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Re-live IAStival

As IAS B2B Marketing starts to return to normal busy schedule, it is obvious it's a weekend no one will forget in a hurry, and here is why.

Wednesday 7th September 2011:
On Wednesday afternoon the festival organizers were filled with mixed feelings of fear and excitement about what was to take place over the next few days. The fear part wasn't helped by a rather negative caterer saying, "I attend 10 festivals a year and there is no way that you will pull this together in 2 days".
However at IAS we don't let negative talk scare us, we took what he said with a pinch of salt and got started on bringing IAStival to life.

Thursday 8th September 2011:
Mr. Caterer must have been very shocked when he arrived back to the field on Thursday evening. As low and behold he would have seen a festival site!
In those 24 hours 5 marquees had gone up, 20 toilets had arrived, 4 generators were in place, a camping area had formed and bunting was hanging proudly from every corner of the site. Everyone had worked so hard on site and feeling like we had run a marathon we went home for some much needed sleep and to pack our tents ready for the next day.

Friday 9th September 2011:
The festival day was finally here and suddenly it felt like we had another marathon to run. After a frantic few of hours of putting the final touches on the festival, the site quickly started to fill with guests. All our planning was about to be put to the test.

With our first band back stage and ready to go, the festival was running smoothly. The Genuine Articles opened the show with a killer acoustic set that eased everyone into the festival vibe. The next acts on, Papa le Gal and The Quangos upped the pace with their fun, sunshine tunes and guess what? The sun was shining!

As the night went on and the sun went down we enjoyed a brilliant set from up and coming rock stars These Mortal Cities. We all enjoyed a sing along to their song "Charmers", whilst IAS's Steve Webb watched looking like a very proud Dad.
From one proud Dad to the next, Emelle took to the stage and got the crowd going with their Scottish energy that, throughout the weekend, proved constant and very entertaining.
Next up, a personal favourite of ours, Rook and the Ravens rocked the stage with their extremely professional, entertaining set. These boys had stage presence down to an art and no sooner had they left the stage, despite our begging for an encore, it was on to the next act.
The Polarsets took to the stage to close the show, when the crowd was at its largest, it just seemed too soon to end the night… but we had a sound curfew so had to close the main stage. But as always IAS had thought of an alternative solution… a Silent Disco!
Subflex and Skitz Sonix fought it out over the silent disco channels, but it seemed the clear favourite was the DJ playing Zombie Nation and a lot of other 90s classics.

Saturday 10th September 2011:
As the sun rose on Mottram St Andrews, we rose to find our festival site just as we had left it. People began to come out of tents with thick heads, craving coffee and a bacon buttie. After a few short hours and numerous cups of tea and coffee it was time to get to the bar and start it all over again. Surprisingly people didn't take much convincing and by the time our first act, One Too Many Kicks, took to the main stage, everyone was back in high spirits, very happy that there was still a full day IAStival fun ahead of them.

Next up was the Red Telephone and then on to our Battle of the Band winner, Jeramiah Ferrari. The boys got us up on our feet dancing and despite the lead singer losing his voice half way through, they came back on and performed a much requested encore.
After this we were in for a treat, The Adventure Babies. Our very own Jeremy Bramwell got on stage and relived his younger years as Jez, or should I say Bez.

By this point in the day the crowd needed no more persuading and all danced along to the wonderful Naymedici, The Travelling Band, Josh Roberts and Woodwind Rapture, for those who weren't quite in the dancing mood there were plenty of cultural acts to listen to in the Acoustic tent.

By the time we entered Saturday evening everyone was ready for one of our highlights, the one and only, Ultimate Elton. What a guy! I think one of our Account handlers tweets sums it up quite well:
"I never thought for one second that at any point in my life would I be stood in a field in a conga line swaying to an Elton John impersonator singing 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me' and you know what!! I'd do it again!"

From here the night just got better and better, with Taylor and the Mason warming up the acoustic stage for IAS's Tamsin Warley who packed out the acoustic tent and brought a tear to many of the audiences eye. Tamsin nicely got the crowd going for the one and only Bailey Tzuke who sang beautifully, and brought her Mum, Judie Tzuke, along for moral support.

Back on the main stage Elton was just the start of the big names. The Mouse Outfit, Shmoo and Subflex all put on killer performances and got the crowd ready for our headline acts. Everyone gathered round the main stage to see world class acts Turin Brakes, Dave Haslam and The Sunshine Underground. The Sunshine Underground stole the show with their high energy, disco style music and were the perfect act to mark the end of IAStival. But yet again it felt too early for the night to end. So it was onto the Silent Disco for the hard core people, not ready to let IAStival end! Saturday nights Silent Disco was brought to us by Dave Owen our very own DJ Ben Echo. The boys battled it out until the early hours of Sunday morning and the festival site was kept awake by the sound of out of tune festival goers, singing along to Gwen Stefani, Hollaback Girl.

Sunday 11th September:
With little voice remaining, the festival organizers quickly gathered the bunting in hope that we might need it again for IAStival 2. Watch this space!