On July 4th, this was the second day of the Oswestry Rock and Ride Festival 2009.
This festival has come out of Oswestry Music Live in Cae Glas Park which was abandoned, I understand, due to increasing costs of security, insurance and so on.
So, the alternative was to place it in the streets at various venues - Festival Square, Bailey Head, The Cross and apparently, Coney Green didn't come off because of permissions.
All in all, I think it was a nice idea. Oswestry has an embarrasment of riches when it comes to musical talent right now, and what better way to show it off than put it in the streets?
I mainly watched The Cross stage and some brilliant performances from Adam and Kate and Ed Crowley. The audiences were clearly well impressed and captivated.
There did seem to be a lot of grumbling about the lack of promotion. The audiences were not great and those that were there seemed just passing by, and were a little surprised by it all.
Maybe there wasn't the time, or money, or personnel to do adequate promotion - I honestly don't know.
That said, this was a useful experiment and I'm sure that next year, it could be even better with a little targetted promotion.
See many of these fantastic bands at http://www.the-ironworks.co.uk/
