Friends of Mine Festival 2011
Although considered the music capital of the nation, Manchester has been a black spot on the festival calendar for far too long. So, after several years as a successful club night, Summer 2011 saw Friends of Mine branch out into greener pastures - around 100 acres to be precise.
Set within the grounds of Capesthorne Hall near Macclesfield, organiser Sam Gardner and his team hosted a festival of grand proportions. Three days of music from the likes of The Cribs, The Charlatans and Buzzcocks graced four stages across the site, while the bard of Salford himself, John Cooper Clarke, headlined a tent dedicated to comedy, poetry and spoken word.
Stalls, food outlets and bars littered the festival site, with The Capesthorne Arms flying the flag for real-ales while, set next to the on-site lake and alight with Chinese lanterns, the Lake Bar was the perfect spot to relax.
Within spitting distance of the action, campsites sat either side of the festival site with a dedicated area for families and, for a £40 upgrade, a VIP area with on-site champagne bar.
Gardiner, 30, says the festival was born out of the same ‘maybe we could do our own’ mentality as the original club night, which rose to prominence in the boom of DIY club nights in the early 2000’s.
But unlike his original visions for the club nights, Gardner’s vision for the festival is big, as he hopes it’ll become an important date on the Manchester music calendar every year.
With an impressive line-up for year one of the festival, the diversity of Manchester’s music scene was reflected in the acts. Friday was the night for fans of the old school with Bernard Sumner’s Bad Lieutenant headlining the Satellite stage, proceeded by The Lightning Seeds and The Farm.
Dance fans were appeased with Manchester DJ Mr. Scruff headlining the circus inspired Big Top Stage while folk fans enjoyed a the likes of Liam Frost in The Capesthorne Arms.
With the weather having held up, Saturday kicked off in style with The Heartbreaks, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly and Emmy The Great warming up the main stage.
Manchester punk band Kong played an energetic set for their 5.15 slot and while fans said they loved it and it represented exactly what the band are about, FOM didn’t agree and reportedly asked the band to leave the site on the grounds that the band were ‘too rowdy’. Kong went on to call the festival an ‘expensive joke’ via their Twitter.
With an eclectic mix of sounds from ska to indie, Kid British kicked off the evening’s proceedings on The Lake Stage closely followed by Fiction who played an impressive set to an unimpressive crowd.
The Lake Stage later took a turn towards the mellow with a stunning set from Manchester harmony six piece The Travelling Band and Badly Drawn Boy. Meanwhile, in The Big Top stage, Dutch Uncles played an impressive an atmospheric set.
The crowd was spoilt for choice on Saturday evening, with huge acts clashing but The Wedding Present, Buzzcocks and Twisted Wheel were hailed as festival favourites while The Cribs, just weeks after Johnny Marr’s departure, stole the show with their back catalogue of tracks and a couple of new additions.
While the underground FOM club nights quickly gained momentum and a cult following, its followers weren’t quite enough to fill the 10,000 capacity festival.
Tickets, as reasonable as they were at £89.50 for the weekend, including camping and free entry for under 13’s, were still being sold throughout the weekend. With so many activities and such a lot of music, across the four stages, to choose between, audiences often consisted of only a handful of people.
Festival goers embraced the small crowds and took the opportunity to watch undisturbed, intimate sets with their favourite artists in the day, while taking full advantage of the short queues at toilets and concessions, but vendors voiced complaints about having barely broken even and the twittesphere was rife with rumours of missed payments to bands.
If the organisers were beginning to think that they had been overly ambitious for their first year however, their prayers to scale back were answered. Weather conditions on Saturday night caused The Big Top and The Bowl Stage to close.
DJ sets were re-arranged for the Bulmers Bar but many of the acts planned for the final day, including Mancunian rave-indie band, The Whip were cancelled. Contemplating high-winds and hail didn’t help in finding your bands of choice in the epic re-shuffle and many festival goers sought refuge from the unpredictable weather in their tents, while others fled the site completely.
But for those who chose to brave the elements and stick it out, the organisers made it worth their while, with an intimate secret gig from Willy Mason at the Lake Stage to round the weekend off.
Read our on-site interviews with Emmy the Great and The Travelling Band here.
FemaleFirst Antonia Charlesworth