ROCK REVIEW : Whitchurch Festival 1993, 1999

16 July 1993
Ticket for the 1993 festival, headlined by Galahad.

There appear to have been a couple of batches of Whitchurch Festivals. The first one I actually made it along to was in 1993 when Galahad and Pallas headlined shows on the 16 and 17 (respectively) July 1993. From what I gather there was another Festival the following year then a break before they began again in 1997.

Initially the festival was organised by the landlord of a local pub, The Red House Inn, and that is where I found out about it. While down on a three week course a local friend took me to the pub as it was "a good rock pub" for a drink, and also to find out more about the festival.
My interest was piqued with mention of Pallas but, alas, I was due in Glasgow the day they played. I did manage to get along to the Friday night show before the long, overnight, drive North. Despite a very hot village hall I enjoyed the music - I'd not heard any of the bands previously (apart from a 4 track Friday Rock Session by Galahad) and came away with a smile on my face. As you can see from the ticket the Festival was called "Musicians Convention" that year rather than "Music Festival" as it has become now.

6 - 8 August 1999
The second year I made it to the festival was 1999. I'd moved South by this time so it was only a 30 mile drive now - and I could make it for the whole weekend. Things had changed a lot by this time. The date had moved from mid July to the first weekend in August. Instead of the event being held in the Parish Hall the local School sports hall, Testbourne Centre, was used for the evening shows. A smaller hall in a different building provided the home of acoustic sessions on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons - though we only managed to get along for the Sunday one, discovering a local musician, John Young, in the process.

4 - 6 August 2000
2000 brought another Festival, in some ways very similar to the previous year (Saturday night) and in others very different (Sunday night). Overall I felt less inspired than in 1999 but I think I also expected more because of my experience that year. There were certainly a number of bands I was impressed enough to travel to see again, Landmarq, The Morrigan to name but two. I have a fair amount of the 2000 festival in electronic note form and hope to get some of it on line soon.

3 - 5 August 2001
The first Saturday afternoon that required a ticket - £4

Before that I have this years festival fresh in my mine so that is a better place to start this set of pages. With a Psion and borrowed digital camera this year I am in a good position the get things on the site much more easily. The only limiting factor is time (plus enthusiasm during these summer evenings). So far (14 Aug) I have managed to get one on the site, the highlight of the Sunday, Jump. Now, I may be biased (aren't we all to some degree) but I feel they may have been the highlight of the weekend. Certainly the two bands before them were fairly tedious and the 'main attraction' was the first cover band I have experienced on the bill. I can only assume that they were booked to try to attract a larger Sunday evening audience. To these eyes that plan seemed to have failed as I am sure there were less people watching than for the Jump set. (There were actually 50 more tickets sold for Sunday in 2001 than 2000.) If the previous trend of second-on-the-bill acts being promoted to headliners the following year continues I think Jump are the best candidate from the 2001 festival.

2 - 4 August 2002
2002 was the fifth year I made it along to the Whitchurch Festival and, as usual, I was expectant of seeing and discovering some great bands. 2001 proved better in this respect that the previous year so my enthusiasm was whetted. A good proportion of the bands on offer were unknown to me, pretty much everything other thanh the Friday evening bill were bands I'd never seen live. I was familiar with some Primitive Instinct and Sphere3 from last year and Francis Dunnery from three of his earlier albums.