Just got back from meeting Ian for the first time. Lovely bloke. Saw the famous CCM 41Vs, too; very tasty. Here's hoping the weather holds out for him in Manchester this weekend. It's been highly changeable already today.
Well, thank you kindly, Stephen. It was great to meet you, too.
The cardioids were a lost cause in Heaton Park, due to a lethal combination of rowdiness, flying beer, daylight and rain.
The only safe and sane place to record from was the back of the pit, where the sound was also great, as it happens. That would have solved the flying beer problem, but the cables would have been a dead give-away in the daylight and it was impossible to remain even remotely still, due to the people pushing through the crowd all the time. Then there was the rain that came down on Saturday and looked as if it might come down at any moment on Friday, too.
In the end, I just couldn't risk such expensive equipment in a hostile environment where there was a real chance of damage.
Still, I got pulls of the Stone Roses on all three nights with the DPAs, the Sunday of which is actually really quite good. The other two are more in the category of enjoyable mementos for those who were there. I recorded some of the supports, too, but have yet to master those. The Roses sets are already up on DIME, though.