Ladies and Gentlemen, please be upstanding for the other headline act appearing at the 2008 Final Fling:
There appears to be a worrying trend at the moment for bands to imagine that they are a modern day Bob Dylan, believing they have the skill to pepper their music with reflections on the horrid state of the nation. It’s all very admirable to highlight these apparent shortcomings but it can all get a little bit too serious and well, boring. For every Morrissey or Alex Turner there’s a Tom Clarke or Johnny Borrell spouting a holier-than-thou attitude which really grates after a while...how many more times do we need to hear about how life is unbearable when living on the breadline? It gets to the point where you long for a band to give you a break from the doom and gloom, to take your mind off the sorry state of affairs we live in and just make you dance like a hyperactive nine year old on Haribo. You need a band that will make you forget about everything for the next three minutes- apart from the insanely catchy indie-rock funk that is luring you onto the dance floor. If you’ve never listened to the Liverpool-based trio before, we’ve concocted a handy step by step to imagine what a Wombats gig is like:
1. Purchase a bottle of Sunny Delight
2. Collect all your mates in one room
3. Lie upside down
4. Down the bottle of sugary delights
5. Try and stand up
6. Giggle insanely
It sounds weird, but trust us, listening to The Wombats is that much fun. Since first releasing Moving To New York back in 2007 the Wombats mission has been simple: write songs that hop, skip and jump into your brain and refuse to shift. Carrying on the trend set by four local Liverpudlians back in the sixties, The Wombats have crafted songs full of sing-along choruses and perky pop guitars that have hypnotised many a gig-goer into believing they are some kind of human pogo as they leap around grinning inanely. Just a take a listen to their long-player, the beautifully titled A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation to uncover fuzz-pop gems such as Kill The Director (featuring the absurdly genius lyric “This Is no Bridget Jones”) the NME award winning ironic masterpiece of Let’s Dance To Joy Division and the instantly likable Backfire At the Disco- choc a bloc with bouncing harmonies and choppy guitar despite being about a pretty bad date that ends with a slap to the chops.
Come the Final Fling, as the opening bars of Let’s Dance To Joy Division start sounding out, you’ll realise it’s that time of the evening when the bow tie gets cast off and you lose the high heels and you turn to your mates and you realise, that right there, right then, it really couldn’t get any better. If their recent sell-out tour is any indicator, it won’t be long until the lads step up into the big league and move onto even bigger dance floors, so seeing them in this setting really is going to be a one off. With the anthemic brilliance of Feeder and the joyful exuberance of The Wombats, the Fling has all the ingredients to be one of those nights you won’t easily forget.
And if that wasn't enough musical wonderment to contend with, we've also got that other marvellous act for you...
If there was ever a book written about British Rock it would make for very interesting reading. The trials and tribulations that bands go through all in the pursuit of fame, releasing albums met with critical acclaim and widespread adulation one minute, and total apathy and disinterest the next, would certainly be a page turner. If you were to flick through to the section marked ‘F’ you would read about a band who have firmly taken up residency in the hearts of the nation. A band that have eschewed fads and bandwagons and focused on writing songs that soundtrack the times when you feel at your most ebullient and times when you feel the whole world is against you. Many bands claim to be rock royalty; few have the back catalogue or the sales to back it up. Ladies and Gentlemen, Flingers everywhere, we are more than excited to announce the first act playing at the 2008 Final Fling. The all-conquering, multi-million selling, stadium rocking….
Without a doubt, the biggest band we’ve ever had at the Final Fling and one of the biggest alternative rock bands in the UK. Since 1997 Feeder have become the Festival Band du jour. From the trench foot threatening mud fests to the blistering- albeit rare- British summer days, Feeder have the clout, the skill and more importantly the songs to draw in the crowd and send everyone into a mosh-pit frenzy one minute and reaching for the lighter the next. The chances are you own a Feeder album or you own a couple of their singles or at the very least you have a track you can hum. They write songs that people relate to and even in the face of adversity, such as the tragic suicide of original drummer Jon Lee; they always carve out gutsy chunks of music.
The Feeder back-catalogue is a bit like the cast of Friends; everyone has their favourite. There’s the angst-ridden bubblegum-metal of ‘High’ and ‘Insomnia’ which borrowed some of the bombastic pop-melodies Smashing Pumpkins are so experienced at. There’s the blitzkrieg pop of songs such as ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Just A Day’, and there’s the melancholic marvel of songs like ‘Just The Way I’m Feeling’ and ‘Forget About Tomorrow’ which wouldn’t sound out of place on a U2 record. With their rock star homes littered with numerous awards and their walls covered in platinum and gold discs, Feeder are the kind of rock titans a show stopping event such as the Final Fling deserves. They’re playing the main stage at Reading and Leeds and we’ve got them first.
We wanted to make the Final Fling better than ever, and we think we’ve done it. Just imagine it, you, your mates, drinking cider from a lemon and Feeder. It really doesn’t get any better now does it…
More special guests are to be announced, so keep checking back for more details. Previous acts include Scissor Sisters, Ash, Amy Winehouse, Sugababes, Idlewild and Hard-Fi, so rest assured the acts will be of the highest calibre and won’t disappoint!