“What’s in a name?” said a bloke from the Midlands. There are over 250 names in the Worcester Musical Festival programme, two of which are Fretstomper and Fret Stomper. One could be a noisecore band, the other could be a Danish folk singer. You take your chances with your choices at this festival, and you don’t mind the gap. You know that wherever you go, you will find good times. So, without much further ado…
Is Chewie named after Chewbacca? Probably, with that ZZ Top beard (plus Buddy Holly glasses and a mushy pea green guitar). He’s tucked in the corner of the Copper Beech beer garden, next to a clandestine pizza merchant called Greedy Pete’s. His gravelly vocals bring to mind and our ears Jimi Goodwin from Doves and James Hetfield from Metallica as he plays, amongst others, ‘Basket Case’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Freefallin’’, and ‘Running Up That Hill’. At the end, he asks the crowd if they want a Billy Idol track or a German folk song. My mate Al and I call for a German folk song and do not walk out as Chewie proceeds to play ‘Rebel Yell’.
The very second that Chewie ends his set, Heavy Peace strike their first Satan-troubling note in the bar next door. Frontman Ruben Seabright holds his guitar like Paul McCartney and sings like Robert Plant. Rich Chaudhury bangs drums the hardest I have ever seen or heard. Heavy Peace are ‘purveyors of noise’ to be categorised alongside currently hot Brummie duo GANS, Butthole Surfers, Rage, Death From Above 1979, and Deftones. At the start of track #3, revellers rush towards the stage to get a better look of their new favourite band. This is a Cavern Club moment, and not just because of Ruben’s high guitar stance. “Nothing feels the same!” he screams, and hopefully it won’t feel the same for much longer once they’ve been snapped up by a big label. Their debut single ‘Tree Sentinel’ is out on 3rd October. You know what to do.
I dash over to the Oil Basin to catch the end of Hurricane Tapes’ set. Spidery guitar riffs hint at Gang of Four. One track ends with frontman Johnny Rose crouched down and messing about with pedals like he’s tuning a telly. He is wearing a Slowdive T-shirt. This is shoegaze. Downstairs, country rock duo Alice Coley delight folk with their covers of songs such as ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ and Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’. One woman’s legs convulse Tina Turner-style. Such behaviour is standard at Worcester Music Festival.
At St. Swithun’s Church, four-piece Spincycle offer an ‘instrumental psychedelic experience’. The acoustics are perfect for their Godspeed-like sound. Projected on the back wall are images of black and white thistles withstanding the wind. A disembodied radio voice narrates something fascinating yet indiscernible. A tom drum is smacked, and an Interpol-like guitar line is played. The thistles are replaced by phantom fluttering starlings. I swear that the actual Andy Bell from Ride is on guitar.
Al asks me if the next band Moss Grotto have started or whether they’re tuning up. That, dear Al, is the hallmark of Moss Grotto: every sound is a source of potential and a part of the performance. It’s music, but not as we’ve known it. Think Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and Radiohead’s Kid A with – yes, them again – Godspeed doom twanging. One ‘track’ sounds like the aural backdrop to a terrifying 70s advert warning children not to play 5-a-side football on pylons. Hunched over an array of knobs and switches like a confident mechanic, Jack Phillips recreates the sound of whales saying goodbye and a tonne of screaming kittens being lowered into a lake. One segment can only be described as ‘Doctor Who abduction’. As I’m absorbing this alien activity, Tor Pingree – member of Icy Moon Explorers and Deputy Mayor of Worcester for 2025-2026 – approaches me while dressed as a construction worker. She is holding a sealed bucket. I make a donation to Worcester Snoezelen, this year’s festival charity, then Tor goes to collect more donations and possibly inspect the foundations of the building.
Al goes to the Firefly and I nip back to the Oil Basin to see SAUR…except that I can’t see them, because the venue is packed and the crowd has spilled out into the corridor. Adam Robinson’s James Acaster-like banter is almost as good as the songs: “It’s rock ‘n’ roll, so it’s important to stay hydrated – give it up for H2O!” The band then start a song called ‘H2O’, which is as silly and as frantic as Dead Kennedys. “Everybody say, ‘F*** you!’” and the crowd do as they’re told, though it could be argued that they’re refusing to do what they’re told. A cover of ‘Hallelujah’ played in the style of The Ramones was not on my Worcester Music Festival bingo card, but here we are. SAUR can do love songs, though the one they play sounds like someone gutting a kitchen with a JCB.
Three young men stride in with instruments, each of them wearing black trousers and white shirts open at the neck like waiters at the end of a wedding. They are joined by two more individuals, one of whom is a chap called Ben, who looks and – we soon discover – sounds like Yannis Philippakis from Foals. Cult Trexy are smartly clad and very, VERY loud. By the end of the first track, my right ear drum has made a run for my lughole. There are Cradle of Filth screams, Limp Bizkit rapping, and Napalm Death roars. “Is anyone a fan of Nirvana?” Ben asks the sweaty crowd. Someone at the back clears their throat before announcing, “I am quite partial to Siddhartha Gautama’s fourfold path to enlightenment, actually.” The band resumes, and a couple kiss each other so vigorously that a woman in front of me almost vomits.
How can you not be intrigued by a band called Asbestos Farmer? Off I went to the Firefly to see them resurrect the spirit of late 90s Ibiza. Two bald blokes in black T-shirts stand in front of a spectral projection. Boz Jam is on vocal and chaos pad duty. For one track, he reads the lyrics from a piece of notepad paper as if he’s reminding everyone of their lunch orders. “Hold tight all the DJs in the 90s…Hold tight all the people in Manchester, London, Worcester, Hereford…And most of all, the people of Palestine, Ukraine…” Amen to that. Courtesy of Ben Sparrow on synthesisers and samplers, one track begins with an excellent kick drum and simulated cow bell, then Boz brandishes an actual cowbell because why not. “Peace and love,” he says, and a man in a tie dye T-shirt raises his arms preacher style in agreement and stands on one leg. Because why not.
Nigel Clark is, of course, the frontman for Dodgy, but is he good enough when performing on his own? Yes, yes he is. The King’s Head was packed, and it was treated to history and politics as well as music. Apparently, the Stars and Stripes originated from the Washington family in Worcestershire, which bestows up on us “the right to sing about Trump.” Reference is made to ‘Worcester Über Alles’ and is followed by the claim that “Dead Kennedys are the greatest band in the world.” No one disagrees. Nigel prefaces ‘Staying Out For The Summer’ by saying it has the same chords as ‘Hurt’, which means that “Nine Inch Nails have a lawsuit out against me.” He performs ‘Pinball’ by Brian Protheroe, which has also been covered by Paul Weller on his covers album, except that Weller does not “miaow” like on the original. Mid-90s banger ‘In A Room’ includes “my Tom Petty bit,” and this is followed by a beautiful cover of Tom Waits’ beautiful ‘I Hope I Don’t Fall In Love With You’. Nigel asks: “Are you ready for a big final singalong?” Again, the answer is a resounding yes, and ‘Good Enough’ makes its glorious appearance. An Irish journalist said in 1996 that it’s “the socialist love song of our generation,” though for me it’s a portal back to endless summer days as a 14-year-old without a care in the world.
Before he’s strummed a chord, Mark Archer – Bourbon Alley frontman– says he’s been “f***ing painting all day,” and we assume that he has not been mimicking Monet at his own leisure. He and the rest of the band then perform 14 tracks of blues par excellence. Imagine the Back to the Future band kicking out the jams, and you’re halfway there. At about 10:30pm, Mark exclaims that “it’s 7 o’clock – it’s time for a party!” Thankfully, there are no pedants in the Chestnut, and the bar staff dance as gleefully as Leo and Kate on the bottom deck of the Titanic. The gig ends with a battle cry of “support live music!” and so say all of us. Bourbon Alley will be playing at the Chestnut again on Christmas Eve, and after that it’ll only be nine months until the next Worcester Music Festival…
Many thanks to everyone who gave up their time to organise this year’s festival. Thanks also to everyone who donated to Worcester Snoezelen.
By: Neil Laurenson