TWINWOOD VINTAGE MUSIC FESTIVAL

The annual three-day multi-genre music festival at Twinwood in Bedfordshire was hot, hot, hot in every way this year.

-  Paul Waring

The sun shone all three days and mid-day temperatures were in the 80s. 1950s rock ‘n’ roll music was very much to the fore and we’ll concentrate on that here.

The Control Tower stage specialises in the rockin’ sounds, but there were equally rockin’ acts on the Main Stage from time to time, and with the clever programming it was possible to find wall-to-wall rock ‘n’ roll throughout the event.

The sun shone so intensely on all three days of this open-air event that between us we spent £40 on double raspberry sorbets alone! These were supplied by the Classic Scoops ice cream van, which was a most welcome addition to the proceedings, as the permanently long queue all day testified.

As we entered the main grassy arena on our arrival The Daisy Chains, who were well turned out in 1950s frocks and, unusually, the vocalists were also the brass section which featured tenor and baritone saxophones and a trumpet. They played these well and we loved their sound.

Our favourite acts included Laura B and her band, Mark Keely’s Good Rockin’ Tonight, Rockin’ the Joint, Greggi G and his Crazy Gang and the Revolutionaires Big Band, who appeared one after the other on the Sunday before Si Cranston gave his ever popular jump-blues act with welcome nods to Jackie Wilson, Roy Brown and Nappy Brown, in addition to his many selfpenned classics.