This is a first for this reviewer in many ways; my first review, my first day ticket rather than the whole weekend, and the first without kids for 10 years!

Ok, let's start with the biggest moan. This is a great festival with a really diverse range of music with some pretty big names. The place was busy without being crowded and the clean proper toilets never had massive queues. This, combined with talking to a fair selection of the friendly, up-for-it crowd, suggests that this festival isn't going to last unless more people from outside the area buy these cheaply priced tickets and take advantage of what is on offer. It feels like the whole town is behind the festival but I'm not convinced that just the locals are enough to keep this going. Come on people, where do you get this diversity for this price?

Not being local and wanting to have a few drinks/eat in town; we didn't arrive on site until almost 3:30pm which was a bit of a disappointment because we were looking forward to seeing K90. So no chance to tell you what a cracking set I'm sure he played. Whilst we are on the topic of timings, can promoters please stop using those lanyards that fall apart after five minutes please? Not moaning about you Shrewsbury, nearly every second festival we go to seem to use them and the only way to make use of them is to take them off the lanyard and stick them in your pocket.

No real ale, which was a surprise for Shrewsbury with their fine breweries, but you could get served straight away at both big bars and prices were good; you could mix and match full size bottles of lager and cider - 3 for £10. 

When we arrived we were stuck between seeing Masters in France and B.Traits, so as the site is easy to get around (but with plenty to do), we decided to see a bit of both. We started with Masters in France, who I'd not heard of before, but played a great set (the bit we saw). Obviously the whole of Shrewsbury gets behind this festival as we saw The Mayor enjoying MIF as well!

Suffering from low attention dis-order at some point we saw Athlete for a while. I'm not a fan but everyone knows the radio tunes and they played these well to a large appreciative crowd.

As mentioned, I'm 44 and still can't decide on my favourite music but we decided to skip Sunshine Underground and 1975 to throw some shapes. Who can resist Roni Size after all?  Both he and Shy FX before played great sets and again the lighting guy was pulling his weight. However, we did get drawn back to that smaller dance tent a few times. It really isn't an afterthought and the DJs in there can hold their own with the bigger names.

We decided, well I didn't have a choice as the gaffer loves Paul Smith, to finish with Maximo Park. Although not their greatest fan, I do own the CDs and must admit they always put on a great show. Paul Smith is a fantastic performer but he seemed to surpass even his usual self this night. Even the ‘straight men’ near us were gushing about how good he/they were.

As published, the arena shuts before midnight and with a single day pass I can't tell you whether the party carries on. I'm guessing a lot of it moves into town though. We met various locals on our trip back, helping each other through barbed wire fences and having the usual messy conversations! So fair play to the locals, but the rest of you need to get yourselves down there before it’s too late.

More festival details HERE.

Article by Bill Dean