Next month sees the inaugural Rare Vitamin Annual Diversion come to Northwich, what is an Annual Diversion you might ask, well according to co-organiser Chris Mundie from The Salty Dog “We wanted to put together an alternative musical festival curated by Rare Vitamin Records, but we decided ‘fest’ or ‘stock’ was too obvious, so went for something slightly pretentious and confusing instead”.
So now we’ve established it is in fact a music festival we pressed for more information “Myself and Jason from Rare Vit work with loads of really cool bands, we thought it’d be great to do an event that celebrated new original music instead of relying on an older established headliner, which we’ve often done in other events I’ve been involved in, that’s great and works really well, but we wanted to put the focus on new music that we really liked, Jason is the man really when it comes to the underground stuff, so he largely curated the line-up, I took on the logistical stuff and Tracey our designer made it all look pretty!”
Northwich is no stranger to live music events and has been consistently punching above it’s weight for a long time, a few years ago the world’s media descended on the town when The Charlatans did their triumphant series of home coming gigs, “That was a massive week for the town, we were lucky that The Charlatans really wanted to showcase the town and put a week of world class bands on in The Salty Dog and across the town, I think that really cemented a love for music in the town and demonstrated how great it can be when we all come together and get behind something”
So what can we expect from the Annual Diversion in terms of acts an bands and who should we be looking out for? “Our headliners are The Lovely Eggs, who Jason has followed for a number of years now, they are a fully DIY outfit and just played a packed-out gig at The Ritz with no managers or agents, that’s a big inspiration to us and shows what you can really achieve whilst maintaining an underground ethos, they even collaborated with Iggy Pop on a single last year and had a number one album! The line up is absolutely packed with great bands though, we have The C33s heading up the Friday who just put out a storming garage rock album on Rare Vitamin, we have Headsticks who can’t really be stuck into a genre, but encompass punk, rock, roots and loads of other influences, Zen Baseballbat are over from Widnes who meld ska and new wave into a proper infectious dance party, Pagans SOH who picked up an award for best live act in Birmingham playing funky hip hop, IDestroy who have had loads of Radio 1 play since we first booked them two years ago playing great melodic punk and grunge, Kicked In The Teeth, who I happen to drum for, Nervous Twitch who play great lo-fi alternative pop and a whole host of other great bands” (full line up below).
That’s that then, Annual Diversion is an alternative name for an alternative festival, it’s taking place on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th of July in Riverside Park in Northwich, which is located in Barons Quay, just near H&M, tickets are priced £8 for Friday, £15 for Saturday or £20 for a weekend pass, you can get yourself by heading to www.wegottickets.com/annualdiversion
Friday 15th July – The C33s, IDestroy, Kicked In The Teeth, The Battery Farm, Cassette Apes, Tic No Toc.
Saturday 16th July – The Lovely Eggs, Headsticks, Zen Baseballbat, The Pagans SOH, Nervous Twitch, The Kings Pistol, Hazel’s Maze, Crooked Little Sons, All Is Vanity, Sonum, Patrick T Davies and Ewok.
Compered by Leon The Pig Farmer
