Wednesday morning and now most of the 4TR team are fully recovered from their epic travels, ranging from London to Bristol to Nottingham for the Dot to Dot Festival.   It only took 3 days.

I am still reeling from some of the amazing bands I got to see, some for the first time and others who are old fav’s.  But absolutely gutted that having missed Cutting Pink with Knives over the course of the festival I return to find they are announcing the end of the band.  WTF?  Sad but true, but at least we still have the likes of The Death Set to get us through with their abrasive experimental punk/pop. Amazing live by the way!  In London they cleared the area in front of the stage and set up there in amongst the (drunk) Shoreditch crowd at the Old Blue Last.  I watched standing on my chair at the side as the big boys at the front nearly crushed us gals to death.  It’s now apparent why they are called The Death Set.

Esser was another high point, as was Iglu & Hartly who are possibly so wrong they are right. With their 2 lead vocalists resembling Michael Hutchence and Iggy Pop/Kid Rock in looks, their no-shoe/no t-shirt leaping around was a pleasure to behold, and cracking track “In This City” was immense.

Ida Maria was so so; bloody well missed the Teenagers; Mystery Jets were ace (shame about the crowd in Bristol); Golden Silvers were effortlessly brilliant; and Metronomy put on an inspired show for the American Apparel hoodie army watching.

Other highlights included interviewing bands including Rosie & The Goldbug and Cheeky Cheeky & The Nosebleeds (with Cassie & Curtis from Hub Radio); accidentally finding our way into the Holloways dressing room at the Academy; seeing the sheer size of the Dirty Pretty Things tour bus and playing Rock Band on the X-Box  at the Thekla.

To sum it all up it was a 3 day festival of diverse music, great people,brothers strawberry cider and sailor jerry tattoos.  A special thanks to the people we met and to the girl who walked us to Fiddlers after we got ourselves lost for 45 minutes in an industrial estate.  It was a rubbish map anyway, nothing to do with us not being able to read one.

And to the group of Vicky Pollard “ladees” in Brizzle who commented that we looked like we were going to a fancy dress party in our festival garb (vintage dahhhhling), yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah……piss off!!!

xoxo