Saturday dawn is fresh and bright and today’s openers were Rxptrs, metalcore times Maiden so you kind of got two for the price of one. Proper heavy if you like that sort of thing but it wasn't really for me. 

Men In Black were also thrashy as anything but had hipster beards and side shaves. Competent, but again not really my thing.

Sweet Teaze then brought us sleazy good time fun which was much more my thing. They sound like Poison and look like Zodiac Mindwarp so there's dancing and melody and fun. At one point the weekend’s youngest performer, son of guitarist, festival organiser and all-round good guy Raz White, joins them on stage for a bit of a jam. They finished with rock and roll queen and the bass player is out in the crowd – excellent.

And now for something completely different, The Bootyard Bandits. How about some dirty rock rodeo? Pull up an inflatable cactus and let’s line-dance! The sound isn't too good at first though but it does improve as the set goes on. There is a lot of knee-bending, and a lot of stomping - stomp stomp stomp! The lyrics are humourous and if you happen to have braces (even invisible ones) you should have thumbs tucked in them at chest height. It's all good time good ol’ boys, and the icing on the cake is the heavy metal banjo. Yes, you did read that correctly! There’s more laughs, and more stomping, and a damn good time is had by all. Yee-ha!

Velvet Insane give us 70’s glam with a saxophone, they come from Sweden and they sound like Roy Wood’s Wizzard. They are sleazy and very sparkly, there’s a lot of sequins going down here. It starts as bouncy retro and then they turn into the Beatles, mixed in with a sprinkling of Hendrix. It’s completely batshit, but very good to watch!

Next up we have one of my bands of the weekend Shiraz Lane. These young lads come from Finland and they bring all the glam, all the sparkle, all the songs and all the power over with them. They have melody and harmony but they still rock. It's emotional, there are lots of chances to sing along with the woah-woah choruses and they do the peculiarly Finnish guitar thing of putting a foot on the monitor and pointing the guitar neck skywards whilst soloing. This I think is the future of rock and roll, they have youth, skill, enthusiasm and talent in spades and I could watch them forever. The final song is a cover of Savage Garden’s ‘To The Moon And Back’ but properly rocked out. I really enjoyed that.

The Middlenight Men too are somewhat unique and that’s mostly because there's so many of them! I think there's at least 10 on stage and probably five or six backstage doing stuff. This actually caused some technical problems because the sound man didn't have enough places to plug them all in and when they finally got going the sound wasn't brilliant, I've definitely seen it better. However they played bouncy pop rock with a bit of pyro, the brass section played and I could just about hear them despite them not necessarily being miked up properly, the backing singers gyrated and harmonised and the whole thing was a blast. They have a style of their own, it’s rock but not rock. It’s senseless but makes perfect sense at the same time.  They do some paper cannons and party strings, which is fun, but I can’t help feeling the flames and pyro is a bit of a waste on a sunny afternoon. That being said, it’s a hell of a show. They do edge towards ska-punk occasionally but only a little bit so I'll forgive them for that. I do think this band is very influenced in their songwriting by a certain Mr G Wildheart and for that alone I have to love them.

After I’ve picked the silly string out of my hair, I head back to the marquee to catch Archie And The Astronauts. They're very young three piece and they play funky blues. It’s not my favorite genre but they do it very well and had a pleasant pop punk vibe.

Kickin Valentina next, and they are all spike and attitude. These boys are gritty and real, they’re dirty and sleazy and they pulled the biggest crowd of the day so far. They have all the energy and all the love feeding back to them and if anything that spurs them on to play even better. The songs are catchy and singalong and they may be basic dirty rock but they do it so, so well. Occasionally the sound gets kind of polished but somehow still with rough edges. The crowd love it, their set is one of those things that you just can't help getting involved with. It was brilliant. The guys from She Burns Red (who I managed to miss this time) came on at the end to add some vocal support and, well, just dick about a bit really, but this is what this band is all about. Everybody is included, everybody is part of the show. Superb.

My notes about Crashdïet are a bit unintelligible but they start with FUCK YEAH in big capital letters. I love this band. They bring more energy, more bounce, more Swedishness to the stage. They bring the big riffs, the swishy hair, the singalong choruses, they are the real deal wrapped up in a neat little Scandinavian package. I really can't find the words to tell you how good they were, how engaging, how entertaining. They're so tight, so together, so FUCK yeah. Vocalist Gabriel climbs up the scaffolding and still sings and even the lovely Olli Herman (from headliners Reckless Love) comes on for the last song. They brought in a new drummer for these shows while the original one takes a bit of a break and he is absolutely killing it, but the main thing (for me) is that it's so good to see Sweet and London back on the stage together playing to the crowd, bouncing off each other and generally having a good time. I also note that Gabriel is a frontman on another level. He's in the crowd, he's all over the place and again we feel like part of the band.

Finally at last we get to Reckless Love, one of my favourite live bands ever and again my notes are somewhat sparse because I just spent the entire set dancing. They hit the stage in a blaze of dry ice and sharp suits in pastel ice-cream colours, and the night just explodes. They've just recently released the new album “Turborider” and at the start of the set a lot of the songs come from that which means that they make quite heavy use of the dreaded click track but then we reach the part where singer Olli looks at the crowd and says “Do we use backing tapes? We've just made this album full of synthesizers, of course we fucking do! But not all the time and this is what Reckless Love sound like without them……” and they launch into several of their old songs. I did note however that they didn’t play ‘Beautiful Bomb’; what's happening guys, where has it gone? Bring it back, bring it back!
They power through a set of absolute bangers. Again the crowd is on side, we're joining in, we’re loving it. We're dancing, singing, clapping and the atmosphere is just beautiful. Reckless Love are a band full of cheesy cliches, but that’s one of their major strengths. They don’t take themselves to seriously, but when they get up on stage they play a hell of a show. My only complaint is that the set could have been twice as long and I would have still been happy.