10 things you missed at Dot to Dot Festival

1. Nottingham’s clubs becoming host to a load of great bands

The main roads got closed off, face painters and street poets lined the streets and Rock City became a far cry from Crisis nights as a whole host of bands took to stages across various venues for a whole 12 hours of great music.

2. The Minutes

The great thing about festivals like this is that you have lots of time to explore between big acts as everything is in very short distance.

The Minutes played the upstairs room at Spanky Van Dyke’s, beneath a big chandelier and with a pretty cool light show in the back. Hailing from Dublin and labelled as one of the city’s must-see acts, they did their first official headline show in 2011 – rock music with some belting choruses and tight drum solos.

They bought some great energy considering there are just three of them.

3. Peace

This band get better and better.

Tracks off their debut album ‘In Love’ seem to be well-known now by crowds and their melodic indie rock sounds brilliant now the band are more sophisticated performance-wise.

It was great to hear new songs off their upcoming album in a live setting.

4. Harry Koisser’s Hair

Peace’s frontman is currently sporting hair in a delightful shade of orange. Think more neon than carrot.

 5. Band of Jackals

With some fierce energy and a song that featured a whistled chorus, they’ll definitely appear on the mainstream radar soon.

6. Wolf Alice

With a young Johnny Rotten on guitar and a lead singer who looks too young to be at the venue, Wolf Alice brought what Clash have labelled as “the lovechild of folk and grunge” to Rock City main stage.

The mosh pits were seriously ferocious which is generally a good indicator of how popular the band is – and for good reason.

7. Macaulay Culkin playing the kazoo and singing about pizza

The child star we all know as Kevin McAllister of Home Alone now spends his days in a Velvet Underground tribute band, aptly named Pizza Underground.

They only sing about pizza and they introduced every song with “this one’s about pizza”, with seemingly little irony.

Featuring the well-known Lou Reed anthem altered to “It’s such a pizza day, I’m glad I spent it with you”, someone played a pizza box, Macaulay made some sweet music on the kazoo and footage of a spinning pizza filled the screen behind them. Brilliant.

8. Pizza Underground’s disastrous exit

Despite their genius, some members of the crowd (hyped after moshing to Wolf Alice) didn’t seem to have any appreciation for pizza music and kazoo solos.

Why they were on at peak time in the biggest venue is very questionable (organisers I’m looking at you), but nevertheless, they still didn’t deserve to be soaked in beer and booed off, much to the majority’s disappointment.

Drenge, the following act,  threw their own drinks over the crowd after their set was finished (oh the drama).

They passed round pizza and then were forced to leave – that is not how you treat pizza-bearers.

9. Spanky Van Dyke’s got super cool

Firstly, the avocado and bacon burgers are a gift from the gods.

Secondly, Spanky’s became the hang out of choice for many of the bands. Peace had a few drinks with friends whilst Saint Raymond’s lead singer mulled about the bar. Go Spanky’s.

10. Something to take home

The day’s programme only went and turned into a house, a pretty cool end to the day.