One month out from Shiiine On we look at the best new acts on the line-up,
On The Cusp...Holy Youth Movement
Here's Where the Story Ends
Trudging slowly over wet sand, how I dearly wish I was not here. The seagulls can smell my vulnerability. I shake. I shiver. I think I about food, no, I’ll sit in the storm a while a longer. Sip the coffee. Should have brought water too. Feet sore, hips killing, I limp my way to the water. Splash my face with the Bristol channel. Regret. Retreat.
Change of scene. That is all I need to breathe again. As soon as I thought it was over. It started again. The running gags re-emerge. Tea. Toast. Fosters anyone? Yeah, go on, I’m not taking it home.
As a child, my family would go to Mill Rythe Holiday camp in Hayling Island every year. Minehead, but smaller. Roaming free, playing football, table tennis, the arcades, pool, fruit machines, swimming, Jacuzzi, tennis, meeting Henry Cooper, Nan getting a table for bingo 1 hour early, and having a picture with Del Boy’s three-wheeled van, it was glorious. I would mope horrendously upon return.
These memories flood back on Sundays at Shiiine. It’s another time and another world and one no one wants to leave. One last hurrah lurks within everyone’s tired glint. We’re all over thirty, we all know we packed Sunday morning but, we’re all going to behave like it’s Friday night again.
Bouncing to TYS, fawning over Miles’ lyrics and wondering what anti-aging serum Jesus Jones are using. We shall not go gently into the night. I don’t want to go home!
Levi digging everyone who is hanging out of a hole. Neds’ fire raises you up and PWEI’ groove launches you back to the party (sorry Burger King, Big Mac fries to go!). Orbital caning it like its 1988 and Stereo MC’s showing out like bosses. I don’t want to go home!
Cast, Dodgy and The Farm. Friends arm in arm, tears roll down cheeks. Reality looms on the horizon but, it doesn’t seem so bad now. Conversation going on all around me. I join some, I leave some and some never found me. And now you must believe me, we never lose our dreams. Stop the slaughter, let’s go home, let’s go, let’s go.
All together now. See you in 2021
Saturday night's alright for Shiiine!
I get up when I want, except on Saturdays, when I’m rudely avoiding the cooking of breakfast. The four-man birth resembles opening scenes of Young One’s ‘Sick’ episode. Someone please god tie a bin bag on my head and hammer the nails in!
Come on man, get up, the hangover cure awaits. Piss looks like iron bru. Berocca, coffee, litre of water, coffee. Piss looks like 5alive. Another litre of water, bacon sarnie, nap, more water, more coffee, shower. Piss looks like a weak Robinsons squash. Back in the game!
Sit on the patio with a brewer’s droop, I get intimidated by the seagulls, they love a bit of me!
The troops are up, every one slightly in shock we’re all intact despite the confession:
“lot more pushing on the bog than normal”.
With that, it’s Inn on the Green time once more. The glint in the security guard’s smile is beaming, yeah, alright mate, we get it, you got some sleep, we didn’t. cheers!
Thatcher’s Haze, the lemsip of booze. Edge is coming off! Time for new music. Theatre Royal and Gazelle have been the truly special ones in this slot!
A feeling of impending victory forever lurks on Saturday. The c86 wars were fought and the Stourbridge massive kicked an academy venue-sized hole into the industry. It’s all we ever wanted. A place to exist. A place to call our own. Then 1994 happened. Masterpiece after masterpiece came out. Dare we dream a little bigger?
This all culminates in the mid-90s triumphalism. Huge skyline singalongs to Sleeper, Ocean Colour Scene, The Bluetones, and Shed Seven echo across the sea. Smiles on every face, band t-shirts glow in the disco lights like a Mediterranean sunset. Maybe it's the clothes we wear. The tasteless bracelets and the dye in our hair. Maybe it's our kookiness. Or maybe, maybe it's our nowhere towns. Our nothing places and our cellophane sounds. Maybe it's our looseness. But we’re Shiiine On trash, you and me!
The skyline filters out, and the indie kids seek out Lammo but the ravers are only just coming out to play. Daniel Fulham fires up the party with his rave sets. The black and yellow become poetic as visibility wanes. Awesome 3 wobbles you to the core and N Joi pulsates through your heart like a shot of serotonin.
Jon Mancini drops acid house, rave, and pop classics. The piano loops a signal for another vodka lime soda. Another hug from a stranger. I lose my friends, I dance alone, it’s 4am, and I don’t wanna go home!
Shiiine On Happy People
On a cold and frosty morning, there's not a lot to say. Have I stolen a pint of milk from work for coffee? Have I packed my Thousand Yard Stare t-shirt? Have I been to the gym enough to get through the onslaught of Shiiine On?
I catch myself in the mirror. Greyer and fatter but, never more ready for the annual trip to Minehead. Why the fuck did I have the 6th pint at Gerry Cinnamon last night?!
The first rush of excitement as old friends meet is allayed by hips falling out of place. Much like 4am finished, hugging around a hand brake is a young person’s game. Four hours of shit jokes, farts, and laughing at your mate for pissing in a bottle as you deliberately ignore Fleet services fly by. This alone is worth 200 quid.
Being the musical geek of the gang, inevitably I’ve spent hours making playlists. Agonising over which new Candy Opera track to add or about which new band is the best Oasis re-hash. The Crooks or Columbia? (it’s The Crooks for me). As you take that exciting right turn past every supermarket under the sun and the Big Top becomes a reality, so does that they haven’t listened to anything you have curated. When Liam Tyson shreds later, then they’ll listen!
Admin. Bleurgh. Queuing for check-in for 30 mins, why didn’t we get here at 10am? Maybe next year. In the meantime, I’ll stare at everyone’s trainers and parkers like a fourteen-year-old staring at strap-on sally chasing you down the alley.
Beers in the fridge. Beers in the freezer. A warm beer whilst we wait. Lammo on 6music. I wonder if he’ll repeat the same John Peel joke again. I wonder if I’ll laugh again. One hour until Ivory Wave, keep drinking!
Then it happens. Like it does every year. There are only three, of the four of us in the lounge. The extractor fan is on. The slow waft of service station expulsion meanders into the room. The wretched fog is here, and with five thousand middle-aged folks digesting the one nutrient between them in Burger King all weekend, it’s loitering with intent.
That first walk to the main arena is like the coronation. The laughter at the Inn on the Green grows steadily, the bouncers friendly (that’s not very 90s), and then it begins, Stone Roses is booming. As it surely always is here. Minehead, in November, is grey, bitter and the seagulls have come beyond the North Wall in Game of Thrones but, ‘She Bangs The Drums’ paints night like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece.
Jug after jug come. I should eat, maybe after Rev. Jug, jug, Thatchers, jager bombs, jug repeat! I should eat. Maybe after Cast and Lightning Seeds. Shit, I can’t hear the Seeds properly, maybe I should eat no? Not before Sice, never before Sice! I eat, it’s not legal, Apollo 440, Adamski and Cut La Rock take me to a buffet of love among strangers I forgot existed. I should sleep. One more pint with this couple as they tell me about meeting at Spike Island.
Chalet. Bed. Sleep smiling. Best friends. Best strangers. Best day one ever.
Shiiine On Weekender '19
The hangovers and comedowns have just about faded nearly two weeks on from this years Shiiine On Weekender. All we’re left with now is, an aching feeling that 2020 is just so far away.
To ease the pain, here are our top 5 highlights from the weekend. Please don’t troll us, we really did love everything about the weekend! Except Phil, he says we’re all c**ts.
Jon Mancini
Classic after classic, rave, acid house, Ibiza anthems and stupendous remixes flooded Reds dance floor. No-one played this weekend without technical proficiency. What set Mancini apart was, his ability to tap into the soul of this festival and its people. By the time he dropped Electronic, the room was ready to fall in the floor and die in a state of sheer happiness. May he always be at Shiiine!
Gazelle
The Shiiine On family continues to grow with new bands each year. Having the Inn On The Green free from the main stage on Saturday was a great touch. Big crowds for every band, more importantly, crowds of music buying generations to hopefully fund the new wave.
Taking full advantage was Leicester's Gazelle. The most aptly named band of the weekend, who among us wasn’t wearing a pair!
Along with mainstage openers Ivory Wave, they have had great run of singles in 2019. Looking like a gang and as free flowing as The Rifles and The Courteeners, they channel Richard Hawley’s Blake-esque lyrics through a flurry of great choruses and solos.
Despite the smell of feet (the room, not theirs), their everyman rock n roll blew away Friday's cobwebs with aplomb.
Sice
What a comeback. No live performances since 2005, Sice returned with a couple of gigs this fall. Neither would have compared to the huge crowd he drew on the Centre Stage. Humble, and full of love, Sice was visibly taken aback by the crowd he drew and, their reaction to the Radleys classics he played.
The Radleys were always full of adventure musically, however, to hear their songs stripped back was one of the cutest and most adorable things known to man. ‘I Wish I Was Skinny’ was jaw dropping, ‘Fairfax’ was heart-warming and, during ‘From the Bench at Belvidere’, Shiiine On possessed a hymnal quality like no other.
Embrace
Doing exactly what it says on the tin, they lift you up, inspire you and release you into the ether a better person!
Euphoric from start to finish, their beauty continues to reign supreme. With a classic record in each of the last three decades, they are becoming Indie’s Cliff Richard, here’s to ‘20s.
The Popguns
As a teenager of the Britpop, Shiiine On offers up several bands not yet discovered. Each of our four trips as unearthed a band that has stolen my heart:
2016 - Thousand Yard Stare
2017 - The Orchids
2018 - The Train Set
This year’s lucky winner was Brighton’s jangle gems The Popguns. Their effortless pop music warmed the arctic seaside conditions effortlessly. If there is a better sound to fall in love to than theirs we’d like to hear it.
Shiiine On: Then, Now, Forever!
“When something's good it's never gone”
New Order, 1990.
From the second summer of love to the end of 1996, saw several cultural spikes from the UK. Acid House, Baggy, the Camden pop art scene and the 60s renaissance of Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene and Cast. They haven't just sound-tracked the lives of the 30 plus crowd at the Shiiine On Weekender, they continue to be the fulcrum for subsequent generations looking for something real. Yes, The Libertines, The Streets and The Enemy have contributed significant albums, but, there has never been that Joe Strummer defamation “finally Beatles mania has bitten the dust” written about the Happy Mondays, Oasis or Stone Roses. Why? Well, as this great weekend showcased, it was music by the people for the people. Not a bunch of tossers kitted out Topman clobber. Every act, DJ, venue host, heck, even the dancing security guard proved that a working class hero is still something to be.
'Do you remember when....' is probably the most uttered phrase this weekend. Do you remember when he Bluetones went straight in at number 2 with 'Slight Return', or, when Steve Lamacq used to help us with our homework on the evening session? On and on the fond memories went.
To cynics, the Shiiine On Weekender is a festival for the outdated and irrelevant. They're wrong. For any artist or band yearning to breakthrough, a lot of these bands hold a the answers their looking for.
Echo & The Bunnymen show the value in looking cool as fuck. Mark Morriss and Rick Witter demonstrate the value of between song banter. Meanwhile, Echobelly's Sonya Madan's ability to connect her dancing to their sound gives that additional meaning to songs and makes her look every bit of a star now as in 1995. In a world where music is stolen as much as its bought, these things matter even more now. Talent is not enough to garner adoration, it's got to be earned!
Recently, the glorious Caitlin Moran spoke about the differences between the approach taken by Radiohead and Kasabian on Richard Herring's RHLSTP (RHLSTP) podcast:
“Radiohead and Kasabian are interested in exactly the same music. Kasabian are a working class band from Leicester and Radiohead are a middle class band from Oxford. I love both intensely and dearly but this seems to absolutely typify the differences between working classes and middle classes.......Where as Radiohead make these impenetrable things and don't really talk to the audience, we make these scary things and to make you cry. Where as Kasabian make the same music and are like oooooaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh. There was a quote from Serge after a Radiohead gig saying 'there was no birds on blokes shoulders, that's a shit gig'. That's exactly it, they want to share it with everyone and make it joyful.”
This come one, come all spirit is alive and well at the Shiiine On Weekender and can be seen in the various cover songs played. It's an art form often overlooked but cultivates identity so easily, it should be rehired immediately.
The Farm remind everyone of their punk and protest roots via The Clash's 'Bankrobber' and arguably draw the biggest reaction of the weekend when Paul Hooton rightly revels in the victories over the West Yorkshire Police, Thatcherites and the Murdoch press.
The music industry is often looked upon negatively, and often with good reason. The lack of reward for the risk is nothing compared to what it was for this weekends acts. Nevertheless, is there a better time to be in a band? There are more festivals, more radio stations and a ton of more interesting less corporate ways of promoting yourself. The talent that Cabbage, Whistlejacket and The Academic possess, the world is theirs to take if they want it enough.
The odds are clearly stacked in favour of those from more comfortably backgrounds but let the likes of Jake Bugg and especially Skepta and Kano be the example of not only how but why it should be done.
NB:
Please go read Mark Beaumont's Guardian review and the beautiful piece from Step On Magazine:
http://steponmagazine.com/purple-love-balloon-shiiine-on-weekender-wrap-photos/