Bands In The Park – Kettering
VENUE : Rockingham Road Pleasure Park, Kettering
LOCATION : At the bottom of Pollard Street, off Rockingham Road. Not easy to find, as there is no signposting from Rockingham Road itself
TIME : 3pm to 5pm, Sunday
TRANSPORT LINKS : From London, trains run from St. Pancras to Kettering.
From anywhere else, links are not great, but manageable. If you live in Wellingborough, Bedford, Leicester or Nottingham, you can get to Kettering by train. Following the moronic axing of the Northampton to Market Harborough line, which connected Northampton and Milton Keynes to the rest of the Midlands, you are stuck on an X4 Stagecoach bus. This takes a ridiculous hour and five minutes to complete a fourteen mile journey. At least it exists.
COMMENTS : It is now hard for me to assess the Kettering season, as I haven’t attended it since 2007. There have been problems in the past with anti-social behaviour, but I cannot say whether these have been addressed or not.
The standard of the 2009 season was not good, as there were more gap weeks than weeks where bands actually played. Even some of the weeks where bands did play featured “varieties”, and not proper brass or wind bands. Only four genuine brass bands played in Kettering in 2009.
I know there is an economic depression, but this is a town of 86,000 people, nearly three times the size of Leighton Buzzard. They should be able to do better than this.
MARK : 3/10
WHAT KETTERING COULD DO TO IMPROVE : Kettering Council needs to vastly improve on 2009. It should be possible for a town of 86,000 people to produce a three month season with a band every week. Leighton Buzzard manages it, with top quality bands as well, and they have a fraction of the budget that Kettering has.
The usual problems are all here – no guarantee of a seat unless you bring your own, no public conveniences in the park, no back-up venue for rained out events.
It would take very little effort for Kettering to vastly improve upon 2009. I only hope they will do so.
THE 2010 SEASON
Here is the link to the season. Sadly, it is pitiful once again with only four proper brass bands.
http://www.kettering.gov.uk/site/scripts/services_info.php?serviceID=1146