music in the gardens
The past decade or so has seen a massive growth in the number festivals and outdoor events in the UK. Despite Glastonbury taking a year out in 2012 if you look at the festival listings you will find dozens of large events,some familiar and many new names. Events like the Leeds And Reading Festival, V Festival,Download , Creamfields, T In The Park and Latitude have been joined by events like The Hop Festival,End Of The Road,Number Six Festival, CockRock,Spendour,Tramlines and many others large and small.
With the appalling weather in 2012 many festival events have suffered with the guest experience and the financial rewards badly hit by the rain. A large catering company that Live Music Management were speaking to last week confirmed the the Isle Of Wight was a bit of a disaster (although it went ahead and reviews proclaimed it a great success) whilst The Godiva Festival was cancelled at a cost of £350,000 to Coventry Council and many other small events have been pulled at the last minute.
On Friday Live Music Management attended a small outdoor event in Sheffield which has been running for the past five years in the Botanical Gardens. Music In The Gardens offers four music styles over four days with a Jazz Swing Band on day one , Classical music on Day four and a pop rock night on the Friday this year featuring seventies hit makers 10cc with support from a Sheffield based function band.
Fridays weather was truly appalling with a months worth of rainfall in an afternoon. All day we were checking the listings to see if the event had been cancelled and (like many others) we were hoping that it had! In the end the skies cleared an hour before kick off and a splendid night was had by everyone with the covers band warming the audience up and 10CC offering a greatest hits set which made perfect sense to the audience who were attending more for the event than for the actual band booked.
It was a hugely civilised event with picnics everywhere and large quantities of fizzy alcohol consumed. Dancing was banned due to the sodden ground but there was an hilarious Rubber Bullets inspired mini riot where the posh folk in attendance decided en masse to flount the rules and rise to their feet. I havent seen so many posh folk rioting since Waitrose ran out of Turkeys at Christmas.
T In The Park was televised this weekend and from the bits I saw the rain didn’t stop people enjoying an eclectic mix of live music.
Anyway all of these outdoor events and festivals add to the cultural heritage of the UK and Live Music Management sincerely hope that 2012 doesn’t spell the end of the line for many of the great Summer Festivals which have sprung up throughout the UK.