With the likes of Reading and Leeds and, albeit a slightly different target market, Creamfields taking place the same weekend, not to mention a number of high profile sporting events such as Wigan Warrior's Challenge Cup Final game at Wembley, a slew of football games on Saturday and what turned out to be an absolute drubbing of Arsenal by Man Utd on the Sunday, there were a lot of other events all competing for our potential customers' attention.
And that's before we even get into the fact that people just like to get away for a break over Bank Holiday weekends.
So it was absolutely imperative in the weeks and months leading up to the event that we had everything spot on.
A number of last-minute cancellations from several artists led to last-minute replacements being drafted in, we had emergency trips to Manchester to spend upwards of £200 on new speakers and a final briefing on the Thursday night (not long after our impressive 40ft stage arrived) ironed out any final problems.
Thursday and Friday's local press gave us some superb coverage, as did a series of online outlets and by the time we were ready to roll, the only thing that could possibly let us down was the weather.
Which it did, in a big way.
We were on site by 10am Saturday morning amidst some of the worst wind and rain I've seen all year. Undettered, we loaded amps, hung banners, set up the house drum kit and hooked up the mixing desk.
Then, we sat.
By the end of the festival, we were all in agreement that this was one of the most surreal elements of the entire weekend; there'd be a mad dash in a morning to get everything set up, followed by an odd moment of calm when we all took a breather, sat around the desk drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes then, before any of us had realised it, we were three bands in and Millstone Rocks was in full-swing.
As it happened, it was about the time when the third band of Saturday's opening day, Skive, took to the stage that we were fully settled and in control of the event.
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| 'Team Awesome' have everything under control |
Which isn't exactly as bad as it sounds.
After the hugely enjoyable duo of Dayve Dean got the event underway, we found ourselves faced with a two-hour gap thanks to a bit of last-minute rescheduling of the line-up. Thankfully, I'd ensured that Colour Me Blind (scheduled to perform on the Sunday) were all on hand should such problems arise, and did a more than satisfactory job of filling in.
From Skive onwards, we pretty much ran the entire weekend without much in the way of serious problems.
Our incomparable Sound Engineer Danny had everything sounding awesome, Stage Manager Stew did a fantastic job, and though I try not to let my ego get the better of me in these things, I'm confident in saying I handled my role as Event Manager well; troubleshooting, keeping everything running smoothly and to schedule, liaising with the technical team, artists, venue owners and volunteers to make sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing, and taking care of all those other little bits and pieces that usually fall to the Event Manager.
In between all that, I was also responsible for jumping on and off stage all day to introduce bands and warm up the crowd in another enjoyable gig as a compere.
After all that, 10pm arrived and we spent the next hour or two unloading the stage, packing everything away and sitting down for a quick debrief, going over the successes and challenges of the day and discussing how we could learn from the following day.
It was usually sometime around midnight when I finally arrived home, 1am by the time my head hit the pillow and 8am by the time I was up again to do the whole thing again.
Artist wise, I didn't see a bad band all weekend, and every single person who took to the stage over the weekend was a pleasure to work with.
Personally, I utterly enjoyed Saturday's headliners, Mother's Country, who's dirty blues and rock 'n' roll inspired set, complete with a very welcome cover of The Doors, was sadly their final gig ever, along with bands like Titors Insignia, The Sonic Revolvers and Monday's headline act, 5X5, who's frontwoman Jess epitomises charisma and stage presence, and who pleased this blogger greatly with a cover of his favourite Smashing Pumpkins tune, Bullet with Butterfly Wings.
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| Jess of 5X5 |
And of course, it probably goes without saying that the ever-awesome Jeramiah Ferrari were the talk of the festival.
Speaking of praise, we heard nothing but great feedback from bands, festival-goers and the Millstone's owners all weekend.
Not only that, but with around £700 raised for Help for Heroes purely through donations, I think we did pretty well.
The typical British weather stopped nobody from having a great time and everyone worked well together to ensure Millstone Rocks was such a success that our little team (from here on in dubbed Team Awesome) have been asked back to run Millstone Rocks II, complete with a second stage, on May Bank Holiday 2012.
Bring it on!
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| With Danny, Stu, Millstone landlord Anthony and Jeramiah Ferrari |
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