Connect Festival 2007, Inveraray Castle

...the last day of our Argyll holiday

So after we had breakfast at our snug, clean B&B and visited a gorgeous prehistoric viewpoint, we headed south to Inveraray to the Connect Festival.

Connect was organised by the same people as T in the Park, and having been to that one (years ago) I had a certain expectation about the atmosphere, in that it would be completely different to our local festies at home. I was expecting teenagers and mud - and that just about sums it up! Boutique festival, my arse (I pity his lordship).

We arrived about 11am, slightly apprehensive about the parking arangements because they were trying to encourage people to get the bus there (not really practical for us on our way back home). There was in fact plenty of space but on marshland. They'd put temporary metal "roads" over the grass so far but after that - good luck! The trick was not to stop. We found this out the hard way and got stuck reversing into a space, requiring three burly blokes to lift the nose up while I backed in, splatttering the car and myself because I had the window open to shout "heave!"

We then started the long long long path to the main gates and festival entrance. We were fighting against a tide of weary, hungover, laiden people carrying their tents and worldly goods back to the cars after a wet night. They looked tired and miserable and were mostly determined to hog the central higher ground of the muddy path, travelling headlong into us if we didn't get out of the way. "Take no prisoners!" ... this was a bad introduction ot the festival and made us almost as miserable as they looked.

When we arrived in to the main area, we found the stalls to be very tacky and predicable, I swear one of them even had a Kiss me quick hat.

The first food stalls we found were dire. We didn't realise there were more burgers vans to be found at each of the stages so had to take our chances with the ones here; the Stoats van had the longest queue we'd ever seen (apart from the one to the toilets) because most people by now realised that porridge was by far the best food here. I bet the Stoats boys made some huge money that weekend.

Enough moaning! We came here to enjoy music.

Well our first target was to familiarise ourselves with the location of the two main stages, then to find ourself at the right one in time for Newton Faulkner... the "Guitars and other machines" stage was at the opposite end of the patch to the "Oyster Stage"... with a narrow bottleneck inbetween, again a very muddy path the opened into an even muddier space where the game was to find the high ground.

I kept telling meself it wasn't as bad as pics I've seen of Glasto. That's OK, then. I couldn't get round the fact that not only were there people here wearing white shoes and trousers, but that some of them managed to keep clean! they should have got a special prize.

Enough moaning!

So we found the Guitar Stage and parked in front of it; first up were The Kissaway Trail - never heard of them... from Denmark, young and rocky, quite entertaining but not really our cuppa... when they'd finished we made sure we moved away from the speakers a bit ...

Enough moaning!

Newton Faulkner came on to a smallish crowd which grew as people arrived to investigate. I'd heard his stuff on the radio and B has constantly played the CD in his car for the last few weeks, plus the album is number one. We were right at the front, got a good measure of the bloke - not as tall as expected, and not as hunky as some of his promotional stuff! Ginger dreadlocks - I mean, the PR people had their work cut out with that didn't they!

Newton was fab - good rapport and banter, on the stage alone with no band, held the audience in the proverbial palm. Fantastic! Brilliant guitarist and obviously used to playing on his own in much smaller venues, using his guitar as percussion as well as melody. Did that thing where the left hand plucks as well as making the chords, while his right hand slapped and drumed on the box. Wonderfully strong voice, perfect tone, explained the songs with a little story. Made a mental note to recommend him to people who like Nick Harper or Martin Stephenson. Great stuff!

Here's Newton playing "Teardrop" at connect:


So after Newton putting a smile on our faces, we hung around and watched Tilly and the Wall set up. Of course not having heard of them before either, we thought it was the roadies setting up but it was them; wondered what that round thing with the microphone was they were setting on the floor - turned out to be a tapdancing board! A joyous experience, helped by the student-types standing next to us who knew every word, I decided they must be well known and I go around with my ears shut. I soon realised why I hadn't heard of them though - cos I don't buy the right magazines but mainly because they are highly unlikely to be played ont radio cos of all the effing! Great fun, visually interesting and very entertaining. I would say they are somewhere between Riverdance, Steps and B-52's (they wish).

Tilly & The Wall clip - (this must have been filmed just to our left!)

We next had to make our way to the main stage to check out Regina Spektor - I like her CD and wanted to see what she's like live - the answer is just the same as her CD - almost word for word and plink for plonk. Russian version of Tori Amos (she wishes). I enjoyed it, but we made the right decision to head off early to make it back to the Guitar stage in time to get a good pitch for watching Seth Lakemen...

Seth brought his band with him - I presume it was his brother Sean on guitar. Sean looks so much like Jack dee, he even has the sneery smile. Enjoyed Seth a great deal - we've seen him before at Solfest last year and this was better cos he drew a much larger crowd, including dancers who couldn't help jigging to the fiddling:


Here are some Connect pics on Flickr.

Now for the grand finale. There was nothing after Björk that we wanted to see, so this was gonna be it for us at Connect. I was sooooo excited, been looking forward to seeing her live for ages, I've danced round the living room like an idiot many a time to her mental music!

I was escatic! What a goddess... she did not disappoint! I was bouncing like a kid, pogoing and shouting the words, watching her from the corner of the stage doing her thang... fantastic show, new stuff and old. Enjoyed every second of it and I'm still grinning now just thinking about it :-D

I got B to take this pic of me - I know it's crap, I took my old camera with me, but I quite like it!



Found this great clip on youtube of Declare Independance, which was the finale and the crowd went insane, including me! What a crescendo! Lasers and exploding glitter! Screamin' "Raise your Flag! Higher, Higher!"


(this is her doing it on Jools - even had Paul McCartney dancing)

So that was it - I was on such a high and I can recall it so clearly now, that I'm not gonna bring it down by telling you the finer details of our painful traipse back to the car, or the 3+ hour journey back to Carlisle.

No! Leave on a high! Go play some Björk!