Mighty Mighty @ Warley Wood’s Picnic in the Park, Sunday 18th July 2010

Despite living in Bearwood for roughly 128 years this is only the second ‘Picnic in the Park’ I’ve been to. Predictably I had very little luck on the tombola (I just couldn’t win that ancient bottle of Lambrini...despite spending the equivalent of a month’s salary on tickets) but I did get to enjoy watching guest compére Stuart Maconie (I think he lives round these parts) wax lyrical about a missing black handbag and the obligatory dog show. Highlight of the afternoon though was a gig by cult C86 band ‘Mighty Mighty’.


Before last week I’d never heard of them but after a little digging around I discovered they’d featured on NME’s genre defining ‘C86’ album (alongside early offerings from Primal Scream, The Wedding Present, Half Man Half Biscuit, The Mighty Lemon Drops and Fuzzbox). It turns out that at least one of the band live in the ‘wood and, after coming out of retirement recently to perform at last year’s Indietracks Festival, they stepped up to headline this Picnic thingy. Musically there are touches of The Housemartins, CUD, The Smiths and The Inspiral Carpets, in other words top notch jingly jangly indie pop. The lead singer had a few vocal difficulties towards the end of the set but, considering they’ve barely played together for the odd quarter of a century or so, it was a darn fine performance. If you even have a passing interest in the birth of Indie music I can highly recommend their back catalogue, most of which you can hear on You Tube. Click on the video below for my personal favourite ‘Everybody Knows the Monkey’.



PS: Congratulations to Warley Woods Community Trust who put the whole thing on (and who do a frankly awesome job of looking after the woods) and a big thank you to all the other bands who played. In the space of four hours, in amongst their self penned stuff, I heard cover versions of REM, Bowie, Steve Harley, Martha and the Muffins, Pink Floyd and...er...Hawkwind...it's what Sunday's were invented for.