Indietracks 2013 Photos and Memories

[knibbles]

That was so ace I started getting a tear in my eye chugging off from the site to go home.

Favourite music bits were:

The Lovely Eggs being hilarious and everyone sticking their sausage roll thumb up in the air like they just don't care.
Fear of Men were brilliant and pretty and a bit entrancing.
Haiku Salut and their lovely lampshades. That was proper post-GCSE level electronics that was, I was well impressed.
Lardpony are awesome and they even did Noxious Gas when they were told to. I liked the experimental dancing based on miming sports and the rebirth of the macarena
Emma Kupa on the train. Bloody well hot that was, but really worth it.
Milky Wimpshake and everyone jumping about.
Big Wave. I well love them.
Martha and Jaynie playing air-guitar on Lucy's poorly leg during the stage invasion.
Cars Can be Blue, especially the between song insults
Tunabunny and Finnmark! were ace too
Seabirds, especially the song for Indiehorse

Favourite non music bits:

Not camping, especially not camping on Saturday night
Inventing Breakfast Pudding
Leon kindly being my Partner in Twirl Crime for all of Camera Obscura. Busted some serious twirls. Sorry to everyone we kept bumping in to.
That Toffee Apple Cider
Sashay Girl
The fact that there was toilet roll available still at 9.45 pm on Saturday night. Surely this has never happened at any other festival ever.
Trying all the 4 main food vans in order to definitively put them in order of bestnest, final result: 1. Carnival of Dirt 2. Gopal. 3.The Mexican one 4. Paella House
Everyone being there and it being ace

I didn't take any photos whatsoever unfortunately, but hopefully everyone will be along with some soon.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can we do it all again next year? I can't imagine what it would be like not having Indietracks. Thank you so much to everyone involved in making it happen, you all rule.

[tompony]

Amazing weekend! My highlights were Martha and Onsind and Bis and Helen Love and getting to play Indietracks again and Good Grief! and Ace Bushy Striptease and having a burrito and the owls and that nice young man from the volunteers who was charming and chatty on the trains and meeting lovely people new and old

I've got a bunch of photos but I'll have to turn on my computer to get at them and that seems like quite hard work right now. A more thoughtful post tomorrow, hopefully!

[a layer of chips]

Nothing works this morning. Want to go back.

[tompony]

Right, here are the best ones out of my photos:

Sunshine on Friday night


ONSIND in the Merch Tent, possibly my favourite performance of the weekend


Woog Riots turned their synths off during their last song and finished it acoustically with a ukulele and a singing saw in the middle of the audience


Good Grief!


Ace Bushy Striptease in the Merch Tent


2013: Year of the Stage Invasion



And a personal being-in-a-band-is-brilliant-sometimes highlight, these people wrote Lardpony all over themselves because they were excited to see us!

[indiansummer]

that was ACE!

personal highlights (in no particular order):

Tunabunny!
catching up with nice people and friendly faces every three steps!
Martha!
the Slampt!/Discount Horse corner of the merch tent ruling hard!
Ace Bushy!
seeing Helen Love play Punk Boy!
Wimpshake!
being 'a bit tipsy' and talking to Gordon Ballboy for a good 10 mins whilst thinking he was someone else!
Bis!
Jerv, benevolent overlord of the merch tent!
ONSIND!
tonieee! and hayleygerms' faces during the Helen Love stage invasion!
Cars Can Be Blue!
getting to play!
Seabirds, especially Real Tears and Independent Horses (titles may not be accurate)!
curry shack!
Pete Green on the train, with me stood slightly behind him and probably looking awkward on all photos!
ALL OF IT!

[indiansummer]

oh! and every time someone said they were off to see The Ballet, it afforded me the opportunity to reply "going to see the bear in the little car, huh?"

[/simpsons nerd]

[Trev]

So much fun!

Bis!
Big Wave!
The Beer!
Bloomer!
The Choo Choo Trains! (please don't let that be their last ever show!)
The People!
(the first half of) The Understudies!
Fever Dream!
Cars Can Be Blue! (who were everything I'd hope they'd be and then some!)
The Brilliant Corners!
Flowers!
Good Grief!
Kid Canaveral!
MARTHA!
The Lovely Eggs!
HELEN FUCKING LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Getting to DJ on Sunday night was unbelievable (and thanks to all those that said nice things about it)!
Seeing so many happy smiley faces!

Sad I didn't get to see a Church show this year or a Train one or a Merch tent one. Silly me. Also missing The McTells cos I was a dingbat and had their start time wrong in my HEAD. Silly me, again.

[Dan Pop-o-matic]

Sooooooooo amazing!

Musical highlights:

Flowers
Pete Green
Lovely Eggs
The Tuts (thanks for the shout out!)
Martha
Flowers
Still Corners
Cars Can Be Blue
Jupiter In Jars
Flowers
Getting Biology by Girls Aloud at the campsite disco
Dancing to I Love It by Icona Pop 4 times over the weekend
Flowers
Pretty much everything else I saw
Flowers

Non-music highlights

Owls, especially Xena the eagle owl and that tiny one
Donkeys
Tasty Gopal's mixed curry goodness
The mostly nice weather (even the thunderstorm was exciting)
Seeing all best people, whether it's people I see all the time or people I see once a year at best.

The heightened security was a bit excessive, not that it put a dampener on the weekend.

Please do another next year!

[PontiacB]

Cracking time, hangover from hell today though.

Highlights for me were
Flowers - where did that come from? Heard them before but didn't expect anything as good as that, set of the weekend.
Tunabunny
Fever Dream
Fear of Men
Bis
Martha
Cars Can Be Blue
Lovely Eggs
Colour Me Wednesday in the merch tent
Tuts
Finnmark

Only downer for me was dropping my Tunabunny T-shirt somewhere at the festival or on the way back to the Premier Inn - never got to wear it.

Didn't make it into the Church either which was a shame.

Cheers to everybody involved, we'll be back next year for sure.

[sweepingthenation]

There's something in the air at Indietracks, I'm reasoning by now, a unique ecosystem in which the best fun happens without outside influence coming and spoiling it. My head is still quite spinny.

I mean... Bis still being Teen-C Power despite now being two bald men and an eight months pregnant woman! Helen Love playing the hits and glitterbombing the rest as only a Helen Love set could get away with (and standing just outside the tent just to figure out at which point at which the uninitiated would go "what the hell is this?" and walk off, which turned out to be three songs in)! Emma Kupa on the overfull, overhot train! Martha's fake-out not-Bruce cover and subsequent stage invasion! The Understudies! Kid Canaveral! Fear Of Men! The Lovely Eggs! The end of Still Corners! The Wave Pictures! The French Defence! EXPENSIVE! The Magic Theatre! The reaction to ONSIND's merch tent set! Ace Bushy's wondrous anti-rehearsed set in same tent! The tent selling strawberries! Owls! Parrots! Hearing from primary source that on first meeting the former David Tattersall assumed John Jervis and Sean Price were partners! There not being the thundery showers predicted on Sunday! Everyone, apart from the police dog*! Everything, bar the thunderstorm! Being told "see you next year" by station staff! Oh, I will alright.

(* I assume the drug amnesty bin and the posters in the shed were a security firm insistence, which seems a little like they couldn't convince someone what sort of event it really was)

[Silver Girl]

Woo yes that was fun wasn't it! Kept telling myself that as I was sat back at my desk at 8.20am this morning....joy almost not quite dampened by losing the excess on the hire car boo hiss.
Highlights...
The Soulboy Collective (new favourite band)
Helen Love's glitter cannon army (insert smutty joke here)
the Ballet
Just-Joans in the merch tent
Miniskips on the train
OWLS!!!! and PARROTS!!!!

The drugs amnesty bin made me laugh. Looking at us lot, what did they find in it? Some HRT and prescription-strength voltarol?
(mmmm....not keen on the heavy security tbh....having handbag repeatedly rifled and ibuprofens eyed with suspicion palled a bit after the first 8 times...)

[a layer of chips]

Did anyone stroke a cockatoo?

I made this "joke" every five minutes on Saturday. I suspect it never lost its impact.

Christ, I'm tired.

[graysonscolumn]

Helen Love's glitter cannon army

Think that's vying for 3-1 favouritism with Diabetic Charlie and Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels.

gc

[Trev]

After-hours vodka with Sheffield and London anorakers at the Premier Inn (today's hangover is not a highlight, however)

Oh yes, this was a really ace way to wind down after the Sunday mega day.

[Damian]

Well, I'm certainly glad I came to this one after missing out last year. This has to have been the best indietracks for years. An utterly huge congratulations to the organisers for putting it together and making it run so smoothly. I know it must be massively tiring, and sometimes maybe seemingly unthankful work, but everybody that goes totally appreciates the amount of effort that goes in to making something this good happen. Please do it again!

Anyway, musical highlights
The Art Club. I thought they sounded very 'classic' indiepop, really good stuff. I always appreciate a Springsteen cover too, even if it was a partial one.
Woog Riots. Joyful electro/disco/poppy fun. They gave everyone in the audience some special glasses which made the light break into prisms (kind of) like a mid afternoon disco. When they stopped the beats and just played with a ukulele and saw everyone went totally quiet. Proper lovely moment.
The Wave Pictures. Fine form, and I love the amount of solos Dave continues to somehow fashion into each song. I lost count after awhile.
Seabirds - Independant Horses or whatever it's called is a future classic. Really promising stuff from them.
Good Grief - Just awesome.
Lardpony - DRUMS! Lardpony never ever fail me. Terrific
Frozy - Antifolky loveliness
The Ballet - Proving to be utterly great live.

The second indiepop singalong at the beach was probably most superb though. Whenever I think of indietracks past it's always the communal memories that stay with me; people bellowing out Belle and Sebastian songs outside the train shed the first year; everyone singing along to Love Is In The Air at La Casa Azul; The platform singalong in 2009 (?)This was one of those for me. A reminder of the feeling of community that indiepop inspires. It's what it's all about. More of this sort of thing.

Forming a new band, whose first songs have the names, 'Does your rabbit like cheese?', 'sweaty hat' and 'wank glove'

My own particular special moment came on the second day. We met a family on Friday (mum, dad and daughter) who had never been to indietracks before and had come specifically to see The Pastels. We explained how good it was, and also talked about how we were going to go home every morning to feed our rabbit. Their daughter, Charlotte, told us about the toy rabbit Lucy she had back in the tent. The next day, mum and daughter came and found us to ask how our rabbit was, show us Charlotte's toy rabbit and tell us how all 3 of them had spent the day making pom pom pets, bags and been cheerleading. Huge, huge smiles on their faces. When I think of indietracks it's often of all the friends I know I can speak to there, it's the bands we share, the forum we post on, it's the community. It's easy to forget that there are people at indietracks who don't know anybody there, who don't know the bands, have never heard of anorak and can still have just as great a time as the rest of us. It's that that makes this a great festival, we always go on about how welcoming and friendly it is to everyone and it's always lovely to be able to show that it's true.

As I said at the start, let's hope it continues.

[freson]

I thought the whole festival went really well from the moment on Friday when I found out why the "Carnival Of Food" van had turned 90° from previous years to the indiepop singalong in the sand pit on Sunday.

It's easy to stand in the shadows at gigs and not speak to anyone but Indietracks manages to bring out the affable side of pretty much everyone and I lost count of the number of people I spoke to(under normal circumstances I'd make a list).

I obviously didn't see everything but my highlights were:-

Main Stage - The Tuts, Seabirds
Indoor - Camera Obscura, Alpaca Sports
Church - The Magic Theatre, The Soulboy Collective
Train - Owl and Mouse, Emma Cooper
Merch Tent - Vacaciones, Colour Me Wednesday

I also enjoyed the look of panic on Leon's face when I told him I looked forward to seeing his band play in the merch tent on Sunday. I later found out that I'm not the only person to mix up Hobbes Fan Club and The Proctors.

With the price of a pint not increasing from last year, at long last the differential between Indietracks and pub prices is now quite small, even for those of us living in the provinces.

At some point I'll probably post plenty of photos but this one is my favourite.

[everard]

if the person in the huggy bear shirt (sam?) sees this: where did you get it? i want one. could always silkscreen my own and have thought of doing so with that same design but i'm lazy.

edit: thanks for answer below!

[a layer of chips]

I'd like to say it's an original, but the times I saw Huggy Bear coincided with me being far too shy to buy any merch off them. I got it off of Etsy. It came from America, but was very reasonable indeed!

[Damian]

Also security were hilarious this year. Such effective bag checks:-
"Any drugs in there?"
"No"
"Alright in you go then"

By the third time of asking they just started waving me in, I could have had mountains of cough medicine and vicks for all they knew.

[sweepingthenation]

Take with your chosen amount of salt, but I heard some time on Sunday that the amnesty bin amounted to a total of two small amounts of weed. Maybe the security detail were told it was a spin-off of the same weekend's Secret Garden Party. I suspect by the last day they'd wised up to the sort of place that puts on sock puppet and bow tie making workshops.