If it’s a challenge syncing with touring schedules, it is also something of an issue to have a gender balance in music and arts line-ups. In the UK, the figure for registered female songwriters is 16 per cent . Looking at the situation pragmatically, does Benn ever see gender balance in festivals being equal? Such an eventuality, he says, is very feasible.
“It gives young female artists – who have no record contract, no agent, manager, that type of thing – their first opportunity to record professionally in a studio for four or five days, with proper engineers, where they can develop their first professionally made recordings. That’s something I’ve been doing in the UK for a little while – of course, it needs a little bit more proactivity from a lot of people in order to make that change, but there’s no question in my mind that we will get there.
Speaking of The Smiths, it should be noted that while performing at this year’s Glastonbury festival, UK pop singer Rick Astley – the man who you know will never, ever give you up or let you down – teamed up with Greater Manchester band Blossoms to perform a set of Smiths songs. So, you know, one never knows what may happen, right?The Lightning Seeds performed earlier this summer at the United By Music Tour Of Liverpool event at the Eurovision Village in Liverpool, England.
It is almost 40 years since the Saw Doctors formed in Co Galway, and in the interim period a few things have made themselves known: they go away for years and then return; they have two steadfast members, Leo Moran and Davy Carton; and whenever they play a gig in Ireland they receive a level of adulation you rarely witness.The reason for this Irish band reforming is the 15th anniversary of their 2008 debut album, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion.