Happy Mondays: Macc Fest 2018

We were delighted to be asked back to provide the complete audio production and systems for Macclesfield Festival in it's second year; Headlined by music legends The Happy Mondays!

At DD Music Group we love it when the events we work with just keep getting bigger and better each year, and we do our best to help make that happen; That's why when we got the call to say who was headlining this year our team got very excited.

The Happy Monday's are a band who defined a genre and gave inspiration to artists like Oasis, Kasabian and Arctic Monkeys; all of whom would not exist without the Monday's leading the way back in the 80's. Their own brand of "Mad-Chester" brought people together who stood against the zeitgeist, with the philosophy of the none stop party and living life to the extreme.

Last year was the festivals first ever year and was the brainchild of the team at Monopoly events; These guys are seasoned in the events game but had never hosted a music festival of this scale before, especially outdoors! With an amazing team of people and some slick organisation skills from everybody involved they managed to pull together a family festival of proportions nobody could have expected, and one that catered for thousands of people across all ages, with four stages of entertainment including last years main stage with The Brand New Heavies and The Farm. Back at it a second year the team wanted to build on the immense success of 2017's festival and make this event a calendar staple for everybody in the local area. Safe to say that they have definitely done just that, with this years festival bringing in thousands of people from across the county to join in the fun and revel in the electric atmosphere that swept across the whole site.

On the main stage we deployed our RCF HDL20 line array; flying 8 elements either side of the stage with 12 of our festival subs in a triple end fire centre cluster giving earth shaking low end, the control package included our brand new MIDAS Pro 1 at front of house and our K&F CA1201 monitors were the stage wedge of choice for this particular show.

From the moment the first act hit the stage people were ready to have a great time but it was The Manchester Ska Foundation who just took this energy to the next level with their antics whipping the crowd into a frenzy almost immediately; a sea of chequered hats, braces and "skanking" came seemingly out of nowhere as if the people of Maccfest had been suddenly transformed.

Another memorable performance came from local legends the Virgin Marys for which this was their first hometown show in several years. The lads have been full time touring to promote their own style of aggressive hard rock sounds around the globe; Picked by Slash as one of his features in Classic Rock Magazine we found ourselves singing along to familiar tracks that had everybody's head banging.

We look forward to seeing where this great festival goes in 2019..... If this year is anything to go by, we can't wait!!!

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