Last weekend was the annual Country to Country festival at the O2 in London, and the 5th consecutive year that I’ve attended.
I stayed for the weekend in a self catering apartment – the StayCity apartments at Deptford Bridge. My thinking was that, as the main arena event goes on for more then 6 hours, I could shove a ready meal in the microwave on return to the apartment and not have to worry about buying the overpriced food in the arena. It worked quite well, I thought.
This year I went for 2 of the 3 nights; I went on Friday and Saturday. My highlights were seeing Lady Antebellum – the group which got me in to country music. I not only knew, but also own on CD, every song they played (apart from the new and unreleased material). My other favourites were Cam and Keith Urban.
In previous years I have occasionally been a little disappointed with some of the headliners, partly because the acoustics aren’t great in the cheap seats and they like turning the bass up. This time, there were no issues as far as I was concerned, and I was very impressed with everyone who played.
One of the main attractions of C2C is that, for the cost of 1 concert, you actually see 4 during the course of the main arena event, plus ‘up and coming’ artists on the Spotlight stage. Prior to the main event, there are a growing number of pop-up stages around the O2 complex – some of which are ticketed, some of them are completely free.
The pop-up stages over the yeard have introduced me to some very interesting country artists, not only from the US but also British ones as well.
I went for the correct Country music attire this time – My Aunt gave me a shirt which we decided looked very “Country & Western”, so on Saturday I went and bought myself the Stetson hat. There’s no going back now!
On my Corinium Radio show on Monday I’ll be doing my C2C special – tracks from artists at this year’s festival, as well as some favourites from previous years.
Don’t forget to tune in – Monday 18th March – 8pm.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s C2C event, and will look forward to hearing the announcements on the line-up which will probably be in the Autumn.
FH.
