Vintage Vibes at East Lancashire Railway
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Vintage Vibes
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Where else could you find a Northern Soul dancefloor, wall-to-wall pop classics, and a legion of full-costume Stormtroopers?
Vintage Vibes returns to East Lancashire Railway on 23 and 24 May, taking over Bury for a gleefully bonkers bank holiday weekend of iconic music and retro pop culture. Spread across Bolton Street Station, The Trackside and a main stage in the station car park, the festival turns East Lancashire Railway’s heritage setting into part of the fun, with platforms, tracks and carriages sitting alongside stages, bars and stalls. It’s centred around the station, but there are smaller stages and acts dotted around the railway, too, with unlimited train travel included in the ticket.
As for the music, the programme spans genres and eras under the banner of ‘vintage’. Northern Soul has a proper place here, with The Signatures – house band for the Northern Soul Special on The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show (BBC 6 Music) – performing live with Lorraine Silver, and long-serving soul DJ Ian Gibbons behind the decks between acts.
The rest of the line-up doesn’t take itself too seriously. In fact, that’s kind of the point. Motown classics collide with Beatles revivalism, a Rat Pack swing band rolls into 80s synth-pop. Tina Turner, Cher and Queen all get their moment, too.
Between sets, there’s plenty else to keep the weekend ticking over. Food and drink vendors including Flying Pig Pizza, Bears Street Food and Prosecco Pot will be set up across the site, while So Retro’s vintage fair brings vinyl, band tees and homeware, adding a bit of rummage-and-browse nostalgia. And then, the big guns: the UK Garrison of the 501st Legion (that’s Star Wars cosplayers, for the uninitiated), will be on site throughout Saturday for photos. It’s exactly the kind of detail that pushes Vintage Vibes beyond straightforward tribute-festival territory and into something more eccentric – and all the more memorable for it.
Vintage Vibes knows exactly what kind of weekend it wants to be – an unselfconsciously fun day out where iconic music, vintage browsing and a slightly surreal sense of British pageantry all share the same track.
