Blog: Indietracks Friday

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You find me sat gawping into space, very happy and very exhausted, for LO! it was Indietracks this weekend!

On Friday I met Mr T McClure at Tiger Towers and, after a STRATEGY MEETING re: maximising sales potential (or, to put it another way, "Oh God, where did all these old CDs come from?") we headed off to Ripley. We arrived at Butterley Station and were IMMEDIATELY embroiled in saying hello to people, also HUGGING. The train seemed to be taking AGES to arrive, so Tom, myself and Mr G Anderson CALLED IT by walking off towards the site on foot. Within SECONDS the train arrived. MAGIC.

It's been ages since I last went to Indietracks, so when we got to the main site it took me a while to reacclimatise to the fact that at least 50% of the people I know in the whole world were in THE SAME PLACE and also that there were ALSO loads of people there I didn't know but who DID know me. This is the only place on the entire planet that we get to find out what it's like being slightly famous, and it took some time to remember how to deal with it, but once I did - SMILE at everybody, HUG anyone within grabbing distance, and if you DON'T know them you will within a few seconds - it was lovely.

Mr FA Machine arrived not long after us, and he, Tiger and I settled into a steady rotation of BEER and Ambling About. We were joined for much of the evening by Mr & Mrs P Wilson and had a DELIGHTFUL time of it. LOADS of people had told me that i HAD to listen to The Chills so I did, and can confirm that yes, they certainly did sound like a Legendary Indie Band and I reckon if I knew the songs it would have been MIND BLOWING.

The highpoint of the day though was seeing Allo Darlin who, it may surprise you to know because I hardly ever mention it, I REALLY REALLY LIKE. The first half of the set featured a lot of new stuff, which sounds great, but things really kicked off about 30 minutes in. I'd gone off to the bar for BEERS and came back to find the ENTIRE SITE in SILENCE, all listening to "Tallulah". It was astounding, and then it was HIT after HIT after HIT. They got Emma Kupa on for "Silver Dollars" and THEN got Katie and David from The Just Joans on for "If You Dont't Pull". EVEN BETTER than all that though was at the end when they segued into "You Can Call Me Al". You could feel the tension growing as everyone in the audience thought "Hang on - this is the one with That Bass Solo in it, surely they can't..?" and when Mr B Botting DID do That Bass Solo the whole site ERUPTED!

When the gig was finished we stood AGOG in a crowd of similarly stunned people, GRINS plastered all over the place. "They're like a proper band!" we all said, for LO! it felt (as it so often does with them) as if one of OUR bands had not only Become Big but had also STAYED as one of our bands. I suggested that surely we could all pack up and go home now, as nothing could possibly top THAT and that any band attempting to play afterwards would be on a FOOL'S ERRAND, then remembered that WE were playing next day. Ah!

We set off to go home but accidentally had loads more beer on the way, so by the time we fell into the Tiger Mobile two thirds of us were a bit tiddly. Back at Tiger Towers we had a nice settling whisky before I concluded that, what with one thing and another, BED was probably the best plan. We had a big day planned for tomorrow!

posted 28/7/2014 by MJ Hibbett

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