Shiiine On Weekender’s 2016 Line Up: Indie Music & Beyond

With a full slate of music festivals and events designed to maximize the fleeting prime weeks of summer, true music lovers should not miss out a chance to keep the party going well into fall thanks to the organisers of Shiiine On Weekender, back for its second year 11-14 November at Butlin’s Minehead Arena in picturesque Somerset, U.K. (near Bristol). With Early Bird Tickets still on offer, this is a prime time to get a group together and plan a memorable weekend away.

We make no secret of our excitement for this newer weekender that is sure to make you remember family caravaning trips ” with a twist-  now alive with great music around the clock, a crowd of like-minded people and a laid-back and drama-free environment with minimal fuss.

Step On Magazine was thrilled to attend and cover Shiiine year one (which was also our mag’s first year) after getting word from a savvy friend in Canada who shares our deep love for Happy Mondays, 2015’s first major headliner, then touring and celebrating the 25th anniversary (!!!) of their masterpiece, Pills n’ Thrills and Bellyaches.

The line up looked too good to be true. It was very different from many bigger festivals that try to be too many things to too many people, then missing the mark with bloated line ups that make less and less sense. Worse, big festivals (particularly in North America) fail to honour so many solid 80s and 90s U.K. artists that are the backbone of this very notion of togetherness and festival ethos, who are still active and still well worth the ticket price. There are legendary names that deserve the call and that would raise the level of North American festivals exponentially.

There’s an extra effort missing with some other festivals at present, a thoughtfulness required, that goes beyond just the viewpoint of the accountant and comes, instead, from the heart. From the music loving soul who can also write the cheques. And here in Hacienda black and yellow was something altogether new, from people who’d been around the festival scene as fans and clearly felt the need for something else, and then, found a way to create it.

U.K. music fans know their music and are spoiled for choice in the busy summer months. The most mobile even jump trains or flights to great, big European festivals. A new player on the scene needed to offer something different, something a little bit bespoke, that didn’t need masses but the right mix to create an excellent party. And so they did. Shiiine On is an all-in experience that manages to be relaxing and exciting at once, at a pace you can set yourself: the more intimate setting (where festival-goers stay on site but do not have to camp out and lug gear) means they can sleep in until they hear the first strains of the early afternoon sets beginning, or get up for daily pool parties (yes, if you weren’t there you missed Bez’s legendary pool party in year one) see cinema screenings featuring 80s and 90s classics that continue the vibe of Indie, Dance, Britpop, and other iconic images, stories and sounds of the day, and become night owls again at epic club nights that keep the party going until very very late (including the bar).

Club nights for 2016 include Keep it Social, Cool Britannia, Burn Down the Disco and Madchester. To top all of this off, in the place of where might be head-scratching place holders at other fests, come the best in relevant cover bands to round things out to the full (2015’s Clone Roses set was a major highlight, regularly noted as the surprise of the weekend, or the major regret of those who did not get in before the club reached capacity). Clone Roses return for 2016 along with Oasis UK, joined by the TRIFECTA that thrills the 80s kid heart: The Smyths, The Cure Heads, and True Order (the last following last year’s barnburner of a set by Peter Hook himself (with his band, The Light, accompanied by legendary Manchester singer and ambassador Rowetta Satchell).

All this and we haven’t even covered the full artist line up. Here it is:

As visitors from abroad we were well-versed in the music but new to the notion of Butlin’s and to the way things work there. So by way of a brief trip guide for those unfamiliar, Butlin’s site is very informative but essentially the weekend works as an all-in package (festival pass to all performances and other offerings + accommodations) best suited for groups (though single rooms are available) and comes with or without a meal plan (and with optional cooking facilities). We suggest you skip all but your morning tea & biscuit before setting out for there is a local Spar onsite (open 24/7) the home of nightly post-last orders funny moments and quick, life sustaining eats, as well as many affordable restaurants on site and the all-important pasty shop which is almost 24/7 (we miss u). For U.K. visitors within 3-4 hours drive, taking the car is probably most convenient but can also be easily organized by train and coach (see official sources for more information/recommendations).

Minehead proper is just a 5 minute walk along the coast with many great pubs and friendly shops as an offsite option for socializing & mealtimes during the day. Butlin’s, to an outsider who had just recently been to Las Vegas for the first time, is something akin to that otherworldly adult playground but much much more walkable, social, friendly, and happily, without one single cheesy magician full of desperate repressed anger (that Vegas staple who charges as much as a third of this weekend for the dubious privilege). In his place, we have, instead, a delightful array of claw games, a big tent which covers the large, roomy, main stage area as well as a number of appealing different clubs for smaller stages and DJ nights, and indoor/outdoor places to hang and celebrate the scene that deserves a full 72 hours to remind us all how right we were in our youthful exuberance; how right we still are to love it and to preach the gospel of this music. The fine tradition of the memorable road trip awaits you and the kids would love to have a weekend with granny, we promise.

Fans, organizers, a few Canadians and visitors from abroad, and essential, iconic bands all came together to create something rare and great last year. Corporate Pop music and the years of digital noise and declining music press were blasted away the old-fashioned way. Our Canadianness permits us to be earnest for a moment: it was a real marvel. And worth every penny and every jet-lagged mile, in fact, way beyond those things. Like all music festivals and all travel ought to be. For 72 hours, a real village was built that made plain and easy for all the vibe promised so easily elsewhere that falls short when their chosen site, focus, line-up and scale is just to large and scattershot to please anybody.

Don’t take it from us. A testament to this claim is the many players from last year returning in some form or another who’ve made it something of a priority (or….is that… a new tradition?) and the festival-goers who immediately rebooked for 2016 before leaving the site. Bez’s pool party has gone down as legend, but there are still pool parties ahead, as well as music from returning artists The Wonder Stuff, a significant percentage of returning Happy Mondays in the form of Black Grape,  Love & the Family Tree (Gaz Whelan & Rowetta) and a Happy Mondays DJ set on Friday. Also returning to great acclaim is The House of Love (Terry Bickers played with his duo, Fij & Bickers last year) The Farm, James Atkin (EMF) and Thousand Yard Stare (who we’ll be featuring in an upcoming interview). The unusually civil and positive social media exchanges around this weekender by past and prospective attendees are worth noting as well. See you there. (More coverage and band profiles to follow.)

Jacqueline Howell & Dave MacIntyre.

Shiiine On Weekender’s website

Link to Early Bird Tickets and Butlin’s Information

Shiiine On Weekender’s Facebook page

Minehead Tourism- general area information

Headliners: Echo and the Bunnymen; The Wonder Stuff;  The House of Love; Shed Seven;  The Bluetones; Echobelly; Cast; Black Grape; The Farm; Paul Hartnoll (Orbital); (and more)

Read more of our Shiiine On Weekender coverage / view our photo galleries

The Subways and PINS at Mod Club, Toronto / North American Tour

“What will we do. What will we do. What will we do – when our dreams come true?” is the rallying cry from Manchester’s PINS, whose voices, in unison, infuse each repeated line of the phrase with multiple meanings. It’s gutsy. It’s fresh. It’s a delicious throwback to a time we all want, no, need to get back to when music was always raw, alive, sly with a twist of menace, pretty and dangerous. It’s the real deal. And we are getting it on the back half of a major spring tour as they’ve worked their way from Cardiff to Austin to here.

It is, unfortunately, always worth noting when Toronto rock club show crowds allow themselves to impart emotion, enjoyment, be seen moving, or express much sound beyond the furtive “WHOOO”s that come out of the dark from people like us, answered in kind by other anonymous owls in the darkness. This is just our way in Toronto the dry. One wonders what visiting bands think. Bands out of England, from places historically known for bottling their disapproval, a nation of experts and hecklers, a land of regional identities and generations of music lovers and real night owls, ones who can hold their pints, characters bred for toughness.

In the belt-tightened economy of the live music scene today, outside of the grey concrete nothingness of mega stadiums, a place like Toronto is ever-more privileged and lucky to be included in so many “American” tours of visiting U.K. bands that one could almost weep. We are routinely presented with no less than the cream of the still thriving Indie world of the U.K. and Europe, and we are visited by the best and the brightest bands of recent years and those of tomorrow-the ones who still deserve much more love after years of grinding.

On nights like tonight, it all comes together. Jaded industry types are forced to the margins while real music fans come alive. There is no pit, no obvious security, and the boundaries of stage and and crowd are respected by mutual agreement, except when a singer sits and stands among us, at first surrounded by sheepish men who cannot meet her gaze, then by females who move in and fill in a circle around her and rock out in a way long missed in these parts.

And so faces are turned upward like old footage of the devout in far away Pentecostal churches, and we come alive for a few hours on this Tuesday night, given permission and power by the marvelous energy of five strong, talented women known as PINS. This is their first time in Toronto. The music is noisy but clean, powerful and confident. The look of the band is intense, and as wonderfully uniform as all the great bands are/were once. They are young but like the best, most galvanizing young bands ever did and still do, they’ve done their homework: visually and musically. Wow. It’s all there: Jesus and Mary Chain. My Bloody Valentine. Hole. Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Early Cure. The Ramones, even. PINS feels like vinyl sounded on headphones. They’re exciting. A real find. And PINS comes as we always knew it would, again, in Doc Martens. Clad all in black tonight, in all its best variations, in pitch perfect styles referencing the best days- when live music was mostly still captured in black and white. And what other colours do you need?

The Subways are the headliner tonight, and they bring a well honed body of work that is four albums strong (most recently, 2015’s self-titled release, along with a regular output of EPs and special issues). The Subways hail from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, U.K. and their name is a bit of a curiosity for Anglophiles in Canada and the States as we know that the”subways” of our bigger cities is akin to London’s “tube”. But the subway of the band’s name is an underground walkway to cross a road (thank you, Wikipedia) an obvious choice of youth hangout which has a pretty universal, parent-defying appeal by any name anywhere as long as there has been skateboards and graffiti and Smirnoff in underage back pockets.

The Subways are a tight three-piece unit who’ve been around just long enough to be able to claim one of music’s highest honours- John Peel was the first radio DJ to play their single on National radio. This energetic band sounds much bigger than their number and brings the feeling of a great gang. In the Mod Club tonight, locals and visitors from U.S. border cities are treated to something ultra-rare and special in our culture that one imagines and fantasizes is the province of British pub life nightly at gigs big and small – some truly great stage banter that makes us feel like instant and forever friends. After the exciting cold shower of PINS (who dedicate their second-to-last song to The Subways), the headliners immediately make the stage their own with their unique rhythms and energy. The Subways emerged out of that great global mid-aughts movement that brought us The Strokes, The Killers, and Franz Ferdinand when corporate pop and dance music was seriously threatened for the first time in a while. And tonight’s good news continues, The Subways are still flagbearers. They still sound so immediate, youthful and fresh, and are still needed for the revolution we are fighting for in music which will not be machine made but just like this: stripped down with a great rock vocal that is timeless, one reminiscent of the great energy and irrepressible defiance of Liam Gallagher.

In between songs, and a stage dive where Singer Billy Lunn is caught and returned to the stage with love and care, Lunn regales us with pub-like fireside tales that we don’t write down because you had to be there. The band is gracious, warm, and approachable. The set is full and fulsome. The band banters with each other and gives each member their time in the spotlight, including a great drum solo-ish song (complete with spotlight lighting) for Josh Morgan. It’s the first North American trip for the band in eight years, and there is a definite, honest, and well-earned mutual appreciation society vibe. This band has traversed the open stages of Glastonbury, T in the Park, and more across Europe (2005’s “Rock & Roll Queen” was a massive chart hit in UK and North America and is an instant classic that gets a rousing response tonight, but is among other older and newer songs equally strong). You can hear this great potential in their sound even inside the walls of the mid-size Mod Club, and a definite wish is formed to see them again somewhere in the world among one of these festival crowds. Thousands of miles away from those storied fields of the great festivals, the crowd in Toronto is made to feel just as big, just as important. Rock n’ Roll with heart and grit will win. The revolution rolls on.

The Subways North American Spring Tour 2016 rolls on through May 3rd, with support from PINS (all dates). Get out there, West Coast!

The Subways. Facebook. Special Record Store Day release out on Pledge Music

The Subways are Billy Lunn, Charlotte Cooper & Josh Morgan.

PINS. Facebook.  Wild Nights LP on Bella Union

PINS are Faith Vern (vocals/guitar), Anna Donigan (bass), Lois Macdonald (guitar), Sophie Galpin (drums) & Kyoko Swann (synths/guitar).

Jacqueline Howell