Truck Festival 2024 Festival

[Nickyboy]

Not going to get into an argument about Jamie T.  I thought he was looking well after all his battles with alcohol, drugs and his ongoing Autism.  Thought he got a great reception from the crowd, and looked a bit emotional at the end.  However, we can agree to disagree on whether he was awful or not.  

 

Great festival BTW - we were blessed with the weather, although being churlish, it was a bit too hot for me yesterday.  I thought food and drink prices were a bit on the steep side, but otherwise a fine first visit to this festival for me.  The site was incredibly well maintained throughout, portaloos and litter were astonishingly well looked after and plenty of them.

 

Shame the Zodiac fields had appallingly inadequate numbers of toilets and showers for the number of people they flogged extortionate upgrades to mind. Shocking value for money

Edited July 29 by Nickyboy
spelling

[spg]

13 hours ago, charlierc said:

 

Only slightly different reviews on Jamie T.

 

Anyone wanna cast a tiebreak verdict?

I thought he was ok, nothing to write home about but not terrible (this is actually how I felt about the performance)

[gooner1990]

12 hours ago, Nickyboy said:

Not going to get into an argument about Jamie T.  I thought he was looking well after all his battles with alcohol, drugs and his ongoing Autism.  Thought he got a great reception from the crowd, and looked a bit emotional at the end.  However, we can agree to disagree on whether he was awful or not.  

 

Great festival BTW - we were blessed with the weather, although being churlish, it was a bit too hot for me yesterday.  I thought food and drink prices were a bit on the steep side, but otherwise a fine first visit to this festival for me.  The site was incredibly well maintained throughout, portaloos and litter were astonishingly well looked after and plenty of them.

 

Shame the Zodiac fields had appallingly inadequate numbers of toilets and showers for the number of people they flogged extortionate upgrades to mind. Shocking value for money

 

Ever since they introduced that area I've heard nothing but negative reviews about it...surprised something hasn't been done/changed or had it scrapped entirely. 

[gooner1990]

43 minutes ago, spg said:

I thought he was ok, nothing to write home about but not terrible (this is actually how I felt about the performance)

 

Would agree with that.....everyone around me seemed to be having a good time singing along.

[Hirstys 12th Pint]

Some of the comments re Jamie T sound similar to his performance at Tramlines. 

 

Musically the band were decent but something definitely not right with Jamie.  Was definitely hammered and was missing lines in songs.  He also seemed to want to fall out with the crowd.  At one point also slagging Sheffield off.  Maybe he was trying to be edgy.

 

Definitely not a Festival Headliner and Super Struct have definitely dropped one in booking him in block across a few Festivals.   I'd say crowd was about 30% down on what it was for Tom Grennan who was on before. 

[Jacksamthompson]

I thought Jamie was the best ive seen him. Although last couple of times he wasnt great. Still much better than Wet Leg though. 

Did anyone else see Ross from the 1975 at the back of main stage on the sunday!? 

[ourkid1984]

My first time at Truck and I'll be back again. 

 

The line up always seem to be great for me and I was impressed with the relatively small size of the site, yet mostly felt like there was space. It's very much like Y-Not before they increased their capacity. 

 

I left on Saturday night as I went to Libertines on Brighton beach but I thought Idles, Jamie T and Wet Leg were all good headliners. 

 

There were a few issues though. In the This Feeling Stage late on Thursday I felt it was way too packed and had too many space invaders not having any awareness of others to the point where they were relentlessly bashing into people without any signs of apologies or recognition of what they were doing. Also is there usually that many spice and other hard drug users? Most were entertaining to watch at a distance but I think it peaked from just before Jamie T until the end of that night. We had to move 4 times during Jamie T due to really annoying behaviours and every late night venue we went to there were loads of people so spangled they could barely move. 

 

All in all a great value for money festival if you're into indie music. 

[gfa]

We were mixed on Jamie T. i thought he was crap but mates thought he was good

 

Think Kooks should have headlined really, not their biggest fan but they were far better than Wet Leg (who just don't have the material) and Jamie T.

 

Festival seemed very undersold - so much room in the campsite which wasn't very big to begin with!

 

On 7/31/2024 at 2:21 PM, ourkid1984 said:

My first time at Truck and I'll be back again. 

 

The line up always seem to be great for me and I was impressed with the relatively small size of the site, yet mostly felt like there was space. It's very much like Y-Not before they increased their capacity. 

 

I left on Saturday night as I went to Libertines on Brighton beach but I thought Idles, Jamie T and Wet Leg were all good headliners. 

 

There were a few issues though. In the This Feeling Stage late on Thursday I felt it was way too packed and had too many space invaders not having any awareness of others to the point where they were relentlessly bashing into people without any signs of apologies or recognition of what they were doing. Also is there usually that many spice and other hard drug users? Most were entertaining to watch at a distance but I think it peaked from just before Jamie T until the end of that night. We had to move 4 times during Jamie T due to really annoying behaviours and every late night venue we went to there were loads of people so spangled they could barely move. 

 

All in all a great value for money festival if you're into indie music. 

It will be ketamine and coke probably. nobody uses spice really

[DangerousBrian]

First time poster!

My first time at Truck, was very, very impressed with almost everything. We only live about 45 minutes away so we decided to return to home each evening, skipping out during each headliner which we weren't overly fussed about seeing, other than The Streets.

Main thing that let it down was the price of the cans of cider, 6-7quid for somebody to open a can that you can buy about eight cans for the same price is obscene as was 8.60 for a single can of JD and coke. Thankfully I was on driving duties for two days, so stuck with the Thatchers bar itself on my day of drinking, but the price of cans needs a re-think surely?

Venue was great. Small but felt you could get from stage to stage quick enough to not really miss too much on tight turnovers. Felt like there was nearly always plenty of space to move around. didn't feel claustrophobic at all. 

 

In terms of the acts:

Friday:

Pennine Suite were a nice relaxing, easy listening way to start the day after we arrived.

I'm friends with the lads in Carsick, so really enjoyed seeing them on a BIG stage after a couple of years seeing them in anything from pubs and dance halls, to small venues. Overpass were enjoyable and thought that Anthony Smzierek was a more modern take on The Streets, very entertaining set from him.

The K's look set to become a band who will headline these type of festivals for the next couple of years before heading down the large arena tour venues and who knows from there. Thought they probably warranted a main stage appearance, but they truly rocked the Market stage. Was my 3rd time seeing them this year already and I really do think their going onto big things.

Was gutted to miss out on Pave who clashed with The K's. Had some food from the charity tent whilst listening to Declan McKenna before heading into the This Feeling stage to see Spangled rattle through a quite brilliant 30 minute set. I think another improvement Truck can make here is to leave the headliners on these smaller stages play for a bit longer. It's a good idea that the main stage headliner gets pretty much all the crowd, but having secondary and third options is a nice thing to have. Watched a couple of tracks by Jamie T before heading back to the car park listening to him on the way around.

 

Saturday:

We weren't too fussed on a lot of the earlier playing bands, so we had a relaxing morning at home before arriving to see The Slates live out their dreams and play to a big festival crowd in the This Feeling tent. Was such a great feeling seeing a band click with a large crowd and the joy on all their faces was a real pleasure to see. Felt like a real moment for them and for those watching. 86TV's were impressive. Enjoyable to see 3 guys all taking the lead vocals at time and some great harmonies between them all at times.

With no signal at the venue, I missed the Pigeon Detectives on the main stage. Seems they were on around the same time as The Slates, but the absolute highlight of the weekend was Fat Dog. A band I've been following for around a year or so now and recently caught them on tour in Oxford, so knew what I was letting myself in for, but to see a whole tent interact, bounce and get stuck in with the same energy was impressive. These feel like another band who are really going places. Half hour again, probably not long enough but they made the most of it and was surprised to see the tent still standing over the rest of the weekend after their set! 🙂 

We then caught some of Sophie Ellis-Bexter before heading into This Feeling again for Lissy Taylor, who has a quite brilliant voice, but she fell victim of the huge crowd watching Sophie on the main stage, so was only a handful of us watching at the start of her set. Stuck around in there for The Kairos who were one of the most impressive young bands I've seen in a while. Some absolutely cracking tunes and one I will be looking to see in their own tour somewhere in the future. Wet Leg really isn't my cup of tea, so we took an early night.

 

Sunday:

Arrived in time to see Sabrina for 'free beer' from Barstaff! They did well there! A lack of signal failed to make us aware that Stanleys weren't going to perform as their guitar player was stuck in traffic. Did find it odd that they weren't soundchecking and had no real kit set-up on the stage, but thought we'd hang around and then they halfheartedly announced that they would only be performing Northern Soul tunes off a laptop, so we headed down to get a place at the front of the main stage for The Amazons who again, will be a band that can headline this size of festival in years to come. Sea Girls were great, a really good afternoon with food listen type band. The Kooks drew a huge crowd, they're not a band I particularly care for, but the missus really enjoyed them. Blush Puppy weren't as good as I thought they might be, so we took in The Royston Club instead and they were absolutely superb. Great entertaining set and another young up and coming band who look set for much bigger things perhaps? Same can be said for The Snuts. The path for these type of bands looks really good and they will be the type of bands that easily headline. These type of bands headlining would easily get me buying tickets for future Truck Festivals.

Watched The Streets for around 45 minutes before heading home.

 

All in all, a quite fantastic first time at Truck and with the right bands announced early, I'm definitely going back again.

 

Positives:

Lineup

This Feeling Tent acts

Venue

Charity Food Tent

Free Coke Zero and Liptons Ice Tea

Plenty of toilets

Entry was pain free as was parking each day

Relaxed atmosphere

 

Negatives:

Price of alcohol

No Wi-Fi or phone signal so missed a couple of important announcements, as detailed above. (Not Trucks fault obviously)

 

Where can Truck Improve:

Longer headline and sub headline sets on other stages

Extend other stages into main stage headline slot times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rivaldo]

It was our family's first time at Truck, and have to agree with other posters - a really fabulous time was had. The crowds were friendly and up for a good time,  including loads of large groups of young lads and ladettes, the music line-up was eclectic and interesting, the food stalls were excellent, there was always water to drink, the toilets were clean and generally worked fine and of course the weather was mostly perfect, which always helps!

 

Of the headliners, we were at or near the front for Idles, Streets and Wet Leg and they were all terrific. Jamie T as others have said was a real let-down except for the wallop of the last three songs - before that were all those looong gaps between songs, rambling and repeated thank-yous, the solo spot etc. He should have had a snappy set of short, sharp, punchy songs. Something was definitely off.

 

We must have seen 25-30 performances over the four days, yet could have been at an entirely different festival to some - which is a good thing and indicates a well thought out music policy. We're not a fan of indie landfill (controversial!), so avoided the Amazons, Snuts, K's, Royston Club, Pigeon Detectives, Kooks, Sea Girls and others.

 

Instead we saw great performances from Fat Dog (the festival standout), Mary In The Junkyard (getting better and better), English Teacher (superb), Divorce (brilliant songs), Heartworms (a goth star in the making), Ebbb, Ditz, Been Stellar, Declan Mckenna, Cheerbleederz, The Wytches, Sophie-Ellis Bextor, Nightbus, Yard Act, Cameron Hayes and Thistle to name just a few.

 

The only complaints were that (1) the Market Stage sound was definitely a little off at times, and (2) there was absolutely no Wi-fi anywhere, which is a good thing overall, but meant you couldn't make or receive emergency calls and also caused confusion over the new stage times for various acts following the peculiar and inexplicable shifting of Pigeon Detectives and Lime Garden.

 

We'll definitely be returning if the headliners and supporting stage line-ups continue to be this good.

[Trucking Fine]

I loved Jamie T, thought his set was a bit more fumbling than actual entertainment but over all, I thought he was great! The kooks and streets really topped it for me though! 
 

It’s official, I have truck blues BUT 2025 tickets secured. What headliners are we predicting for next year? 

[ourkid1984]

On 8/1/2024 at 4:11 PM, gfa said:

We were mixed on Jamie T. i thought he was crap but mates thought he was good

 

Think Kooks should have headlined really, not their biggest fan but they were far better than Wet Leg (who just don't have the material) and Jamie T.

 

Festival seemed very undersold - so much room in the campsite which wasn't very big to begin with!

 

It will be ketamine and coke probably. nobody uses spice really

Definitely coke and ketamine but I was sure I saw a guy open up one of those baggys that look like a condom wrapper and then skin up, it might have been just weed but soon after him and his friends looked completely out of it. I think they had backstage bands on.