Feeling good in 2014

Now into its seventh year Rochdale’s Feel good festival is a 2 day free event held yearly in and around Rochdale town centre, With food and craft stalls, Celebrity Chefs, Acrobats, and a varied range of Musical artists. This year’s event was held on the 29th / 30th August.I visited on the Saturday, the day when all the focus would be on the main stage. Now Rochdale’s town hall square is a perfect spot for a large music event, with a good selection of bars facing the impressive town hall, the usually busy car park, when empty is a vast space. set up just to the rear of the town was the main stage, and this years entertainment proved to be a quality line up. As well as the main stage various bars also had live acts playing through out the day. I arrived a little before the first act was to take to the main stage, introduced by today’s host DJ Dave Sweetman, the Battle of the Bands winners 5FT Fez, So just enough time to grab a pint in the Flying horse. Having never heard them before I must say I was impressed. The closing Arctic monkey track was awesome.

Next on stage was MDNGHT, a Manchester based house band who have featured on BBC1 Big weekend.

Inbetween MDNGHT and the next band (The Lottery winners) gave just enough time to fill my glass and the heavens to open.

2010 winners of the Live and Unsigned music competition The lottery Winners proved to be a hit, unfortunately with the rain bouncing off the tarmac most had took shelter in the local bars (or under gazebos or umbrellas).

After about ten minutes in the rain even I decided to take shelter firstly under a stalls gazebo then into the flying Horse. The charitable gazebo that helped me hide from the rain was a charity stall. raising money for Springhill Hospice asking people to take the Chicken wing challenge. being a lover of spicy food I thought it would be a doddle. I was very wrong…. I think some one has now managed to harness the power of fire and wrapped it around a chicken wing.

So now with my clothes wet and my face on fire, it was time for a pint and a look at the inside bands at the Flying Horse. Now sadly I didn’t get the name of the band playing but I have never heard such a mix of music. it was fantastic. (if anyone could let me know the name of the band I would be grateful)

Now at this point I must admit I nipped home to get changed, ready for the big act of the day Scouting for Girls. Now this is a band I presume should need no introduction, with 10 top 40 singles and 4 top 10 albums. having sold over 2 millions records and having taken £this ain’t a love song to a UK number 1 in 2010, they proved to be a quality headlining act.

After the awesome show put on by Scouting for Girls, it was time to grab a few pints back in the Flying Horse. Thinking that was pretty much the end of a great show I found an encore to the day. upstairs in Bar Mystique was the band Collibus. playing a set of hard rock it was the perfect end to a great day in Rochdale