Sunday 6

All of which only left the Michael McGoldrick Band to bring the evening to a close.

Michael has played with most if not all of the Celtic music elite, his cv reads like a whose who of the genre, either appearing on their album or having people appear on his.

The music his band were producing during the early part of the set was pretty good, but by the time Sharon Shannon had joined them on stage it was really getting the audience on their feet and dancing.

A number of the people that I’d been talking to during the festival took the opportunity to slip away and beat the rush, which was sort of a shame, but I knew how they were feeling. Four days of festival were starting to catch up on me.

CONCLUSION

I enjoyed Cambridge this year. From a music point of view I think they tried going too broad and ended up too shallow. It may have just been that they were a little late into the market and some of the targets had already gone.

There wasn’t anyone that played that were on a must not see list and most of the acts played up to expectation or higher, it just that as an overall thing I don’t think it held together as well as in previous years.

Low points for me include not spending as much time at the Club Tent as I usually do. I missed some of the showcases I wanted to see as well as some apparently cracking performances from the people that just turn up and play.

High points: The festival started on a high point, NO I.D absolutely fantastic young band. I fear that college might do for them as it has so many fine young bands, but just do what you can and enjoy what you’re doing. Mindy Smith, enough said and the Iberian connection, but a different flavour next year.

The other high point was the craic, on a social level it’s been a while since I’ve had so much fun and good conversation, bad jokes etc. Great comradeship lead to a really memorable festival. Just less of those memories will be about the music this year.

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