There’s been a lot of talk in and around Shef­field about Tram­lines this year. The free fest­ival began last year, attract­ing over 35,000 people, and returned this year big­ger and bet­ter than before, with an estim­ated foot­fall of 60,000 on the Sat­urday alone. The fest­ival is spread out over fifty or so dif­fer­ent ven­ues across the town centre, with Devon­shire Green, a 9000 square metre area in the city, home to the main stage, with a capa­city of 8,000 people. Head­liners this year included Mys­tery Jets, Echo & The Bunny­men, and 65daysofstatic. Last year, tick­ets were alloc­ated on a first-come-first-served basis (but still free), which then entitled the holder to move around freely without hav­ing to queue. This year, the fest­ival was entirely tick­et­less, which has res­ul­ted in massive queues caus­ing prob­lems for people try­ing to get to lots of the venues.

The first act I saw was Macka B on the Sat­urday, who was play­ing the World Music stage in the Peace Gar­dens. The atmo­sphere was very upbeat and pos­it­ive, and a real mix of people had turned up to enjoy Macka’s set. The set itself was very well put together, and the roots-reggae vibe that des­cen­ded over the crowd was enough that even the dark skies and spots of rain were dis­placed by Jamaican sun­shine in our hearts.

The even­ing saw me mov­ing up the road to watch Pocket Satel­lite. The venue were run­ning about an hour behind sched­ule, which meant I was able to inter­view Tom from the band, which you can read in the “Inter­views” sec­tion as soon as it’s fin­ished (we’re cur­rently wait­ing for Tom to verify it — as it was an impromptu inter­view, I have had to recon­struct a large pro­por­tion of it, and rather than just post­ing that, I’ve asked Tom to check to see if he agrees if it’s a rel­at­ively accur­ate record of the con­ver­sa­tion we had). Pocket Satel­lite played an excit­ing set, made up of a good num­ber of new songs from the new EP, and a few from the pre­vi­ous one. As ever, the band were excel­lent, and very well received at the venue. One of the bene­fits of play­ing a smal­ler venue is that you have the oppor­tun­ity to inter­act more with the audi­ence, and Pocket Satel­lite did that well, tak­ing the crowd on a musical adven­ture through a soft folk-y land­scape, show­cas­ing their newer, more upbeat songs amongst their slower old favourites.

The next day saw a line up of Mys­tery Jets, Echo & the Bunny­men, Gal­lows and 65daysofstatic, which I was pretty excited for. Those of you who have fol­lowed Joe’s Big Toe since… well, the very, very early days might remem­ber that we have, in fact, covered Mys­tery Jets before, as part of the Trans­gress­ive Records Road­show. Unfor­tu­nately, that review has been con­signed to the big hard disk in the sky, but, hon­estly, I wasn’t very impressed. How­ever, a lot has changed over the past four years, so I gave the band the bene­fit of the doubt. I’m rel­at­ively glad I did. Their per­form­ance was tight, their songs were well put together, and the crowd were enjoy­ing the gig, but some­thing just didn’t click for me. I’m not sure why, but it felt like the band were delib­er­ately hold­ing back, to the point where they weren’t hav­ing much fun any more. I think every­body had an Eng­lish teacher who abso­lutely for­bade the use of the word “nice”, but I genu­inely can’t think of a bet­ter word to describe the gig. Noth­ing offens­ive, noth­ing unpleas­ant — but on the other hand, noth­ing impress­ive, and noth­ing amaz­ing. Just, nice.

After some minor tech­nical dif­fi­culties (which I can’t help but feel were exacer­bated by the band them­selves hav­ing seem­ingly incred­ibly exact­ing stand­ards), Echo and the Bunny­men got off to a late start. “Aging rock­ers” is a cliché that has been used far too often, but with Echo & the Bunny­men still kick­ing around, we unfor­tu­nately are not likely to be able to retire it for a while yet. Hav­ing released their first album in 1980, it’s some­thing of a sur­prise that their last release was actu­ally in 2009. On tak­ing to the stage, the band’s exper­i­ence was evid­ent — at times, a bit too evid­ent. McCul­loch at times seemed pos­it­ively bored, and the whole band looked as though they’d taken far too many drugs over the years to be able to actu­ally enjoy play­ing live any more. Per­haps they got bet­ter as their set went on — appar­ently they fin­ished by invit­ing Richard Haw­ley onto the stage, but I wasn’t able to stick around, as there was a clash with Gallows.

Gal­lows were also a few minutes late to the stage, but launched straight into their first song. The crowd exploded, boun­cing, mosh­ing, and gen­er­ally hav­ing a great time. To be hon­est, pre­vi­ously, I’d sort of over­looked Gal­lows, writ­ing them off as just another punk band, but this gig made me recon­sider. The music that they were churn­ing out was per­fectly designed to get crowds jump­ing, and it was hard not to get car­ried along with the wave of adren­alin and excite­ment that every good punk gig sends out across the crowd. The band were very com­mu­nic­at­ive with the audi­ence, singing happy birth­day to some guy called Froggy whose rather unfor­tu­nate name is now immor­tal­ised in the minds of those present, and in per­haps the most impress­ive feat I’ve seen at a gig, the band set up a huge circle pit around the monu­ment in Barker’s Pool (those of you famil­iar with Shef­field will know what I mean — if not, this is a monu­ment about thirty feet in dia­meter). The band were also quite com­mu­nic­at­ive with the secur­ity staff — so much so that I felt the need to write a sep­ar­ate art­icle about it, which will be going up in the Edit­or­i­als sec­tion shortly. All in all, I thought the per­form­ance was bril­liant, and went home with a com­pletely dif­fer­ent, much more pos­it­ive, view of Gallows.

After din­ner, I went along to see 65daysofstatic at Shef­field University’s Stu­dents’ Union. The queue was around the block, there were prob­ably about 300 people stand­ing out­side the venue at 10:00pm, 65daysofstatic’s sched­uled start time. How­ever, before the first beat had been struck, the fire alarm went off, and the entire 1,300 capa­city venue was evac­u­ated. The crowd (or, those who could be bothered) stood out­side the doors for nearly two hours before a mem­ber of the venue’s secur­ity staff con­firmed that the gig would not be going ahead. There was no com­mu­nic­a­tion from inside the venue save a single tweet from the band. The offi­cial explan­a­tion is that there was no power to the stage, how­ever, as I walked home, I couldn’t help but feel as though the venue prob­ably just didn’t care enough to try and fix the prob­lem — whatever it was. This is yet another black mark against the Stu­dents’ Union here in Shef­field — when we reviewed Pen­du­lum here a few years ago, the fire alarm went off twice. I under­stand the need for fire safety and so on and so forth, but I’ve never been to another venue where the alarm has gone off even once, let alone the three times that I’ve heard it go off at the Union. But what can you do? Ask for your money back?

For a free fest­ival, Tram­lines abso­lutely hits the spot. An excel­lent spread of acts from Pro­fessor Green and Craig David to Gal­lows and Simian Mobile Disco and a huge amount of live music off­sets most of the down­sides — the queues, the expens­ive drinks, the closed roads, and the fact that 65daysofstatic didn’t get to play in the end. I love the idea of an “urban Gla­ston­bury”, which is for the most part fam­ily friendly, and on the whole very appeal­ing. I keep think­ing though, that with a nom­inal ticket price of £3 for the week­end, the fest­ival would still be incred­ibly access­ible, but queuing issues would be dimin­ished, and there would be some extra money in the cof­fers to book the big­ger acts for a few more songs, and ven­ues such as the Union would be forced to make an extra effort if issues such as what happened with 65dos were to occur again.