YOU live in a small town of no real note and yet someone has decided you deserve your own music festival. These are the only headliners you can get:
The Wombats
Horrible as it is to contemplate, that indie band for kids with the shite song about Joy Division are now industry veterans. Children have been raised listening to the Wombats. You know more Wombats songs than you want to. They’re actually pretty polished and it’s a fun gig, you say self-loathingly afterwards.
Embrace
For much as the mighty Oasis have risen to dominate the summer, so must their pale shadow. Like the Gallaghers they were brothers full of Northern arrogance and familiar riffs, but unlike the Gallaghers we got bored with them after one album. And if not them Richard Ashcroft. Or Ocean Colour Scene. Etcetera.
Midge Ure
Sort of very famous in that he wrote Band Aid’s hit, and Vienna. But have you ever wanted to see Midge Ure? Can you imagine telling friends ‘Yeah, saw Midge Ure the other week, he was alright I suppose?’ Do you need to hear Do They Know It’s Christmas in July in a field in Peterborough?
Toploader
It’s always awkward when a one-hit wonder gets an evening set, both artist and crowd aware it’s one long countdown to the one we know. Both fully cognisant that none of the rest of the set matters. Halfway through he starts doing Elton John covers just to snap out of this hell and everyone’s childishly thrilled.
Heather Small of M People
No matter that you couldn’t recognise either of the other – two? – members of M People, you still spend the whole set wondering. Did they split? Did one of them write all the songs and trouser all the cash? Is poor Heather paying her mortgage up there, or doing if for the love of performing? Repeat for all other lone members of split bands.
Dizzee Rascal
Oh God, Dizzee? Is that you? What happened, man? You had all the underground credibility then the big pop breakthrough and then… yeah, I lost track of you? It seems 22 years went by and you’re now 40? And still doing this. Tinie Tempah had the good sense to get into property.
Dave Pearce
You’d forgotten Dave Pearce and his anthems. The Tony Blackburn of the rave scene, genially riding a wave with ‘Roll another phat one, Dave’ jingles, still playing the same cheap crappy trance songs of his heyday. You dance, but with a sense of shame.
Geno Washington
Crop circles have been debunked, UFOs studied. But as yet, there has been no serious examination as to why so many of Britain’s whitest market towns hold an annual jazz and blues festival. Nantwich, Burton Agnes, the Ribble Valley – why? When did it start? Do you even know?
