Broke my Minety Music Festival cherry, and it was gurt lush! When it comes to live music and festivals, I initially set a high bar. My first concert was Springsteen in ‘87, and aside from traveller’s free parties, my first festival was Glastonbury. These days hedonism is reduced to finding smaller local festivals to savour, enjoy a pint or four; I’m done with tired feet trudging acres of tents, and what’s more, paying a king’s ransom for a multitude of elements I’m unlikely to witness because it’s all going off simultaneously; my eyes were kaleidoscopic anyway.
Though I miss those heady days, finding middle ground is tricky. The disambiguation of “festival” today is such a pub putting a man with a guitar under a gazebo and flogging undercooked hotdogs off a barbecue constitutes a festival, apparently. No, I need at least a taste of the heyday; monumental fun yet diverse, hassle-free adequate attractions without the notion I’m being taken for a mug. If my want was an ice cream, sure I’ve found some single scoop cones of vanilla, some even plop a flake into it, but this weekend I found the ultimate brownie, millionaire rocky road sundae; everything I want and expect from a festival, topped in caramel and sprinkled with Space Dust, close by, and easy to access in a tall glass. It’s called Minety Music Festival, near Malmesbury, and they’re so amicable they even supply those long-handled spoons to dip right into the chocolate sauce at the bottom; meaning, it was good to the end.
The intention was only a taster, pop down on the Sunday, check it out, report my findings, but I got a scrumptious bellyful from this alone. Minety is undoubtedly the best all-rounder local festival I’ve seen, period. It’s unfortunate the previous years I’ve advertised this on our event calendar and thought, now there’s a thing, but I hadn’t plunged in. It all now seems so foolish to have passed it off. Nearly all the bands we love and promote on Devizine have graced a stage here. Of them those lovely indie popsters Talk In Code bunged me on their guestlist, and it’s hardly Timbuktu, rather a twenty-five minute drive away; arm twisted, it’s now for me to justify my reasons for telling you how bloody fantastic Minety is, but it is.
Starter for ten, everything is bound around the edges of one gigantic field, you cannot get lost in a maze of tents. Between three stages everything you could possibly want from a festival is there. Kids are spoiled, something often overlooked at others; climbing wall, circus workshop, arts/crafts tents, storytelling, inflatables, face painting, arty kidz, and a cosy tent called the Tree House with an abundance of instruments to try; I swear bands were formed in there. Youths tended to dance or chill at a wonderfully decorated DJ venue, hosted by an eclectic online radio station, the Incapable Staircase, me too; Peter Pan, me, y’know!
I chose to dine there, takeaway Thai curry from a stall with a restaurant in Purton, on cushions thrown outside, next to a bathtub once filled with free waffles, now just furry pillows. Which brings me to my next reasoning; value for money. Food options were incalculable, any street food you fancy, but Minety also supplied a café flogging beans on toast for a pound fifty, or burgers for three quid, and pints at the bar were £4.50, cheaper than some pubs. There was never the archetypal downer you were open to being ripped off, leaving enough in your pocket to consider browsing the great festival stalls of gifts, cakes, or clothes.
Everything has its place at Minety, it’s their seventh year, subtracting those we don’t mention. They know what they’re doing, and the attention to detail was immaculate, equating to a tremendous vibe of positivity. The mammoth task of organising something on this scale was putty in their hands, and I salute them for this and the given concept of booking a handful of averagely known names for headliners and leaving the rest to supporting local acts; this is my third and final reasoning to why Minety is fantastic, and that should be plentiful to tempt you.
Ergo, our loveable poptastic indie darlings Talk in Code, who absolutely and definitely knocked it out of the farm, by the way, preceded a gorgeous set from reunited nineties giants Sleeper, who I favoured over the grand finale of Irish rock band Ash, but others might argue this and quite rightly so, as both rocked. And this was just Sunday, other nights The Feeling headlined, with Elles Bailey and The Chase.
But Minety is also smooth around the edges, as you wander tent to tent. There were a few must-sees for me, Swindon’s grunge newcomers I See Orange were awesome as predicted, in a tent hosted by Chippenham’s Kandu Arts, and The Sarah C Ryan Band were equal, euphorically cool at the Minety stage. Then there’s the discovery element, whereby a number of bands have now come to my attention, none more so than Arkansaw Jukebox, who play singalong pop classics from Spice Girls to Queen, albeit in a bluegrass fashion, and when it’s time to cover a country classic, Country Roads takes on a ska offbeat to make Toots blush! This tenet of jollification brought the tent down.
Others noteworthy were Hooch, blasting some danceable covers, reimagining the Faithless classic, a youthful semi-gothic four-piece called Pavilion, and nineties Seattle grunge-inspired The Rain City Project, with astute Pearl Jam and Nirvana covers. With the range on offer as vast as acts booked, and hurtling between them as fast as my ageing legs will take me, it’d need an essay length review to cover all, and you’ll be bored shitless before I reach my epic conclusion; festivals are a “you had to be there” thing, apologies to those I may’ve missed mentioning.
But if that popular shirtless tattooed entertainer Jimmy Moore covering the theme to Spongebob, Spice Girls on banjos, stripy stilt walk jugglers with bowler hats, or more upcoming young bands than you’d catch at a college talent show won’t satisfy you, or just this idea of wandering few steps to get from drum n bass at the aforementioned Staircase, to some middle-agers, Chippenham’s Free Spirits, in the Kadu Arts tent enjoy an enjoyable recital of Dire Straits doing the walk of life, and a conglomerate of kindly North Wilts and South Gloucestershire freakshow punters out to revel isn’t enough to rock your boat, you need to downsize your vessel, skipper, because Minety’s boot fits me; a blindingly stupendous do. I’m tempted, if not feel it compulsory to dust off my dome tent and do the whole shebang next year, even if it finishes me off for good!
Busy on the festival circuit Talk in Code are regulars here. Though they expressed a history of unpreventable technical mishaps, this year they were third from top billing, full of zest and gave the sublime show we love them for. The crowd were pumping along with their engaging and original poptastic stage show, “Talkers” or not, a presence improving with every appearance, and proving them far more than musical fluffers for the following headliners. But as the story goes, I didn’t witness a single band at Minety which would make me look the other way.
In conclusion, if before Minety I held a dilemma of what’s best between coughing up dollar for multiple elements you’re unlikely to catch because they’re spread over multiple arenas miles apart, or a cheaper single stage plan whereby you get to see everything, if you wanted to or not, Minety is the middle ground. Centred in a single field, and averagely sized, it’s no trouble to saunter stage to stage, and being scheduled at different quarter of an hour timings, convenient should you have a change of heart. This, tripled with a buzzing aura, plentiful attractions, and a program delivered with clear intention of entertaining, and motivated by a desire to include local or upcoming acts, is cherries on the sundae, and for it Minety Music Festival is well worthy of your attention. If you only do one festival annually, Minety would make the perfect choice.
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