6 of the best at Bella
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ADRIAN EDMONDSON & THE BAD SHEPHERDS
THE former Young One may have slightly mellowed with age — these days he plays his punk music on a double-necked mandolin/mandola — but there is an underlying anarchic sense of humour that would do Vyvyan proud.
The Bad Shepherds may be a one-joke band, playing punk songs in a folkie style, but it was a joke the Bella crowd were in on, part of the fun spotting which three chord wonder was getting the Bad Shepherd treatment before Edmondson sung the title.
Of course, it could be argued that Edmonson and Co were just doing what any folk band does, just singing the songs from the past. Just that Edmondson does not go much further back than 1977.
But really making it memorable was a quick nod to Edmondson’s much-missed mate Rik Mayall with a slowed down version of Rik’s favourite song, Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, which was probably as close to an elegy as we can expect from Edmondson.
GUERRILLA GIGS
BELLADRUM’S bigger stages might have had the big names, but no festival-goer had to stumble far to come across music being played in another corner of the site.
The well established Potting Shed Stage is now almost a festival within a festival with its own devoted following. It even managed to poach a few performers from the bigger stages with Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook and Mekons’ special guest Robbie Fulks popping up.
The same could be said for the new Detour Bar Stage, conveniently placed for those queuing for beer to be entertained by an acoustic set from Frightened Rabbit, for example.
When it comes to looks, however, it was the Steampunk themed Burke & Hair Pub with its music hall stylings that most impressed out of this year’s new additions.
Prize for the most inappropriately placed performance? Local songwriter All Cat No Hat, who sang the lyric "I’ve had lovers in England, I’ve had lovers in Spain, I married a girl at Belladrum and I won’t do that again". While standing in front of The Temple where four weddings took place over the festival weekend.
GEORGE BARNETT
ON the subject of awards, if there was one for Bella’s most energetic frontman, then this 20-year old Herefordshire singer-songwriter would be sicking it on his mantelpiece.
His Hothouse Stage set on Saturday afternoon might have begun unpromisingly with an audience that did not quite make it into double figures. Rather than be disappointed at the turnout, Barnett seemed to take it as a personal challenge to put on as good a show as he could muster, throwing his lanky frame across the stage, helping out his drummer with a few beats, and occasionally pausing to sit down and play something a little more gentle on the keyboard.
Barnett’s efforts paid off as more people came into the tent to listen — and stayed.
A star in the making.
GRANDMASTER FLASH
WHAT could have been one of the biggest disappointments of the festival turned into a triumph.
The hip hop pioneer was earmarked to appear at the Garden Stage on Friday evening but missed his slot — Scotland’s own Fatherson slipping in to fill the gap.
Instead Flash fans found themselves heading to the Hothouse Stage after Tom Jones’ set and in the end the more intimate setting worked to the New Yorker’s advantage as he gleefully mixed up rock, pop, disco and rap tunes with a couple of sneaky tracks of his own making an appearance.
In the tight confines of the busy Hothouse, non-participation was not an option. You had to wave, stamp your feet, sing along or just dance as Grandmaster Flash brought day one of the festival to a close with the best party in the Highlands.
TOM JONES
THE show might have been slightly too slickly efficient, the attempts at connecting with the crowd too calculated — all those repeated "Oh, yeah-s" between the songs began to grate all too quickly — but in the end it was Jones the Voice, the greatest living Welshman himself, singing for us in a field somewhere near Inverness.
It was also pretty much all you wanted in a Tom Jones gig, Jones making his entrance to the menacing rock chords of John Lee Hooker’s Burnin’ Hell and throwing in songs from his more recent gospel-tinged Praise and Blame album and follow up Spirit in The Room with his movingly personal take on Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song among the highlights.
Then there were the hits, including a Latin-flavoured Delilah that began with Robbie McIntosh’s sweet Spanish guitar and finished with mariachi horns, and a swinging blues version of SexBomb and a suitably sexy version of You Can Leave Your Hat On.
And if he did not quite attempt that famous end note at the end of Bond theme Thunderball — according to legend the effort of singing it in the studio was so great that Jones fainted — there is still enough power in that rich voice of his to delight his fans.
BELLADRUM
AS big a draw as Tom Jones is, there is one attraction that keeps people coming back to Belladrum every year — the festival’s atmosphere itself.
As one regular said: "The music’s almost secondary. You know you can come here, have a good time and meet up with people."
And where else would give grown men the excuse to dance like Baloo the Bear while Mad Dog Mcrea played The Bare Necessities?
