Face Of Cheam

Rebekah Delgado is fast becoming my favourite artist this year. Struggling to fit her whole band on stage in the tiny Twelve Bar Club her backing singers (Drunken Choir) had to stand in front. Impressive noises from one of them during Menage A Moi too! This was prior to the album release but was still impressed to tweet about it and even got a retweet from Rebekah herself! My first retweet ever!

The Stone Roses headlined and were disappointing. Obviously iconic but due to only surviving two albums, being top billed meant they had to elongagate their set. And not all their songs are classics which for me meant too long a gap between opener I Wanna Be Adored and Ten Storey Love Song. I decided to leave upon the intro to I Am The Resurrection so I could get back to London in time for the last tube. Had a bit of a snooze in the comedy tent, before food and Example. Example were awful. Still this meant I got a good place for Noel Gallagher. Not much you can say when he ends the set by pretending to leave then playing the riff of You Really Got Me, before launching into Dont Look Back In Anger. Fantastic. Hope to see him again soon. Set - Its Good To Be Free / Everybody's On The Run / Dream On / If I Had A Gun / The Death Of You And Me / (I Wanna Live My Dream) In A Record Machine / Supersonic / AKA What A LIfe / Talk Tonight / AKA A Broken Arrow / Half The World Away / Stranded On The Wrong Beach / Whatever / Little By Little / Don't Look Back In Anger Off to the dance tent where Wretch 32 were playing. They brought on Ed Sheeran but weren't my brand of ale. Still enduring 20 minutes of them I got down the front for the Ting Tings. They centered their set on their new album which was ok but it was Thats Not My Name that the majority of the crowd were here for and they made us wait for that predictably! The Charlatans were a replacement for Dappy. This was tremendous Serendipity for me. A greatest hits set followed. How High, Weirdo, Only One I Know, One To Another etc. you could not argue with their set and how good they are. The only thing you would take exception to was Tim Burgess's hair! Set - North Country Boy - Weirdo - Oh! Vanity - Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over-One To Another - Tellin' Stories - The Only One I Know - How High - Sproston Green Off to the tent for Gabrielle Aplin. She does lack a certain presence and although she's young I don't think it's something you grow into. She even had to ask her manager whether she could introduce the title of her new song. Pleasant enough though a cover as she did at Dingwalls would have improved things. The Inspiral Carpets have the original singer back and whilst Clint Boon maintains his charisma they were missing Tom Hingley in my opinion. Still This Is How It Feels and She Comes In The Fall remain classics. Couple of new tracks where the vocalist was more comfortable sounded ok. So my return to the V fest for the first time in over a decade. The Twang were first on and with a six song set including Bareny Rubble, Either Way and a new song We are the Crowd it opened things up nicely.

The day before the V festival Shed Seven perform a warm up in London. One of my favourite bands that wasn't playing at Chelmsford the next day so I gratefully grabbed this opportunity. The set was based on their first two albums and included Missing Out in the encore which I hadn't heard live before. Also chatted to a nice Mancunian couple who were getting married in a couple of weeks and had got their wedding band to learn Chasing Rainbows for their first dance!