In terms of summer music festivals, Cambridge was previously best known as the locale for the Cambridge Folk Festival. Not anymore, it shouldn’t. It’s very odd but this was the first time we’ve been contacted about Lodestar Festival, taking place just 15 minutes outside Cambridge city centre. This year’s event takes place 30 August to 1 September, and in its family friendly programming, it could very well be the South’s answer to Deer Shed Festival (Well, I’ll have to consult Martin about this, obviously…) We’ll also be running a competition related to the event in the coming weeks here on TGTF so…
But for now, let’s concentrate on what we do best, the music, shall we? The headliners for this year’s Lodestar are brilliant: Friday will see rising South Devon singer/songwriter Ryan Keen, Saturday’s festivities will star our good friends The Joy Formidable, with Ritzy Bryan holding court as shown in the header pic and Canada’s Dragonette will close out the festival by getting bodies bumping with their brand of dance funk.
However, just watching music is not just the only focus of Lodestar. Fancy bringing out your inner Gloria Estefan? The Pan-Jam workshop will allow you to try out steel drums, the instrument that brings calypso and reggae music their distinctive sound; other workshops are yet to be announced. Did our Oxford mates Stornoway ever make you curious about the sport of zorbing? You can do that at Lodestar, along with archery and power kiting. Comedy and dance troupe performances are also scheduled.
Adult mid-bird tickets are still available for £64 for all 3 days, with only £5 extra for your tent or caravan. Comparable mid-bird tickets for 15 to 17s are £56 for 3 days; children 14 or younger are free. For more information on tickets, visit the official Lodestar Festival Web site.
By Mary Chang on Wednesday, 9th May 2012 at 11:00 am
‘You Are the Quarry’ had been called Morrissey‘s comeback album in May 2004 after the much-maligned ‘Maladjusted’ released in 1997. Things were looking good for the Mozzer; the album was his highest charting album ever in America. Fast forward a couple months and I’m flipping through cable channels to find something interesting to watch and I hear a couple bars of something familiar. I look more closely at the television. It’s the new MTV teen reality show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, and during what I’m guessing was supposed to be a tender moment, what do I hear in the background but ‘First of the Gang to Die’.
Sadly, I don’t have a YouTube video to go along with this; the video above is taken from the film for Who Put the M in Manchester?, filmed live at the MEN in 2004 (I’ve played my DVD of this so many times, my DVD skips, I think I broke it). But in my research for this piece, I also learned it was used in an episode of Date My Mom, such that a boy and the coed his mother chose as his date can disappear into the sunset. By limo. We have no way of knowing if Steven Patrick Morrissey himself approved the usage of this song, but it’s hard to believe he would allow the song, about a kid in a Latino gang who becomes a martyr by being the first in his group of friends to die, to be used in either context. While it is a pop song, it’s not really a song about sunny days and going out on dates.
It seems not surprising that the E4 reality drama Made in Chelsea, essentially the UK’s answer to Laguna Beach with well-heeled rich kids from a posh area of London, also uses current ‘hot’ songs in their shows. I won’t list every artist, but a quick glance at the tracklisting for the first episode of the first series for Made in Chelsea lists tunes form some pretty impressive stars that we’ve written about before: Adele, Dragonette, Morning Parade, Muse, the Script, Tinie Tempah (erroneously credited as ‘Tinie T’) and Two Door Cinema Club (twice!). Either the producers have been reading up on the music blogosphere or consulting with people in the know on ‘what’s hot’ (more likely the latter).
While I agree with Grohl on this – I personally can’t stand the show and how it repurposes already great music, only to redo them in charmless, overblown, unworthy imitations – there seems to be no right or wrong answer for an artist or band considering allowing commercial use of their songs. Some bands still and will always feel that allowing such permission debases the artistic value of their hard work and inspiration. However, maybe the gold standard yet groan worthy rule of PR applies here: “there is no such thing as bad publicity.” As much as Goyte might complain that the song he wrote no longer belongs to him, ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ is still #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the third week running. Suffering for one’s art? Maybe not so much.
By Phil Singer on Friday, 13th November 2009 at 10:00 am
I’m a bit slow on this one, but this track has gone huge this past few days around the blogosphere. Taken from Dragonette‘s new album Fixin’ To Thrill (available now), Spanish DJs Buffetlibre.
A huge tune that has hints of Kylie, Little Boots, and early 00’s Ibiza hits, I love it and think you should too. Download, enjoy, and let us know what you think in the comments below.
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