Come Together, Newcastle: Why this city needs and deserves an annual music festival | Chronicle Live

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Newcastle has embraced the Come Together festival on the Town Moor with another night still to go - let's make it annual

The Chronicle team has watched with excitement over the past couple of weeks as a huge stage and festival village were built on the Town Moor and the final preparations completed for Newcastle's first outdoor music festival in a long while.

It has been fantastic to see Newcastle literally come together for a festival of the same name and embrace the opportunity to pin the city firmly to the summer festival calendar. The opening night of Come Together saw top acts Andrew Cushin, Perrie and Kaiser Chiefs deliver excellent performances to a chilly but joyful crowd before Robbie Williams stole the show with his headline set and a dazzling pyrotechnic display that lit up the sky.

Come Together is Newcastle's first rock and pop music festival since This Is Tomorrow came to an end back in 2021. And judging by the crowds of happy faces that gathered to welcome Robbie, sing and dance on the Town Moor this Wednesday, it's not before time and very welcome indeed.

This is a vibrant party city, known for its eating out and nightlife scene and its friendly revellers. And this is a city, and region, where stars who are rightly proud of their North East roots are born and developed - the roll of honour of North East musical legends would take some unfurling. It was particularly lovely to see South Shields' Perrie Edwards perform her first solo gig on home turf as part of Come Together this week, and even better when Robbie brought her back on stage to duet with him on Relight My Fire.

Whether or not you're into football, you couldn't fail to be caught up in the buzzing atmosphere in and around the city after Newcastle United's Carabao Cup win back in March. The subsequent open top bus parade through the city and down to the Town Moor brought in crowds of 300,000 and unforgettable scenes of jubilation and celebration. That showed that there's no party quite like a Newcastle party, and that when we have something to celebrate we get behind it in our droves and give it our all.

So this is absolutely a city that deserves, and can sustain, its own music festival - one that should aspire to be a key date on the UK's map of summer festival events and secure the biggest and most exciting headliners.

We have terrific bars and restaurants in the city centre that would love the economic boost that an annual influx of gig-goers would bring. We have the unique and special green space that the Town Moor offers, just a few minutes' walking distance from the city's transport interchanges.

And most of all we have the passion for music, for live entertainment and for coming together to sing, dance and celebrate that helps to create a sense of festival loyalty and buzz year after year. You need to listen no further than the beautiful sound of Newcastle serenading Robbie Williams as the entire audience sang Angels back at him on Wednesday to see that a summer singalong is something Newcastle would adore.

After all, this is the city where a group of people came together at Grey's Monument one random December night to belt out a rendition of Toto's Africa for absolutely no reason whatsoever. We don't just deserve a music festival - we clearly need one!

We still have another night of Come Together to look forward to on Friday - and at the time of writing, tickets for Kings of Leon were still available, a rare chance to see a huge US rock band play in the Toon. Let's get behind this first new event and show that Newcastle is absolutely ready to embrace summer festival culture. We'll hopefully see you on the Town Moor next year!

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