credit busting Bingley opening day is topped by The Zutons, and Doves

This year's Bingley Music Live has improved its line-up this year considerably compared to last year's festival. Last year's event comprising a mixture of new and old bands. This year's festival line-up included Ocean Colour Scene, Zutons & headliners Doves & Editors, mixed with a credit crunch busting price of just £25 (Yes just £25 for 3 days) plus booking fee you have a sold out festival. A programme for the small gesture of a pound is also very much welcome, with band information, line-up times & small enough to fit in your pocket. As there is no camping on site we had to look further a field to find a campsite to park our camperbus on. Unfortunately most had already sold out, we eventually find a slot on the Lower Heights Farm campsite for the Saturday night for just £5 per person, unfortunately this meant we missed the Friday night which comprised The Undertones, and Toploader so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Getting to the festival on the Saturday it became clear just how successful the festival had become, with the few local pubs well inhabited & queues snaking to the town centre from the festival entrance. Seems the 15000 sold out festival maybe over capacity or the organisers have certainly been caught out with a lack of toilet facilities & bars. Seems the toilet waiting time at one point had reached ninety minutes, they where also only situated at the rear of the arena, which meant a lot of people where using the hedges & fencing around the stage area as makeshift toilets. A quick toilet count revealed just sixty toilets for 15000 people!!! The bar queues where horrendous, with again very long waiting times. I do hope these faults can be fixed for next year as this is a festival that deserves to do well. The site itself is the beautiful Myrtle Park which although in the city centre, once in the park feels you could be 20 miles away or so into the country side.

First band we catch today are The Sunshine Underground who given the number of festivals they have played & we have caught them at this year must be due some chart success. The lead singer tells us they only travelled for 15 minutes to get here. The crowd chant repeatedly Yorkshire Yorkshire Yorkshire.

Ocean Colour Scene time it right with most of the crowd now through the gates. Opening up with the crowd pleasing Riverboat Song gets most of the audience to their feet & they stay for You Got It Bad & even new song Magic Carpet Ride at the end Simon Fowler does a splendid accappella version of Live Forever which gets an anthemic reaction with everyone joining in. Fowler tells us "You'll miss em!!" referencing the Oasis split of last week. The Circle is great as is 100 Mile High City but both do not compete with the brilliant Day We Caught The Train.

The Zutons who considering they no longer have a record deal also seemed to have managed a few festival appearances this year, possibly due to that Amy Winehouse cover that has enriched The Zutons coffers but at the same time maybe contributed to their recording contract. Their set gets of to a slow start with some album tracks, picking up with Zuton Fever & a crowd singing Valerie.

Next up Doves, who after their splendid Glastonbury headline set this year, I was particularly looking forward to. Unfortunately a large proportion of the Bingley audience where either ignorant to the Doves talents or maybe it was approaching their bed times at eight o'clock as they didn't share the same enthusiasm & had started to leave. Opening up with the gorgeous Slipstream, followed by the politically inspired George Bush hating Snowden, a fantastic start. The backdrop shows video footage & for the singles the promo video plays in the background.

Cedar Room is superb as is the pogo dancing Pounding. Black & White Town ups the tempo with the few crowd dancing to the Northern Soul beats. Caught By The River has a fantastic drum solo in the middle. The bands tells us we have been great and off they walk. The curfew for tonight was nine o'clock and with time being five to nine we waited until nine, thinking that was that we made our way to the car park as did the remainder of the crowd. We had just made it to the car park when the band had struck up again, either there had been some negotiations to extend the curfew or the band had called the shots, it made no difference to us as the walk to the arena was quiete far so we made our way to the campsite.

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