10 Things You Should Be Listening To - End of the Road Special
In celebration of End of the Road Festival, this coming end of August, I’ve decided to go with an End of the Road special for this month’s feature.
Im changing things up a little bit this month. Instead of the usual Six (or whatever number Im in the mood for) Things You Should Be Listening To, Ive decided to mix things up somewhat. As you doubt gathered from the change in feature title. In celebration of End of the Road Festival, this coming end of August, Ive decided to go with an End of the Road special for this months feature. Lets just briefly cover why; Two weeks today Ill have quit my job, having handed in my notice two weeks prior to today. Two weeks tomorrow, or today for all you readers who read this on its day of posting, I will be on the road to End of the Road. I am very excited about both of these facts. However, Im not going to bore you with the reasons in regards to my job. What I am going to do is fill you with mutual excitement and joy on my behalf that I will be going. If youre going, even better. If you manage to track me down and lay blame on this feature I will buy you a drink. I may even make love to you, if you want me to. http://youtu.be/FuvWc3ToDHg End of the Road is one of your smaller, more independent festivals that prefers to focus on independent and alternative music, with a bit of a preference for folk, alt.country and Americana. Not exclusively though. It all started when friends Simon Taffe and Sofia Hagberg had the conversation weve all had at least once in our lives; wouldnt it be great to run our own festival, put on the bands we want to see, run things the way we want them to run etc. Except, well, Simon and Sofia went and did it, 2006 saw the first ever End of the Road Festival take place, and 2008 saw it sell out for the first time. Looking at past line ups its clear to see these acts arent huge (or werent when they played), but there is a strain of sheer quality running through all the acts that have played there, and no doubt those that will. Beyond the music the pair saw to really emphasise the little things too, putting as much effort into ensuring quality food, quality beer, quality location, quality camping and quality entertainment besides the music; a games area, workshops, comedy, a film tent, a childrens area, a healing field, readings and even a library in the forest for Gods sake. http://youtu.be/01tL_YOsrCo So, if you arent making it this year, maybe you should think about next year and with a mission statement from the management themselves of; You wont get all the overhyped bands.Most bands play longer sets than usual.You can eat a range of quality food.You can drink a range of quality beers.The staff and security care about everyone and show respect.The crowd will be there for the music.We take pride in being an independent festival. Whats there to argue with? As to this year though, you can see theres a stellar line up on offer and as much as Id like to theres no point me banging on at you about how good Beach House, Grizzly Bear, Patti Smith, Anna Calvi, Graham Coxon, Grandaddy, Dirty Three and Mark Lanegan are. So too Ive already covered the likes of Willis Earl Beal, Sleep Party People, The Antlers, 2:54, Hannah Cohen and Veronica Falls in reviews and features before. With these next few artists Ive instead picked some of the choice lesser known, and not-previously covered acts. If youre going, you should definitely try and catch them. If youre not, you should definitely give them a listen. Theres a handy Spotify playlist doing the rounds of this years line-up which is just plain lovely. Without further ado...