News

Truck Festival / Blog

Sounds XP It’s off to the main stage and Electric Soft Parade. Glenn Tillbrook is standing in front of us to watch them play and he must hear echoes of Squeeze as well as Paul McCartney in the songs. It’s a fine set, including covers of The Associates (a lovely Blue It Is) and Guided By Voices, and made memorable by Tom White’s comedy banter and the awesome riff to If That’s The Case Then I Don’t Know that makes it, for me, one of the singles of the year.

Music OMH Festival secretary Hamu is up on the Main Stage having his copious hair and beard shaved off (in aid of Truck) The Electric Soft Parade play their well-mannered orchestral indie set as the hairdressing goes on on the Main Stage, and possibly the best line of the festival falls to their singer, who, in the between-song hush, asks the sound people for less beard trimmer in his monitor.

Blog 24.09.07 (click to read) Truck – fucking brilliant as usual. Alex got to do ‘The Weight’ with Garth and Maud Hudson, and I boshed drums along to some Danny and The Champions Of The World. Cracking. Other than that, I thought Fonda 500 were hilarious and heavy and all the things a good Truck band should be, Buck 65 was on top form, as usual, I missed Youth Movies, which pissed me off, The Mules were just as good as when Brakes played with them at the Luminaire, if not better, Chris T-T was spot on for mid-sunday, and well, everything else (especially Easy Tiger). May I just say again, thank you to Robin, Joe, Chris, Katie, Edmund and Deborah for putting on the best festival the UK has, year after year.

Oxford Mail Robin Bennett said the highlights of the festival had been playing on stage with Garth and Maud Hudson as part of a ‘supergroup’ of country rock artists, including members of Grand Drive, Goldrush and Electric Soft Parade.

BBC 6 Music Electric Soft Parade played the main stage on Sunday. 6 Music caught up with Alex who says he’s glad the festival was able to be rescheduled.

“It keeps hitting me every few minutes – this almost shouldn’t be happening, it was technically cancelled. It’s just amazing that they managed to get it to happen. It’s beautiful. And so far the weather’s been holding out”. It will be the 5th time Electric Soft Parade have played the festival. We asked whether they’d do it again: “Yeah, definitely if they’ll have us. But I don’t know, 6 years on the trot means we should probably start paying rent”

Blog 19.09.07 (click to read) Truck next weekend – the redux. My fingers and toes and hairs are all crossed for them. Should be a verrry good ‘un. On the ESP front, we are in the process of booking a short tour for the end of November to round up the UK leg of the NN2BD World Tour. It’s gonna be about a week long and will entail a recital of No Need To Be Downhearted in it’s entirety at each show, with complete visual (projected) accompaniment. I know I’ve been promising this for eons, but I’m over the moon to say that the whole project is nearly there, and will definitely be happening at all of the shows on that tour, and hopefully some of the European dates too. More news on that when it comes. Hopefully see you all at six in the morning on sunday, kissing cows in the camping field…

Truck Festival T-Shirts The official T-shirt from the 2007 Truck Festival, available in a variety of sizes in Brown or Cream.

Truck Compilation with a free copy of the programme (exclusive ESP interview)

Oxford Mail “Tom White from ESP will be playing in four different bands…”

Haldern 2007: two live songs and an interview. Scroll down at the right and click on Best Of Donnerstag and Freitag at festivalguide.de/player