Rise against rain

Rise festival in Finsbury Park today. Got very, very wet. But all good fun.

The sun was still shining when the Holloways (top photo) played around 1pm, and they were great live as they always are. They only had a fairly short set, but still packed in loads of excellent tracks. And as they were one of the first bands up, it was still fairly quiet - so managed to get a decent position right near the front.

There wasn't a lot of dancing going on, but a couple of groups going mad down at the front countered the fact that most people were still lying on the grass enjoying the sun.

After they finished off, with Generator, I managed to get a space right at the very front in the middle, ready for Saint Etienne. On the down side, that did mean I had to stand through Ken Livingstone's speech (and a few others) which came in the break before Sarah, Pete and Bob took the stage. To be fair, Ken was brief and most of the speakers through the day did strike a good balance between getting the anti-racism message across and not turning people off with too much politics.

Just before Saint Etienne (middle photo) did start, it started to tip it down and was really stormy on and off for the rest of the afternoon. The bottom photo of me with a friend Megan during one of the rain breaks doesn't really get across just how wet we were. Very wet.

Saint Etienne were awesome, of course. A decent length set, around 45 minutes and a great range of tunes from across their career so far, including Nothing Can Stop Us Now.

Finished off with He's On The Phone, which got the crowd going the most, as you might expect. But I think they won over some new fans today - definitely some of my mates who were standing further back (and said I was featuring prominently on the big screen during their set, oh dear) and didn't know them that much before really enjoyed it too.

I was exhausted and very happy by the time Saint Etienne finished, but watched Jamelia too and she was actually really good. All in all, a great event, all for a good reason.