2009 Highlights

[rob372]

Here are my personal highlights of the weekend

Friday

1/ Oi Va Voi

2/ Mum

3/ Ash Grunwald

plus the Anvil film .

A good start to the festival.

Saturday

1/ Jim Jones Revue

2/ Yellow Moon Band

3/ Beth Jeans Houghton

4/ Broken Records

5/ Airborne Toxic Event

Even better day !

Sunday

1/ Monotonix !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2/ Monotonix

3/ Monotnix

4/ Monotonix

5/ Bon Iver

6/ Port O'Brien

7/ Woodpigeon

8/ Teitur

Just shaded Saturday.

Miscellaneous other good bits

1/ Layout of the site (although did the Rising stage suffer being stuck out in the corner)

2/ Real Ale tent, great spot by the muscian

3/ Large Lamb Samosas £1.50

4/ Mojitos

5/ Friendly Staff

Downers

1/ Blanket Nazis (If you spread out over 20 square foot with then expect me to tread on it !)

2/ People sitting on stairwells and on the pathways , get out the way use your common sense.

(can we have some friendly festival traffic police next year, it will help the flow)

3/ Maybe I'll get a full attendance award next year

and finally, overall this year was the best, No 1 out of 9

[saintupnorth]

Highlights:

RichardH announcing the Joy Formidable and getting their name wrong

[RichardH]

Other great mispronunciations/errors included Her Name Is Carla,The Breakaways and The Dickyknees!

[RichardH]

Highlights:

RichardH announcing the Joy Formidable and getting their name wrong

[llcoolphil]

Off the top of my head

Kid British

Megadub

Kingsize

Easy Star All Stars

Sound of Rum

New Beautiful South

St Ettienne

[lua]

It was Beth Jeans Houghton not Micachu - Micachu is a very different kettle of fish. You're right - was a beautiful version - they made it their own !

[Completewasters]

2/ People sitting on stairwells and on the pathways , get out the way use your common sense.

(can we have some friendly festival traffic police next year, it will help the flow)

Edited August 18, 2009 by Completewasters

[RichardH]

Richard mentioned this on his Phrased and Confused podcast and wouldn't name the band as he thought nobody had noticed ... unlucky.

If you can find the podcast it's very amusing, Ruchard is late so they replace him with a welly. When he does arrive he lasts only 2 minutes before his mobile goes and he has to leave ... the welly is returned.

Poor lad looked like he had the worries of the world on his shoulders.

[andyblack]

Highlights:

Frank Turner - how has he never been on my radar before? And best crowd atmosphere of the weekend too IMO.

[seantizz]

Can I please point out that none of these were me....

[Gabs]

he stays with loveable brilliant irish chap tiernan, who's front door is pretty much directly across from yours. i believe, tiernan ended up playing harmonica for frank on the bbc's open air beat session. which is intriguing because tiernan cant play the harmonica for toffee, but lots of bulmers meant it seemed a good idea at the time.

[danceonfire]

Alot of highlights for me.......

If you dont mind me boring you all with a mini review.

First band of the weekend great imitations i think were a good start. Came flyering at our tent so we went down. Propper ssw stuff. Different, funny and entertaining. Acoustic hip hop.

Kid British were brilliant. Much better than i expected. Shame about the tecnical probs though. Oh and a good anti bnp finish.

After being recomended beardyman. I was very impressed having never heard of him.

Gutted about the streets but the beat on the indoor made up for that with some drunken skanking going on well into the night from us.

Another highlight on the saturday was dan nightingale on the comedy stage. Brilliant. Ssw realy does pick some top comics. Although i dont think rob deering was as good as the last time i saw him in manchester.

David thomas broughton on the saturday was amazing. Again an act i hadnt heard of but now one of my favorites. Truly original and absorbing and ive not talked about and disected a performance like i did that for ages.

Funny to see the shocked areas of the crowd leaving with fingers in ears during the feedback. Seems they just didnt get it. I even got a tshirt.

Beth jeans houghton in phased & confused was great. Although a few hitches. A very nice lady who we met on the sunday night and posed for a pic.

Jim jones review lived up to my expectations.

Airborne toxic event were breathtaking. Really good, noisy and intense. Probably my favorite act of the weekend.

Ending the saturday with a good charlatans singalong and a long island ice tea or two couldnt have rounded it up much better.

The sunday started for me with dan evans in the comedy tent. Another to comedian.

Woodpigeon on the indoor were great and the cover of abba with beth j h a suprising highlight of the set.

Port o brien on the main stage were perfect.

Easystar all stars were very impressive.

Bon iver one of my favorite acts of the year didnt dissapoint.

Then it was on to the orange tree tentfor more booze and a dance to finish the weekend off.

Other good points were the cinema tent. Which i didnt use as much as i should. The garden was a brilliant and sureal addition. Staff were as friendly as ever and as you can tell we had a great time.

Shame i couldnt find anycds on sale from the playing bands. And another one of the very few bad points which was mentioned by us a few times was each bands blurb in the programme. As i had not heard of a few i felt it didnt tell me enough about what each band sounded like. I know its a picky one and im sure alot goes into producing it but i think i might have made an effort to see some more if they were talked up abit more.

Anyway an amazing time was had. Met some great people. Drank some good beer and saw some quality bands. Now to spend even more money on cds from some new favorite bands.

Oh and im looking for a copy of i wanna be a gay dj. An unofficial anthem of the weekend.

Thank you richard h and all involved.

[alfie672]

2009 highlights

the fringe festival - mr plow, maybeshewill, death of london, minnaars

friday

mum

the wild beasts

qemists

saturday

mr plow

jim jones revue

hugh cornwall

the joy formidable

sunday

woodpigeon

maybeshewill

monotonix

bon ivor

the new festival layout

the real ale tent and the disco

the comedy tent

the silent disco

phrased and confused

de montford hall people

2009 lowlights

over zealous security

bulmers cider domination

overall for me this was not up there with the previous few years but the benchmark has been very high and i still had a great time. it is my turn to buy the early bird tickets this year and they will be purchased as soon as they go on sale. dream headliners for the 10th ss would be the national, elbow and sfa. dreaming starts now!

next stop the end of the road festival!

[linleymatt]

Richard mentioned this on his Phrased and Confused podcast and wouldn't name the band as he thought nobody had noticed ... unlucky.

If you can find the podcast it's very amusing, Ruchard is lat eso they replace him with a welly. When he does arrive he lasts only 2 minutes before his mobile goes and he has to leave ... the welly is returned.

Poor lad looked like he had the worries of the world on his shoulders.

[Gav Minnaars]

highlights -

Wild Beasts. Never heard them before, but thought they were awesome.

The Joy Formidable. Met them before and after their set; they're lovely.....and their set was great. Shame they were turned down half way through.

Her Name Is Calla. About bloody time.

Maybeshewill. Bizarre scheduling, but woke a few people up on what was otherwise a bit of a lackluster day.

Free food and drink. when these happened, I smiled.

Lowlights -

Noise Police. I dont know what happened this year, but you could hold a perfectly audible conversation whilst stood 2 feet away from the mainstage. This is VERY VERY WRONG.

Technical Issues. A personal one this....anyone that saw our set....

Idlewild. I love Idlewild. Shame they phoned in their performance.

Headliners. were generally too retrospective for my liking. 1994 wasnt that great. I was there.

- In the main, it was ace though....the most fun i've had at a Summer Sundae. Hopefully we'll be back!

[retromoz]

Disappointments... few and far between.

1. Pizza Express instead of wood fired pizzas. I was looking forward to one of those.

[jay.v]

I missed out a highlight - James Yuill. Did any of you see him. It was awesome. Totally reccomend his album as well.

...and another thing. him walking around playing 'gay dj.' earlier he was playing another obscure tune over and over. I've got the rhythm in my head but can't think of the words. It was like some old punk song with some bloke ranting rather singing. i'm saying all this in a good way!

[frances..]

Sorry that some people found the security overzealous. I stewarded for Oxfam this year at Summer Sundae and found in the main the Showsec lot were friendly and evenhanded. I did find that the DMH staff who were the site security/staff sometimes didn't have a great attitude, even towards fellow staff! Also, its pretty difficult to keep campsites quiet, I'm not sure everyone who was camped in the family area realised that it was the quiet zone. On the Thursday i was working in the fire tower of that campsite and have to say it stayed as quiet as a campsite can get.

Musings

Being part of the Oxfam presence enhanced the whole thing. Its good to see festivals from a different perspective.. SS is such a small festival, friendly and lovely atmosphere. It was nice to be able to get to recognise faces, chat to festival-goers, and generally get to know lots of nice people over the weekend

It did mean that I missed out on a few acts, but got to see those I wanted to in the main. Bon Iver was fantastic as I expected, though I agree, he'd have been better in a tent. But I wouldn't have caught him otherwise as I was working on the disabled viewing platform at the time. Future of the Left were great as always, love those guys. Mum were amazing, Mr Hudson was really good too, much better than I expected. Idlewild were pretty good but they just don't have the fire that they used to. Saw Robin Ince's standup and School for gifted children, which was great.

Really glad lots of people went to see David Thomas Broughton, I didn't catch him this time but I've seen him before and he really is something special.

The weather was fantastic which really helped - working on the bus lanes or the fire towers til 1am would not have been as much fun if it was chucking it down!

[frances..]

Also, the driver of the Airborne Toxic Events tour bus throwing a diva like strop as we tried to find somewhere to put the gigantic tour bus they arrived on was pretty funny.

[y=mx+c]

What fab time at ssw!

Loved the layout this year

the music I saw was great

the weather was great

the people where great

hurley burley was fab

lovely having so much seating in the main out door bar area

only lowlight was no-one sang alone to rocky horror!!!!!

Can't wait for next year..... Cracking

[y=mx+c]

What fab time at ssw!

Loved the layout this year

the music I saw was great

the weather was great

the people where great

hurley burley was fab

lovely having so much seating in the main out door bar area

only lowlight was no-one sang alone to rocky horror!!!!!

Can't wait for next year..... Cracking

[Debbi]

Really glad lots of people went to see David Thomas Broughton, I didn't catch him this time but I've seen him before and he really is something special.

[Unihammer]

[quote name='retromoz' date='Aug 19 2009, 09:20 AM' post='2943331'

To, be honest, whilst i still had a god time, it were my 4th year. And....it was probably the worst of the 4. The line up wasnt that great......There was a LOT of corporate stuff around (a bloody Walls van?!?).....the comedy acts i saw only played, like, 15 minutes.....LOADS of bloody kids trying out their first shandy this year........

er....i dunno how to end this post.......just to say, i still had a good time. I think i will wait for the line up before buying tickets next year. That is all.

[Kaybee]

David Thomas Broughton....... well, I guess it's just me but everyone is raving about him and I absolutely hated it! Guess he must be a Marmite act but I know I'm in the minority.

[Debbi]

Actually, the friend I was with left half way through, Kaybee.. as she was 'quite uncomfortable' haha.