Techfest Part Three

Hi, here we go again...

Let's see if I can finish this with Part Three then, eh?

TECHFEST 2019 Part Three

And so Sunday arrived...

I arrived at the Showground for around five o'clock, and I was just busy chatting with people that I'd made friends with over the weekend, but I could hear the band Harbinger playing in the background, on the Fireball Stage.

There is a thing with me, that I am sure that a lot of people who know me have noticed.

Even though I am a shy person in a lot of ways, I'm also a bit of an oxymoron in that I can be very chatty with people, and have an interest in people, and also don't like to be rude.

Because of that, I missed seeing the band Harbinger up on the stage.  To me though, chatting with people, and getting to know them is all a part of the experience!

Anyway, I went in to see the band From Sorrow To Serenity on the Line 6 Stage, a fabulous heavy metal band from Glasgow.

I can't name the songs that they played in their set, but they did play a blinder of a set, with footage of these and others from the weekend being on my instagram feed.

After watching From Sorrow To Serenity, I went through to the Fireball Stage to see the band Valis Ablaze, another great progressive metal band on the Long Branch Records.  This UK band played a set that was more on the melodic side of progressive metal, and some great melodies they were too!

After seeing Valis Ablaze, I suddenly noticed that the battery bar on my iPhone 6s was in red, and below 20%, so I went back to my car to charge the phone, and also had a play on the travel guitar that's always in the boot of my car!

It was irritating because I basically missed the entire set by the band Vildhjarta on the Line 6 stage while charging the phone up.  I could just about hear them from the car park, but it really did irritate me.

However, I chose to charge the phone, because I really wanted to catch the main band finishing the whole thing off, because Leprous are one of my favourite bands!

After charging the phone up, I made my way back towards the Line 6 stage, grabbing another coffee from the Beyond Coffee stall.

I decided that in the future I will purposely take my old iPhone 5s with me, because then I could use that to take photos and video footage, and then just use my present iPhone 6s to do that if the 5s runs out of power!

So many people made their way to the Line 6 stage to see Leprous, and they didn't disappoint.

I know that I took a lot of video footage, but that certainly didn't stop me from enjoying their set.  So much so, that even I got moving around and singing along with them.  Getting me to move was different, because normally I am very self-conscious about these things, and I'm not really someone that head bangs or anything like that.

I wish that I had taken note of their set list to be honest, but I was just enjoying myself too much!

I feel like I'm giving the Sunday experience a bit of short shrift, but it's now about three weeks later, and the 48 year old me had never had the greatest memory in the world, hence why I video myself playing music, so that if I want to use those ideas again, then I've got the footage to remind me!

I do know that seeing Leprous makes me really look forward to their new album being released later this year.

The band featuring Einar Solberg on vocal and keyboards, Tor Oddmund Suhrke and Robin Ognedal on guitars, Simen Borven on bass, and the great Baard Kolstad on drums, were on great form, playing an absolutely epic set, and interacting with the audience wonderfully.

I wore my Rendezvous Point t-shirt to watch them, another band that feature Baard on drums.

I wish that I could remember more, and probably would have if I had finished writing this sooner.

Security and the stalls on the site were all exceptional, with the security organised by a group named Design Events if I remember correctly, who used security staff from a variety of different security companies apparently.

Other staff on site were working for the Newark Showground directly, who were working voluntarily with free entry to the event during their off time.

Before leaving after that last night, I chatted with the workers at the entry/exit , as well as a nice guy named Josh, who liked the more metal bands on the line-up, as opposed to my more preferred progressive tendencies.

The lighting and sound staff for the whole even were amazing!

I had such a great time, and am really looking forward to going again next year!  I'm looking forward to seeing the acts who will be playing next year, and with hopefully catching up with people that I made friends with while I was there this year.

I'd like to thank everyone involved in setting up the event, the staff of the Newark Showground, the roadies and band staff, the performers themselves, the great security staff, the stall holders, and everyone else.

Thank you for reading, please take care.

July 24th 2019 (48 years, 7 months, and 26 days old - less than eighteen months before the new blog, Marv's Continuing Ramblings years 50-59, takes over from this).