York Punk’s Picnic

Managed to elegantly miss the rain and took the pretend stage down to millennium bridge for this years Punk’s Picnic.

Fantastic sunny day, The Sex Cripples enjoyed a show despite Winston the Wind blowing everything over.

There was a great set from Dog Hand (minus the String Band) who sang songs about killing kids and throwing them down wells or something, lovely family day out 🙂

York Rally 2016

Phew! Still slightly glowing from the unexpected sunburn, this year’s expedition saw the return of The Crab Apples and Hexagon Chic, and the debut of the inimitable Petrol Cow at York Rally!

Hexagon Chic’s amazing storytelling absolutely captivated two younger visitors. Was a pleasure to bring our splashes of colour back to the Knavesmire on a very busy day! Thoroughly enjoyable, thanks again to Peter who was a star and made us feel really welcome  ðŸ™‚

Next up is Ladyfest at the Golden Lion in Todmorden on the 25th of June.

Petrol Cow @ York Rally 2016

Isle of Sock 2!

Isle of Sock 2! After last year’s amazing time we were very excited for this one and this time we had a lovely time too with passers-by on beer runs stopping for sangria and spontaneous skateboarding! Many thanks to Alex who was a star as always x

isle of sock 2

Woodsock 2

For our first outdoors event of 2016, we ventured outside after an epic night of cheese and made a cosy clearing in the middle of some trees and roasted some marshmallows – thanks to Sarah and Christian for those!

Fantastic to get out after a wet and cold winter!

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The sock is done and dusted for 2015!

So… that’s it for another year of pretend stage sock festivals, the next full blown installment with sculpture, light show and live bands will be at the end of March 2016 to celebrate the Hilaria with Woodsock 2. No doubt we will get the picnic sound system out and set up the wishing machine brazier to do jacket spuds at some point in the winter and perhaps a winter solstice event on Hob moor but nothing on quite the scale of what you can see in this short video clip:

Final sock festival of 2015.

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If you missed Woodsock in March and Isle of Sock in May you probably wont have a clue what this is about (especially since we lost our blog from the start of the year) we’ve had live acts and crazy party games all year and here we go again with our complete bicycle festival one more time to round off a great summer and everyone is invited. Believe every word on the flyer and keep an eye on this page or contact us for more info or if you are interested in performing at BURNING SOCK 2015.

ADAM Street Fair thanks!

A fantastic sunny day on Acomb Front Street, right in front of the working men’s club. The working men came out to have a look at us, and we had some lovely audience participation – thanks to Jonathan and Miriam for being a part of our show!

It was lovely to see some great smiles – this is how happy it made Kaitlin:

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Flying the spanner high today. Turned Acomb into YAYcomb!

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UFO SIGHTING IN THUNDERSTORM NEAR MILLENNIUM BRIDGE, YORK!

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X-daybq York 2015.

We got a little bit damp when the skies opened up but we had a great BBQ anyway and the evening was just lovely. Thanks to everyone who risked the scary weather, and our next adventure will be Acomb Dance And Music festival in front of the working mans club on Front Street Acomb from 11am to 4pm THIS SATURDAY. We will be playing as the Crab Apples on our own stage somewhere around noon. Come see us play in the middle of the street! Free as always. Bargain at twice the price.

Post Rally.

 

carrton(YO! VIOLATION at York Cycle Rally 2015, photograph by Chris Hartnup)

Everything is neatly packed away and recharged after The Pretend Stage went to York Cycle Rally for the first time.

Midsummer is a busy time for us so we had to make a choice between venues for our party and I am happy to say we made the right one, the rally was great fun with crazy home made inventions all around and people hell bent on getting everything they can out of the world around them.

We managed to attract a crowd in the rain and then coax the sun out from behind the clouds with a properly bizarre show. York rally marks the first event where the content of The Pretend Stage has been 100% live performed by the original artists. It sounded amazing.

Thanks to Bingersuk for being our token lad and bringing very traditional and lovely and at the same time absolutely contemporary songwriting and performance, Hexagon Chic for bringing something unique, fascinating and devastatingly fresh (and covered with melted cheese) and Yo! Violation for tearing the heart out of an aerobics instructor from Miami and holding it aloft for all to witness.

Our act for the day ‘The Crab Apples’ went down a treat too!

Even more thanks to everyone from York Rally 2015 especially those who came up to talk to us as we packed down the stage. We fitted 4 acts into 3 hours somehow so we were about as busy as we could be and didn’t have that much time to look around and chat so it was wonderful to receive not only gratitude for our effort and encouragement for our future but also tales of cycling adventure and great travelling achievements. I thought I was tough for riding from Birmingham to Bristol and the lady stood next to me had been from Bradford to Croatia!

York Cycle Rally is the bomb, check it out or miss out again next year!

 

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