Earth Music Festival

It’s a lazy, slow-mo Saturday with bouts of rain as the gates open for Derry’s inaugural all-day outdoor music festival.

The two-stage line-up features musicians from the North of Ireland, Scotland, and some young Dublin acts. Donegal’s the Revs take the main stage after Paul Casey. Staunch boy band antagonists, they’ve appropriated a bit of the genre themselves. Their guitar rock is heavily pop influenced and they’re great hype manufacturers as confirmed by their festival program write-up. A fun band with firm self-belief and a good dose of attitude, the Revs need to learn to better read and respond to the variations of festival audiences.

The music matures as the Four of Us trawl through their back catalogue as if their imminent new album doesn’t exist. Derry’s own Undertones proudly perform several new punk/pop offerings, ‘Ride the Rough Escalator’ being the best of the bunch. A bright spot in the sunshine, they’re the first band to move all facets of the audience to dance.

Though proficient and professional, Scottish band Deacon Blue’s performance fails to ignite. With the strong nucleus of Mike Scott, Steve Wickham on fiddle, and keyboardist Richard Naiff, the Waterboys are a live entity with impact. Excepting the highly sensual ‘The Pan Within’ and the grotesquely humorous ‘The Wedding’, their songs stem from their Irish-era or Mike’s solo Scottish years. A long low cloud glows golden in the sunset during ‘Long Way to the Light’, and ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ sparks the crowd as darkness descends. The audience in front of the stage mutates into a drunken mess as Van Morrison ignores his new songs in favour of jazzed up oldies. Then it’s time for a walk by the river with the city lights reflecting off the water. Derry did itself proud today.