The Sheffield Scenester

Such were Morrissey’s words before a rare festival appearance a couple of years ago. The words of an increasingly irrelevant old man in the dim winter glow of a fine career, or a sharp comment on the sheer number of identikit young guitar bands racing for nebulous prizes in the rubble of a record industry? Whichever, Sheffield’s Tramlines festival would put such a statement to the test.

In terms of the volume of humanity on Sheffield’s streets, it hit like a typhoon laying waste to music venues across the town, filling their tills with cash and peppering their floors with broken glass, the cyclical aroma of methane gas and the echoes of performances which followed one after another with such speed and frequency it was a wonder the schedules listed in the official programme bore any relevance to real time events at all.

Forget the Hallam FM Main Stage for a few hundred words. The essence of the festival was to be found or lost in the smaller venues, nightspots which had struggled for audiences over recent months amidst the blur of alternative entertainment options and the bubbling perception that local music scenes were becoming increasingly moribund. Venues designed for 100 or 200 punters heaved with people who wouldn’t normally go anywhere near them, as well as hundreds who would. “One in one out” kicked in hard, sound engineers kept taking the pills and bands filed in and out in tidy half hour cycles, most of them grateful for a crowd, a crowd, in some cases, they will never see the like of again.

At stalwart venue THE GRAPES, proceedings kicked off on the Friday night and kept the pressure on until 8pm on Sunday evening when they kicked out to enable Mr Echo’s crowd to assemble unhindered on the green. I turned up in the small upstairs room on Saturday and saw it through to the end. The room was never less than four fifths full and there were never less than dozens of smiles to be seen around the place. All good and, in a sense, who actually played became curiously more irrelevant as time wore on. More interesting was the way the crowd changed and flexed along the way. People came and went with not always a notion of who was on the stage. Some bands packed the place out in the afternoon with souls who clearly knew the songs and belted the lyrics back at them during each number, whilst others clearly had more people, and no less in number, to win over. And win them over they generally did.

Amongst the smattering of out of town bands that came through were my personal highlight of the weekend, namely Liverpool’s DIRE WOLFE. Yes, regulation line-up of 2 guitar bass and drums. Yes, regulation guitar strapped up at nipple height. Yes, regulation oscillation betwixt smooth melodic passages and explosive parts calculated (and occasionally telegraphed) to tear your swede clean off. And yes, regulation club handed drummer with spinach in his forearms but jazz in his hands. And by jingo it all worked brilliantly well. They won’t win any awards for originality, but what band that makes a successful career for itself these days will? Is that good or bad?

As Saturday wore on, Jesus Christ forsook The Grapes, leaving it in the hands of Beelzebub’s bedlam contractors who organized for the periodic noise of shattering glass followed by ironic cheers to take up residence in my auditory canal. And barely organized confusion reigned. As LA FOLIE handed over to headliners THE BOOK CLUB, not a scrap of floorspace was visible, and not a dry sweat gland remained in the house. They played with surprising poise to say a riot of their own fans were showering them with good natured heckles. Then they quite simply finished and the room cleared in minutes. I suspect everyone then went home then for a cup of mint tea and a pint of cleansing water before being in bed in good time to be well rested for the imminent Sunday session…..…..which, musically speaking, was a bit more varied for my money. Solo artists like SARAH MAC brushed up against trios like DISCOKISS (quality version of Warren G’s nu jack swing classic Regulate) and the more spaced out psychedelics of TWO SKIES. And we even had a few laughs with opening turn FLOATING DEATH PICNIC, a man from Barnsley clearly intent on taking the seriousness out of music altogether with his one man electro punk nonsense and songs about food and the Supertram….

I don’t know what more to say really. I know it may seem like I’ve not said much about the music and I know bands might look at these words and gnash their teeth as to why they weren’t given throbbing triumphant notices. But trust me, it really doesn’t matter who played, where or when: Fifty plus venues, over three days with close to a dozen bands playing every day in each. How is Morrissey ever going to pick the bones out of that? Bands had fun, punters had fun and venues made a packet. My one criticism would be that there wasn’t really much for those music lovers who get their kicks beyond a four square guitar band line-up or beyond a slab of party fuelled grime. (The underbelly of Sheffield’s music cultures weren’t very well represented if you like.) Hopefully, by next year the eighties revival will have been destroyed and the headline turns will be less nostalgic. Who cares? We’re already back to business as usual….