May 10, 2019
wild
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wild
Goldheart Assembly performing at Cazfest.
Bring It All Back To You
You might before have heard me harping on about the BISHOPS STORTFORD MUSIC FESTIVAL, a yearly weekend of music held in my town that makes me proud (for once!) to live here. This year we had Pulled Apart by Horses and Hayseed Dixie, before we’ve had The Holloways and The Subways. Hardly Bono and Chris Martin but not bad either for your average suburban town.
Another event held here yearly is CazFest, which happened today. For want of more intelligent language, it’s horse-shit. It’s for charity, a girl my age died in a club a few years ago due to a rare illness and they wanted to raise money awareness for it. Great. Good on them. It’s god awful though.
I went last year for the first and only time. I never usually make the effort as I work weekends and quite frankly don’t want to go. It fell on my friend’s birthday and she wanted a big group of us to go so I obliged. They pull in some bloody big names. Not quite sure how but they do. Last year we were rumoured to have Mumford and Sons, of all people which would have been freaking amazing. Fresh from Glastonbury they were right on the cusp of hitting big time, and the rumour was they wanted to play but were already tied up at another festival. Instead we were landed with Chipmunk, Tinchy Stryder and Lemar. I went along for the ride, optimistic as even if the line-up was rubbish, it's always good to have big events like this in your town. I wouldn't have minded a cheeky bit of Lemar really, but as evening hit I had to go home. I'd never been to a more dire and poorly organised event in my life.
It's not even the line-up that makes it so horrendously bad, it's the way they put the whole thing together. The girl that died, Caz, all her family go around wearing bright pink t-shirts saying "Caz's Brother" and so on. Is this not a little odd? Are you asking for people to come up and say "Sorry for your loss"? It all feels a bit forced and without being a music snob, prejudiced or judgemental, it attracts the sort of crowd you'd expect a line-up like that to attract. We had so many drunken 15 year olds come into my work today, it was ridiculous. Quite a few shop lifters and one group of louts smashed a bottle of cider on a car.
The line-up was a slight improvement this year, if only for comedy value. S Club 7 minus four of the seven members and Sugababes, that manufactured pop band consisting of NONE of the original members. Had I not been working I would have gone to see S Club 7. I quite fancied a good reminiscent 90s sing-a-long. Think of the fun, the lols! Shameless I tell you.
I settled for half way. As I said, you could hear the music from Waitrose. I recognised a local band Pandora's Box. Acoustic guitars with a lot of keyboard, and three really nice harmonies from two girls and a guy, not bad. Shame the girls are so far up their own arses they look down on everyone else. They also push to the back the male harmony despite him being the best singer of them all. I sound very sour and bitter here describing them but I'd imagine they're worried he'll steal the limelight. Seriously, this guy's about 16 years old and he has an incredible voice. They're doing ok actually, their cover of Rolling in the Deep was played on Radio 1 and they won a new band competition to play at Camp Bestival last year, a gig me and Chris happened to stumble upon. As we walked into the arena I heard a familiar cover of Florence and the Machine's Rabbit Heart. "Those girls can actually hit the high notes", Chris said. In we went and low and behold before me were a group of people from home. We sat down to watch the rest of the set and between songs I shouted "BISHOPS STORTFORD" and the singer Chloe looked round, bewildered with a slight air of disgust, not recognising the name of her town or my face, despite us having hung out a hundred times as she's a friend of one of my closest friends Bella.
ANYWAY. Big digression there. I got my slice of S Club. I was standing at the Customer Service Desk near closing and could make out personal fave Don't Stop Movin' and stood in the car park with trolley boy Hallam to have a listen. You go Paul! (the one who left the band in the first place to pursue a solo career, then never had a solo career). You go Bradley! (the other member who went on to do absolutely jack all) You go Jo! (the nice one turned racist one from Big Brother) A defining moment in the band's career, that and their tour of UK universities at the tail end of last year.
- Forever Bishops Storford <3