Summer Sundae 2004

Students. Part of our National Heritage and also the staple diet of today's summer festival attendance percentages. There was a time when the word 'festival' was widely recognised as an event only hippies or middle-aged men and women descended upon to bask in the sun, get high/drunk, not wash, and dance around maypoles while watching The Pogues or some obscure New Age Prog Rock band perform on stage.

Within the past few years however, the word 'festival' can now easily be described as an event where students (or middle-aged men/women.....and the odd rare sighting of a hippy...) descend upon to bask in the sun, get high/drunk, not wash and dance their tits off while watching The Super Furry Animals or some obscure New Age Prog Rock band (or DJ) perform on stage... Which brings us to the Summer Sundae Weekender.

Formerly known as a 'festival', this three-day Weekender is now in it's 4th year at the heart of Leicester's city centre-based De Montfort Hall. Although still in it's infancy, with only 5000 spaces allocated per day, Summer Sundae cunningly disguises itself as one of the big-boy festivals, such as V or Reading, but on a smaller scale. However, taking note of the rising quality of the acts who have performed over the past few years, Summer Sundae is now widely becoming ever more recognised as an accepted addition to the summer festival season. They've even got their own onsite camping area!

Mainly aimed at showcasing new talent to the public, with acts who would never really get their chance at a much larger festival to make themselves known, Summer Sundae is the perfect opportunity for punters like you and me to start making "must-buy CD" lists for future artists, once they gain a record contract and have their first album release that is. It's very easy to look at the line-up and say "who?" to pretty much most of the bands and artists listed. Thankfully however, around 3/4 or so of the acts actually on the list (except for the commercial artists of course) you can easily mark off on your list as "future star" due to the quality of talent on display. However, Steve Lamacq and the BBC6 Music team are also in attendance to make sure the weekend gets a bit more coverage to the UK's general population.

Having unfortunately missed Friday night's DJ line-up (headlined by Mr. Scruff), arriving on a steaming hot Saturday lunchtime, it seemed as if the heavens wanted to apologise for the Glastonbury Festival Weather (tm) by treating us all to the perfect mix of sun, alcohol, Festival Food(tm) and good solid entertainment.

Full review: Saturday, 14th August 
Full review: Sunday, 15th August