The Zutons, and New Beautiful South deliver at first Cleethorpes Rocks

Having been a cautiously proud resident of the Grimsby/Cleethorpes for my entire life I can speak from experience that an event like this is totally unique in its execution. Often even the smallest of Britain's pop acts pay no heed to this humble ex-fisherman's town and as such we're left with a withering local music scene and a monumental drought of live music.

Solid Entertainments, organiser of this mini one-day festival, have always been a dutiful provider of live music within the town of extreme varying quality; taking a risk with these Cleethorpes Rocks festivals the company have finally provided us with a working visage of culture and brotherhood.

With a surprisingly good line-up featuring some semi-big name groups amongst our own home grown talent this festival was a real breath of fresh air... for a grimbarian. I admittedly arrived somewhat late, but was able to catch the closing numbers of The Sunshine Underground's crowd igniting gig. Getting people to their feet with Leeds infused Indy rock at its least contemplative the festival seemed to be off to a nice start as I arrived. We even had some non-local (and don't worry, I made sure they knew this was a local festival for local people, there's nothing for them here; tongue firmly in cheek) Leeds supporters showcasing some trademark chants of their hometown's name.

Around the front of the stage were your dancers; an admittedly small but cacophonous group giving Cleethorpes all they've ever wanted to give to their loyal birthplace. The rest of the festival was milling around, smoking fags, making friendly conversation and trying to trade cheap alco-pops to whomever owns that suspicious smell of mind altering horticulture. For us oft-forgotten cod-heads in a dark corner of Humberside this all added to the authenticity of the thrill of having a REAL festival in our own backyard. You can probably tell this was a long time coming for a town whose last big export was Thriller's Rod Temperton (and even that is met with confused remarks of "really?").

As previously mentioned, sandwiched between the name bands came some local talent (and frankly, despite my patriotism towards Europe's Food Town I use the word 'talent' very lightly). They did their job however, with energetic performances which successfully piqued the front-crowd's interest. One in particular, Light Scars, could be seen drenching themselves in water (it seems they ain't rock and roll enough for beer but I'll come to that later) and jumping into the crowd as they played abrasive rock music with genuine tinges of potential.

Perhaps Light Scars couldn't get hold of a beer because of one very Large Scar on the festival's organisation. While I myself didn't want to brave the queues an acquaintance of mine waited, with no exaggeration, for two hours for a round of suds. It was ironically THEN that they decided to open more beer stands. Almost everyone I spoke to here brought up this one rather large niggle and had an unfortunately large bearing on most people's reception of the event. Being the first of a series of Cleethorpes Rocks events hopefully it's a mistake they'll learn from.

Taking to the stage next were the aptly titled New Beautiful South, a band who are more like cover artists with the good fortune of having two or three remnants from the original. That sounds harsher than I intended, they played an electric set of classics that had most in attendance singing along to long forgotten songs. A truly fantastic performance that blows Paul Heaton's solo gigs and work out of the water (again, I speak from experience). By this point the proceedings had a definite atmosphere, something which I hope will grow as these events do, and something far from what I expected.

There isn't much to say about a somewhat bland set from The Proclaimers... I mean, what more can I say? They were the Proclaimers; everyone got exactly what they expected. The Zutons however played a great set, a fantastic mix of material from their absolutely stellar first album to their latest slow-burning sell-out fest. Reminding me just how great they were when they were originally tied a little too closely to fellow Merseyside residents The Coral and even made me gain a little bit of a soft spot for some of their more dross based material.

All in all the festival was a success, with some great performances (and some extremely frightening performances only a band brought up on a diet of mariners can produce). There was always that looming dark cloud of the beer stall fiasco which made a lot of people's opinions dangerously mixed, but I hope that these little one-day hootenannies can snowball in popularity and bring more excitement and activity to a very upsettingly deprived area.

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