| on 22-07-2008 14:46
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Published in : , Music |
By Phil Williams For a festival where the music defies convention, it was an apt weekend of blazing sun for Mighty Sounds, as non-stop rain had been promised. From the main stage, the music was as bright as the weather as brass instruments filled the air with ska. When the rain finally came on Sunday evening, there was too much good will in the air to be dampened.
Bead shops, cheap food and inflatable activities courtesy of Gambrinus kept people occupied away from the stages, but with a range of music from ska to punk to drum-and-bass, there was no excuse not to be dancing all day every day. Indeed, the DNB tent was unceasingly active with dancers, every hour of the weekend. The main attractions were on the Chuck Norris stage, opposite the all-important Provokator merch stall, with such crowd-pleasers as the Celtic-American punk-rockers The Real McKenzies and reggae legends Dennis Alcapone and Doreen Shaffer.
As has been its goal since its conception four years ago, the beauty of Mighty Sounds is the great mix of bands on offer, with the relatively unknown and outlandishly different providing as much entertainment as the headliners. Ska was well represented by America’s longest running ska band, The Toasters, whilst equally as well by rising Czech stars Fast Food Orchestra, but psychobilly, punk, reggae and more were all given fair hearing across the festival’s half-dozen stages.
Mighty Sounds has grown by thousands of visitors a year, now with a scale around 10,000, but it manages to combine its growing success with a genuinely welcoming atmosphere to all bands, no matter what genre and how big they are. It is a microcosm of the big-scale festivals popular across Europe, but with a closer, more personal feel where it’s possible to see a mix of bands without trekking too far across muddy fields. Even when lolling in the midday Sunday sun with slightly strange Czech covers of classic easy-listening tunes filling the air, it was possible to feel a part of something special.
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