Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 July 2012 16:45:43
Last night was spent in an Arabian style tent listening to beautiful soothing music. Was this some new boutique festival? Not exactly, there was a festival involved; the Milton Keynes International Festival 2012 but this was the free Acoustic Stage which is a free part of the main festival and we saw went seeing it as a cheap night out rather than a festival experience. Have to be honest we were pleasantly surprised - although I guess we shouldn't have been. The free music on the Acoustic Stage comes under the heading of The Stables Sessions and features the sort of artists they tend to have appearing on the smaller stage at The Stables.
The first artist we saw Chrystina Tomlin, who did a rocking acoustic set. The sound levels could have been a bit lower but this singer whose look echoed an early Paula Yates with bright blond cropped hair and shocking red lipstick played well. Most of the set was original material but she did throw in a few covers including Adele's Rolling in the Deep and Tina Turner's Simply the Best. It was rather a nice evening.
The other group we enjoyed last night were Tinderbox who had their sound levels alot more sorted thanks to the perseverance of the two guitarists who at one point did apologise for being divas.....but who were just getting it right. The lyrical content of their floaty songs - mostly taken from their Counting Time CD- was a bit soppy but they performed their mid-Atlantic folk well. The best song of their set, in my humble opinion, was the last one "The Load" which had a more country feel - pity they didn't do a tad more of this type of thing.
All in all a good evening only marred by the fact TOH reckoned the pint of Westons we did pay festival prices for was somewhat weaker than he would have expected.