Green Man Festival 2006
As promised, here is my full, four-act piece on the Green Man Festival, which was originally published in edited form by PopMatters.com.
The 2006 Green Man Festival Reviewed
Wintering in Wales: A Love Story
The weather followed us into the Northern Hemisphere. As we careened around the back roads of Abergavenny and Merthyr Tydfil, the joy of the previous night still running at high temperatures in our brains and the dewy, drossy hills of the Brecon Beacons national park crowding the road, I had to switch, for the umpteenth time on this foray into the heart of the British summer, our little Ford’s wipers from “intervalâ€? to “high,â€? and squint to catch the oncoming signs and markers. Granted, these Welsh showers were nothing like the downpours we had left behind in Cape Town – which had brought destructive flooding to the coast and snowdrifts deep enough to shut the mountain passes – but still, we were wearing scarves, there were two pairs of mud-caked Wellies in the boot, it was August, and the heat was on.
My companion fiddled with the radio. Nothing could compare with the sweet music that had kept us sleepless until the diminutive o’clocks of that Sunday morning, however, so Radio 1 and BBC Cymru were silenced. We rode on, through towns with names like “Bwlchâ€?, and allowed ourselves to feel like conquering heroes.
Tags: Abergavenny, Actual Air, Alasdair Roberts, American Water, Azita, Brecon Beacons, Bright Flight, Bwlch, Cape Town, Captain Wentworth, Cassie Berman, David Berman, Dorothy Goodbodys, Festivals, Fiery Furnaces, Get Up With It, Green Man, Half a Canyon, Hans Christian Andersen, Indie Rock, Jane Austen, José Gonzalez, Juana Molina, Lambchop, Merthyr Tydfil, Morrissey, Music, Nashville, New Radiant Storm King, Pavement, Peyton Pinkerton, Pinkertons, PopMatters, Powys, Punk in the Beerlight, Silures, Silver Jews, South Africa, Starlite Walker, Steve West, Tanglewood Numbers, The Arizona Record, The Green Man Festival, The Inchworm, The Natural Bridge, The Review, Tony Crow, Trains Across the Sea, Transylvania Blues, V Festival, Wales, Will Oldham, William Tylor, Y & B
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