Celtronic climax lights up city walls.

(From Newsletter)

ITOS festival time yet again.

At venues all over this walled city, dance music lovers from home and far afield have been partying the night away as the Celtronic 2005 Festival zooms towards itOs weekend climax. The DJs ETH dance acts that will have fans flocking to even more gigs include, tomorrow, Stephen Porter and Martin Wheeler, as well as 2020 Sound System record labelOs own act making its Northern Ireland debut.

On Sunday crowd pullers bringing the festival of dance music ETH from hip hop to reggae to funk ETH to a close will include Paul McClean, Paul Hamill and Tom Middleton.

Last weekend, of course, it was the Glastonbury Festival that grabbed the attention and one of the joys of watching it all on television is that you wonOt wake up early one morning and find your matress floating on a sea of mud and bovine scatalogy. The weather was so bad that Mickey Bradley of The Undertones came back reluctant to play any festival again.

Thankfully the sun appropriately came out for Brian Wilson whose repertoire of Beach Boys hits was a Sunday afternoon joy to behold but also on the Sabbath I was reminded just how good a singer Ruby Turner was when she had appeared at LondonderryOs Millennium Forum last year with Jools Holland and his Rythim and Blues Orchestra. They teamed up again for a stupendous Glastonbury performance of BlowinO In The Wind, the Bob Dylan classic.

I was interested during the BBC 2 TV coverage to hear that the late lamented John Peel was greatly annoyed by people who hoist, mainly girls, onto their shoulders at rock shows and festivals completely blocking the view of those immediately ...