Sheftival 2012: Saturday 4th August

Words cannot describe how excited I was when I was told about Sheftival. I'd never heard anything about it, then my mate said 'oi raven, Toots and the Maytals are playing sheffield in a couple of weeks'. I couldn't believe it! Toots is a bloody legend, he is credited with inventing the word Reggae in the song Do The Reggay, he's one of the pioneers of reggae. To find out he's playing not far from me for only a tenner, was amazing! Couldn't miss it. There was loooads of people on the line-up, but I only went for Toots, and The Selecter.

I was very hungover from the night before - this was the day after the Skints, and I only ended up getting a couple of hours sleep anyway - so i almost, almost considered not going. But, I put Toots + the Maytals on the stereo, and it gave me the strength to power through my hangover and get the bus into town. I met Max and Alex, and we got the best hangover cure there is:

More Beer. Which quite frankly made me feel extremely ill, along with the train shaking about. But I just about managed 2 or 3. Anyway, we arrived at Don Valley Bowl where the festival was, about 6 o clock. It was the first time i'd been to DVB since the Arctic Monkeys homecoming gig last year (which was probably the best gig of my life).

It was weird seeing The Selecter. I saw them when I was about 3 years old, and it's probably my earliest memory. I remember being held by my mum whilst they were on stage - I don't remember the music, I just remember it being them. So to see them live nearly 15 years later was pretty weird! They managed to get the crowd going pretty well - lots of old Skinheads were skanking! A couple of people were definitely off their head aswell, haha. Their set was only short, 40 minutes at the most, but It was good. James Bond was probably the highlight of the set, along with On My Radio and Too Much Pressure.

After their set, we made it over to the Juju World Music stage. Macka B was on the stage, someone i'd never heard of, but was pretty good. He sang a song about what food he liked to eat, which was bizarre but pretty funny. There was a pretty long wait between Macka B and Toots, so we sat down for a bit and chilled. When he finally came on.. it was so so so so so good. He opened with Pressure Drop, which is a beautiful song!! One of my favourite Reggae songs ever. His set included the classics Monkey Man (famously covered by the Specials), 54-46 Was My Number, Louie Louie, Funky Kingston and many more. It was a great set and i'm so happy I can now say I've seen both The Wailers and Toots + The Maytals live. Arguably the 2 biggest reggae artists ever!