FESTIVAL season is now well and truly upon us, and I’m writing this at Bearded Theory in Derbyshire. The weather is absolutely glorious.

I seem to remember that the original idea of this festival, a decade and a half or so ago, was to get as many people as possible into the same field wearing false beards (a strange ambition, but one met with considerable success) and in the early years I recall playing on a wooden pallet while a tornado ripped the roof off the fragile-looking main stage just before New Model Army were supposed to play.

From those beginnings it has evolved into what is definitely my favourite outdoor festival of the year, now that our own Glastonwick has changed its name to Alive at the Barn and gone back indoors after three decades.

Put simply, Bearded Theory is like Glastonbury was 30 years ago — relaxed and compact, a lovely, friendly crowd, a mixture of bands old and new and absolutely no “semi-ironic” shit corporate headliners.

And the Something Else Tea Tent, programmed by the inimitable and lovely Gail, is like a condensed Green Fields and Cabaret Stage. Yesterday I saw the amiably anarchist bilingual Welsh singer-songwriter Efa Supertramp, perennial ball of energy Wob, acoustic ska-punkers Boom Boom Racoon, the decidedly Crassy (like the shouty punk band Crass) Amass and techno monsters Killdren, interspersed with a magnificent performance by The Unthanks on the Woodland Stage. Variety is the spice of life.

Last week I had storming gigs in Marple, supported by the excellent Reformers of Peterloo — mentioned here a couple of weeks ago — and at the lovely Salty Dog in my wife’s hometown of Northwich, and then found myself with a free day because Brighton’s away game at Leeds had been moved to the Sunday. So I joined my friends Rachel and Mark at Get Together, a festival of new music held across several venues in the historic and picturesque Kelham Island quarter of Sheffield.

I love seeing new bands half my age, and love it even more if they create a sound I haven’t heard before. That was certainly the case with Silverwingkiller, and the sound was Test Department being attacked by a death metal band in a wind tunnel. They went down like a house on fire, to use a strangely appropriate metaphor.

Best band I saw was Formal Sppeedwear, a wondrous Gang of Four-y mash with a virtuoso bassist as singer. In my pre-Attila musical larval stage I too was a flamboyant bass player, and found combining that with singing totally impossible. So hats off.

But… the NAMES of some of the bands. I know that our rock ’n’ roll culture, or whatever you want to call it, has existed for 70 years now and we got most of the good names a long time ago, but make an effort, for f*ks sake! The two above are just weird, which is OK, but if you call yourselves City Parking or Train Replacement Bus Service all you do is get confused with the actual literal things, as actually happened when I was planning the initial rendezvous with my friends on arrival last week.

It’s noon, the sun’s shining the utterly brilliant Jess Silk has just begun her set at Bearded Theory and I’m typing these words watching her. Here’s a picture. And one of the queue waiting to get in to see her. The voice of her generation!

The world is falling apart, but as New Model Army once said, today is a good day.

Cheers everyone.

Bearded Theory festival runs until May 24. See: beardedtheory.co.uk