30 years since first T in the Park – has anything compared since?

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the first T in the Park music festival, held at Strathclyde Country Park over the weekend of July 30 and 31, 1994.

I travelled there in a pal’s over-loaded car – I was in the boot space – and remember the general air of excitement suffusing the place as it filled up and the first acts took to the stage in the warm summer sunshine.

I watched Bjork on the main stage but eventually deserted Saturday headliners Rage Against The Machine to catch Blur’s headline set on the King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut stage, housed then in a cavernous (and very hot) tent. It’s still one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen.

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The following day I was one of those trying to squeeze in to see Oasis on the same stage. In vain, as it turned out. Primal Scream were the Sunday headliners, and also on the bill over the weekend were Pulp, Manic Street Preachers and Cypress Hill. Not a bad line-up for a fledgling rock festival.

By the time T in the Park emptied its last bottle of Buckfast in 2016, the festival landscape had changed completely however. Dozens of so-called ‘boutique’ rock festivals catering to niche tastes had arrived on the scene to offer diversity and provide more of a geographical spread.

Some of these established themselves, many didn’t. At the same time, Glastonbury was increasingly sucking the oxygen out of the festival business, to the point where it’s now a national TV institution to rank alongside The Proms and Wimbledon. Today, there’s Glastonbury and there’s everyone else.

The current heavy-hitters in Scotland are Glasgow’s TRNSMT and Edinburgh’s Connect Music Festival. Connect was held twice in the grounds of Inveraray Castle in 2007 and 2008, went into hibernation, then came out of deep sleep in 2022 when it set up just outside the capital. The 2024 festival has been cancelled, though indications are it will return next year.

Both festivals have significant promotional muscle behind them but still neither can match T in the Park. They have some of the ingredients which contributed to its success and to the general affection in which it is held by both punters and musicians – you could camp at Connect, for instance, and the initial venue on Loch Fyne was certainly spectacular – but not enough to make either a true successor. As the 30th anniversary rolls around, the fact is worth reflecting on. Here you can read more on the trials, tribulations and respective merits of Scotland’s rock festivals as well as some of the challenges facing them.

Double tops

Two Scottish acts have been nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, part of a 12-strong list which includes Brit Award winners The Last Dinner Party and all-conquering pop behemoth (and woman-of-the-moment) Charli XCX. If you like a bet, that pair are the bookies’ favourites.

The Scots are Barry Can’t Swim, stage name of Edinburgh-born dance music producer Joshua Mainnie, and Glasgow-based jazz band corto.alto, led by trombone player Liam Shortall and also featuring former Mercury Music Prize nominee Fergus McCreadie. They’re nominated for the albums When Will We Land? and Bad With Names respectively.

“I’m over the moon, I honestly can’t believe it,” Mainnie said. “The Mercury Prize is an award I’ve paid a lot of attention to over the years, so many brilliant artists and incredible albums come through there. So for my debut album to be included, is just a huge huge privilege.”

It isn’t the first time there has been significant Scottish interest in the award. The Delgados and Helicopter Girl were both nominated in 2000, and when Primal Scream won in 1994 they beat a field which also contained The Jesus And Mary Chain. In 2004, both Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian were on the list of nominees alongside eventual winners Franz Ferdinand.

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It’s a standing joke among Mercury Music Prize watchers that a jazz band is always nominated but never wins because they’re only there as a token gesture. A nod to musical diversity, if you like. That was turned on its head last year when Ezra Collective took home the award and, though corto.alto are well down the list of favourites, their inclusion is another fillip for a Scottish jazz scene which is going from strength to strength.

Here you can read more about the Mercury Music Prize list as well as a run-down of the who, what and why of the Scottish jazz renaissance.

Exit stage left

Playwright David Greig is calling time on his eight year stint as Artistic Director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre and has announced that the 2024/25 season will be his last in the hot seat. And a hot seat is very much what it has been as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and an ever-repeating cycle of cuts to arts funding. To put it in terms a learned cove like Mr Greig would understand, the job of running a producing theatre and making the numbers add up is positively Sisyphean these days.

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Your correspondent has heard from his own lips many a time the problems he has faced, particularly where enticing audiences back into theatres is concerned. Undeterred, he has still been able to roll out hits, such as acclaimed crowd-pleaser Pride & Prejudice (Sort Of), and maintain the venue as one of Scotland’s best and most exciting. And maybe theatre’s loss is, well, theatre’s gain: Mr Greig intends to return to his first love, writing plays.

And finally

Returning to the world of prizes, this time of the literary sort, this year’s Booker Prize longlist has just been announced and features Sarah Perry’s novel Enlightenment alongside novels by Percival Everett, Colin Barrett, Hisham Matar and others. You can read my interview with Sarah Perry here.