When the music's over

"I and many others hope they learn from this year's mistakes and that Truck returns to rude good health in 2012", I wrote last month. No such luck - in fact, it turns out that even as I was writing that, the news was breaking that the company behind Truck had slid into liquidation, while inevitably the plug was pulled on the second Truck America event too.

While Truck's demise couldn't be attributed solely to stiff competition, a force beyond the organisers' control (as mentioned, there were plenty of misjudgements to factor in too), the festival's obituary in Nightshift was astute in noting that "its success in inspiring other festival organisers may in the long term have been its undoing". Michael Eavis' prediction that even Glastonbury might not be immune from the influence of apathy and market saturation can be taken with a pinch of salt, but other smaller festivals have suffered this year - like the Big Chill, for instance. Reading the comments to the Guardian's review of the first day, it seems as though the festival was far from sold out - though that has been largely attributed to Festival Republic making a complete hash of things in their first year running the show in 2010 (and, in fact, the smaller crowds this year helped make the site seem more spacious and the atmosphere more, well, chilled).

Still, there were some notable success stories this summer - Green Man, for instance. They've had it tough in the past too - unlike Truck, though, they somehow managed to come out the other side. In the run-up to this year's event, organiser Fiona Stewart spoke to local paper the Abergavenny Chronicle about how close the festival came to collapse in 2008, but was pleased to announce that the 2011 event had once again sold out. We loved it in 2007 and again last year, and I've had very good reports from this year's bash, at which the Cave Singers, Suuns, the Antlers, Explosions In The Sky and Fleet Foxes all apparently impressed. With Glastonbury taking a break next summer, hopefully we'll be back in Crickhowell in August - consistently clement weather would be a pleasant change, mind...