Bingley Music Live - Friday

• Posted: Mon 5 Sep 2011
• By: Kev

Bingley Music Live has had its knockers over the years, with queues for the toilets and bar being an issue and the line up, while catering for everyone somewhere along the line, doesn’t fall into the ‘cooler’ festival line ups.

The organisers though have taken on board the feedback, they’ve put in extra toilet facilities throughout the site and have done what they can to alleviate the bar queues. Line up wise they’ve stuck to their guns, it’s a family festival, it needs to be commercially appealing and it needs to cater for all ages and styles…something they do remarkably well each year.

So heading down to Myrtle Park on Friday, I knew I probably wouldn’t like Young Guns and Skindred (although plenty of people picked them as their festival highlight when asked). Neither were my thing musically, but where as Skindred were professional and were at least trying to do something a little different, Young Guns, were run of the mill emo, overly surly  having spent most of the time between songs moaning about the journey they'd had and the set length, they did themselves no favours in my eyes.

I was interested to see Alice Gold, despite giving it a few spins, her album passed me by, but live she made far more sense, a good vocal performance, the music was interesting and she had a bewitching presence on stage.

The Go Team! are a terrific live act, but a combination of bad sound and a couple of weaker album tracks being played, meant they didn’t hit the heights of previous gigs I’ve seen from them, so a wasted opportunity for Ninja and co to convert 15,000 people to their music.

The Fun Lovin Criminals have always had a magical air of cool about them and they were the perfect choice to round off the evening. Huey is still a superb frontman, engaging the crowd between songs and as dapper as ever, they are incredibly tight as a band and it’s only as they get towards the end of their set and have finally given the crowd Scooby Snacks that you realise the depth of great material they have accumulated over the years.

So a successful start to the sold out weekend and the attendance for the Friday night will have delighted the organisers, justifying their commendable decision to keep the first night free entry as in previous years.