In response to the request for feed back, here are my comments on MFAB 2008.

In short it was brilliant and the organisers did an excellent job in pulling together such a superb festival.

The highlight for me (and I am sure many others too) was the Church Fitters, Amazing. Friday night was a difficult choice- June Tabor singing in a church, bound to be good, or the Church Fitters, a band I had never heard of singing in a tent. We went with the Church Fitters and they were brilliant. It was a pity however that there were so many empty seats in the Marquee. It didn’t have the atmosphere it could have done if it had been fully attended.  The band deserved a bigger audience I don’t know if the numbers were down this year or if it was because there were three major venues rather than two.

One of the main reasons that I think the Middlewich festival is so good is that along with the big names and, the safe acts that you know are going to be so good, there is the opportunity to see different bands and performers who may be brilliant, or you may not like at all. I didn’t much like the Warsaw Village Band, probably too far removed from the sort of music I am familiar with, but I would rather go to performances which turn out not to be to my liking, rather than just sticking with the familiar and predictable.

I wonder if this year there were too many venues for the size of the audience. There were singers performing in the Church on Saturday afternoon with hardly anyone listening which really was a shame, the performance I listened to was good. I don’t know that if MFAB were a bigger festival that it would be a better festival. Size is important but it’s important to be the right size. Bigger ain’t necessarily better.  The other reason we like MFAB is the atmosphere. With the boats, the parade the dancing and activities all around the town, it feels like you are part of a annual traditional community event rather just attending a music festival. This perception may be entirely illusory but it is attractive non-the-less.

I didn’t post comments earlier as I wanted to wait until after Brampton Live which I went to last weekend. That was a great festival with many big name performers, many of whom we had previously seen at MFAB. To be able to pull in the big name performers whilst retaining its unique atmosphere is a great achievement.

I missed seeing June Tabor at MFAB because we wanted to see the Church Fitters, I would also have liked to have seen the Band from County Hell but you can only see one band at a time. Were they any good,  ?