Scotland's biggest festival is still one of the parties of the year (part 2)

T in the Park 2015 review

By Clare Damodaran | Published: Fri 17th Jul 2015

around the festival site

Friday 10th to Sunday 12th July 2015
Strathallan Castle, Kinross, Perth & Kinross, PH3 1JX, Scotland MAP
£205 full weekend with camping
Daily capacity: 92,500
Last updated: Wed 1st Jul 2015

And Saturday started off in a similar vein as day ticket holders and weekend campers queued to get on site. Discarded beer cans were already littering the roads into the site, which were also already being used as toilets by those in the queues.

Once in the site though, an early musical highlight of the day was Paul Heaton of the Housemartins, and Jacqui Abbott with him in the Beautiful South, in the King Tut's tent. We just wandered in without any expectations but were treated to an absolute blinder of a set. The tent filled up in a wave of nostalgia as the duo belted out loads of classic hits that had happy punters of all ages singing along.

A rocked up Perfect 10, Old Red Eyes Is Back, Happy Hour, Don't Marry Her, You Keep It All In, Carry On Regardless and Everybody's Talkin' amongst others all proved popular with the crowd, culminating in the acoustic Caravan of Love, which saw thousands of people singing their hearts out to every word and drowning out the band.

As usual with so many festivals, there was not enough time to do everything and see everything we wanted to. In an effort to try to learn to live with that, we decided to stage hop for an hour or so on Saturday evening, catching snippets of The Script on the main stage, The Vaccines on the BBC Three/Radio 1 stage and St Vincent at King Tuts.

The Script provided their usual blend of bouncy, inoffensive pop rock, with singer Danny O'Donoghue earnestly working the crowd, urging them to join him in anthemic sing-along numbers such as Breakeven (Falling to Pieces).

The Vaccines: T in the Park 2015

English indie rock band The Vaccines were back at T for a third time, If You Wanna a highlight of their set with everyone happily dancing in the rain and the mud, while St Vincent, the American musician and songwriter, contributed a rather art-rock performance to the festival with her striking stage presence and hugely impressive voice to a much smaller crowd.

In an attempt to try to continue the stage-hopping experience we headed back to the main stage to see The Libertines, figuring you know, it was The Libertines. And their first ever headline festival set since reforming. That's a moment in history, its gotta be good right?

The Libertines: T in the Park 2015

Reader, I was underwhelmed. After Time for Heroes and Can't Stand Me Now we decided to go see The Proclaimers instead. I'm biased, I'll be honest, I love The Proclaimers. And apparently I wasn't the only one thinking that as thousands of fans headed from the main stage to the King Tuts to catch Leith's finest.

It got properly dangerous though, as a bottleneck between the stages saw folk crammed up against the barriers and up against each other, going nowhere. Security was forced to close the food outlets in the affected area and close the King Tut's tent as well. There were young girls and grown women in tears.

We were lucky enough to get in and it was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the weekend. Classics such as Make My Heart Fly, Cap In Hand and Misty Blue, as well as Scotland Forever from the new album, got the crowd going before an absolutely electrifying version of the always beautiful Sunshine On Leith sent genuine shivers up my spine.

The crowd knew every word of this set too, belting out Life With You, I'm On My Way, Then I Met You, Kilmarnock City Blues and I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles). Twins Charlie and Craig made touching the hearts of thousands of people look effortless, the stories they tell in their music reaching into the soul of everyone in that tent and making the world a better and happier place.

Maybe it was the rain but a fair few folk seemed to be heading back to their bedraggled tents rather than watch main stage headliner, Swedish sensation Avicii. There was still a huge crowd though for what was one of the most hotly anticipated acts of the weekend. And those that stayed were treated to a massive bouncing dance-tastic performance from one of the biggest DJs and producers in the world, complete with strobes, streamers and sing-alongs and a bass so loud car alarms were going off in the car park. These are indeed the nights that never die.

Or seem to never end in the case of the hundreds of people who were then stuck in hours of traffic. The problems on Friday night were further compounded by the rain on Saturday with numerous cars getting stuck in the mud in the car park. People were having to push each other out, tempers were fraying and parents unable to pick up their teenagers. What would normally be a half hour journey to Perth was taking four to five hours. It was a long, long night for a lot of people.

Organisers apologised about the long waits and traffic chaos leaving the event, with Geoff Ellis, explaining that many of the issues were "teething problems", and that there were lessons to be taken from the experience of the event's first year at Strathallan.

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