Great bands and old friends at Festival Too in King’s Lynn
In our weekly From The Newsroom column, Jeremy Ransome enthuses about the annual Festival Too...
And so, just like that, another Festival too has come and gone. Three weekends of free, fantastic musical entertainment for which the residents of West Norfolk are hopefully very appreciative.
In last week’s column I waxed lyrical about how Neville Staple’s songs took me back to the hit parade of my youth, and the same could be said for Friday’s main event, when From The Jam headlined.
The Jam were one of the biggest bands on the planet when I was growing up and to see original bassist and some-time vocalist Bruce Foxton still strutting his stuff, on the Tuesday Market Place, was a true honour.
As my hairdresser said when I went for a pre-gig snip on Friday, Festival Too gives West Norfolk folk something fun and different to do for a few evenings in the summer.
It can be a chance to catch up with old friends too. During Neville Staple’s set I bumped into John Roberts, someone I’d gone to nursery, primary, secondary school and college with but had not seen since leaving the area in 1998 - and we had a good chat.
This weekend, it was a legend of the 1980s and 90s music scene in Lynn who I bumped into. Steve ‘Tox’ Harnett promoted such bands as The Nuclear Sockets, who enjoyed minor national success, and put out his own fanzines. Later, Tox brought bands such as The UK Subs to local venues.
I was delighted to hear that Tox is still going strong, working in a music T-shirt shop in Norwich and still catching two or three gigs a week. Like me, he enjoyed From The Jam, and was delighted to see the mix of young and old among the packed crowd.