here!



They played so many good songs - I proper love 'Open your Window', and it was made even better cos Andy Nicholson came out and played bass on it! He used to be in Arctic blummin Monkeys! was so good. They filmed their new music video there aswell, so there's a chance we could be in the next Reverend and the Makers video! It's for Out of the Shadows, one of the best songs of their 3rd release.



They closed with Silence is Talking, which is a rate song. Everyone went mad for that, and these wristbands that theyd given out all flashed when it started, it was actually pretty amazing.



Quite frankly it was one of the best gigs of my life! Great atmosphere, can't believe this is the first time i've been to tramlines. Unfortunately we've not been off on the Saturday/Sunday because of either lack of money + throwing up :(. Missed a great band from Sheffield called Wet Nuns last night. Sort of really really heavy bluesy punky rock. They're good.



I will definitely come to Sheffield for Tramlines while i'm at uni. It was such a good experience and I can imagine it being even better when I'm old enough to legally buy a pint, rather than having to down warm beer :( Top Night.