What's it all About?
The Story of the Fringe, by Matt Bolton
To be a band in Leicester was once to exist so far on the edge of things you were in danger of falling off. To be blunt, no-one cared. True, every now and then a band would manage to break out of the shadow cast by the city’s turned back and emerge, blinking, into the light of national recognition (thank the lord for Cornershop and Prolapse), but it was generally just one at a time, alone, and the subsequent enthusiastic welcome from elsewhere only emphasised the relative coolness of the hometown response. A few hardy still-believers continued to strive to bring interesting, exciting bands to the city, and to construct a support network for those already there, but they faced a reaction of almost universal apathy. It seemed that while in some cities a thriving music scene is an ever-replenishing source of civic pride, in Leicester it was not so much an afterthought as an outright affront.
There was more to the launch of Summer Sundae in 2001 than an attempt to inject a shot of adrenaline into a failing local music scene. But whether intentional or not, one byproduct of bringing some of the best bands and artists, as well as a couple of thousand of fans, to the grounds of De Montfort Hall each year was the increased self-esteem of the city’s music community. Perhaps for the first time, Leicester had carved out an enduring space in the nation’s pop-culture consciousness. The willingness of the organisers to encourage local participation, with spots reserved on the festival’s stages for the most promising local acts, acted as a concrete foundation for this newfound confidence.
But of course, there are only so many Summer Sundae slots to go round. Not wanting to waste the opportunity provided by the few thousand music enthusiasts milling around the city in the days before the start of festival proper, leading figures within the Leicester scene - many linked with the caustic, cynical but unfailingly enthusiastic Pineapster website – set about establishing a fringe festival, the unashamed purpose of which was to promote the Leicestershire bands who hadn’t managed to get onto the main festival line up that year.
The plan was to hold four or five simultaneous gigs in venues across the city, with what began as transit vans and ended up as open-topped buses transporting festival goers from one to another. Even in a city with a strong history of support for local music, it would be wildly ambitious – for one traditionally riddled with indifference, it was plain stupid. But as a statement of faith in both the ability of the Leicester scene, and the appetite of Summer Sundae patrons for local, grassroots music, it was unmatched; and, as it turned out, it was a faith quickly repaid.
Everyone from the arts council, members of city stalwarts Showaddywaddy, Mercury Music Prize Judges and BBC 6 Music deejays were roped in to help, and the consequence was that the wealth of creativity that Leicester has always possessed, however woefully underappreciated, was brought from the shadows in a manner that made it impossible for the rest of the city to ignore any longer. By creating a ladder that links the local youngsters thrashing around in Stayfree or Big Wheel practice rooms to those internationally renowned bands on the main stage of Summer Sundae, the Fringe Festival has revived and refereshed the Leicester scene in a way unimaginable less than a decade ago.
Long may it continue.
Matt Bolton
Matt Bolton, former guitarist in redcarsgofaster played their penultimate swansong at the 2007 Summer Sundae Fringe Firebug Warm Up Party. Now a journalist, Bolton currently writes for the Guardian, Uncut and Lonely Planet Magazine.