Yoss

Also enjoying Grace Cummings - thanks for the tip.

... and gone again.

I can't say I've been particularly aware of her doing festivals at all, so maybe that's her own choice.

Self Esteem and Wet Leg were the two acts I thought would be nailed on for this year, and thus far we've got neither (though both have played before in other guises). Surely going to turn up some day. Again not headliners, but Julian Cope and Kristin Hersh are a couple that spring to mind who never seem to have played, and probably should sometime.

End of the Road is and will remain my festival of choice, it's only this year I'm able to do the double-header the way the dates have worked out. Looks like it's come out as a good year for it though. Happy with that. Definitely beats EotR at the upper end of the bill.

Yeah you wouldn't necessarily have thought they were significant enough to delay it, but I guess it might have had a knock-on effect.

It went superquiet after the initial teasing - I'm wondering if they got let down by someone high up the bill just when they thought they were ready to go. In light of this week's news, I guess that might have been BCNR.

Think that must be Green Man.

Once you reach a point where people expect it to sell out quickly then that in itself produces the effect - already seems to have happened with Green Man. Once you get close to that tipping point it may be that only a relatively small extra bit of demand makes all the difference between selling out in a week or two and not selling out until next summer. Which will be great for them, of course, if we do get to that point, though I hope it never gets anything like Glastonbury where demand already outstrips supply on the first morning.

It is indeed a pity, being the festivals most akin to one another, that they're so close together. One nearer each end of the season would be perfect. I say give the double-header a go anyway. Or you could grow some balls and tell these so-called friends of yours where to get off.

Didn't he cancel?

I'm a massive hypocrite - I think the rates of infections reported from other festivals in recent weeks are, on the one hand, higher than we should probably be allowing from a national perspective; but on the other hand within the risk limits I personally am willing to take, at least as a one-off, given the importance of End of the Road to me, this year especially. (I'm not actually worried about getting covid myself - what will be will be - only about spreading it, and I plan to be supercautious, if not completely isolate, for a week or so once I'm back.) Also, as others have said, the risk isn't necessarily random, some of it may be coming from crunch points such as the travel, and even when there there may be useful mitigation measures that can be taken. I'm not sure I can make a blanket rule of staying out of the indoor tents altogether - the Tipi in particular would be difficult - but I'll see how things look and feel when I get there. Sure a great festival could still be had at the outdoor stages only if it comes to it.

I will give my answers a week on Monday. But if I had any clues at all as to who might exceed or fall below my expectations at this stage then I would, pretty much by definition, be adjusting my expectations accordingly.

Yeah, definitely her. I recognise her in this interview, in which she talks a bit about making the transition from one to the other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpd_dYk0QdU

That was worth the listen, thank you.