Should be a much better festival with it all being in the same complex alright - will be interested to see the lineup - usually quite predictable but always a few suprises in there.

fewer venues means fewer acts and shorter sets no?

further out of the city too..

the fact that it was previously in temple bar meant that more people went to it..

i thought the meeting house square was great...

agree with benni on spirit..awful awful place......

not so sure about the pod complex at all......

Meeting House Square was terrible owing to the noise limitation set as its a residential area - little guy with a d/b monitor sitting behind the sound desk asking for it to be turned down constantly. POD Complex should be much better, Crawdaddy is one of the best venues in town by a mile.

Should be interesting having it in one place. The Pod complex is giant though, so there should be plenty of room. Might have to enlarge the smoking area towards Camden St though!

I do like the Pod complex, but one of the things I really enjoyed about HWCH was the running around from venue to venue. Town was always buzzing with like minded souls, looking a bit frantic, gripping their schedules, arguing with their mates over which gig would be better... I guess we're all just getting a bit old these days, I'll also enjoy the nice band rooms and improved sound this year.

Only thing about the Pod complex is though that its one huge venue and then a number of much smaller ones. I presume everyone will be hoping for a slot in Tripod.

Agree about Crawdaddy though - it is a great venue if a little small. On the other hand I'm sure bands would prefer to play to a packed Crawdaddy rather than an empty Tripod...

Does any one know when there being announced?

i personally feel that they should get venues like the Sugar Club and Whelans involved along with Crawdaddy and TBMC and the TB Square and you have yourself a great selection of quality venues all within a 10-15 minute stroll (and obligatory LUAS bunk) of each other.

From looking at the website (www.hwch.net), they will be 5 rooms in total, the 3 named above & 2 as yet, unnamed new rooms; "the two rooms which are approx 300 capacity and are on the same floor as tripod."

My main concern over the weekend will be, will we be allowed in & out of the POD Complex over the weekend as we please? To get some food, meet friends, or simply to dive into another pub for a pint of 'not Budweiser'.

Also, I see the ticket price has risen 50% ...

Bands are up on the HWCH website: I've starred "***" the ones I'll be looking forward to seeing. I'll probably just have a wander for the 3 days and see some bands at random as well.

Aleko ***
Alias John & The Ape Parade
Alphastates
Angel Pier
Autumn Owls
Betamax Format
Butterfly Explosion
Cathy Davey
Channel One
Chrome Horse
Colenso parade
Cry Yuma
Chicks
Dark Room Notes ***
DALI
Declan de Barra
Dirty Epics
Disfunktional
Distractors
Dry County ***
Erik Eckhart
Elspeth
Evil Harrissons
Fifteen Minutes
Fight Like Apes
Floyd Soul and the Wolf
Gavin Glass
Gavin Ryan
Grand Pocket Orchestra
Halves ***
Ham Sandwich
Hassle Merchants
Herm
Hooray for Humans
Ilya K
Jaded Sun
Jenny Lindfors
JODAVINO
Kill City Defectors
Le Bien
Leanbh
Loko Parentis
Los Langeros
Michael Knight
MIGALINX
Mick Duffy
Miriam Ingram
Mocrac
My Brother Woody
New Amusement
Noise Control
Not Men But Giants
Offshore
OMB and the Furious Tree
One Day International
Panda Kopanda
Paranoid Visions
Paula Flynn
Push Borders
Queen Kong
Ray Heffernan
Rhob
Seeping Into Cinemas
Stoat
Straglers
Sub Rosa
Super Extra Bonus Party
Ten Past Seven
The Black Tokens
The Blonde Majority
The Chapters
The Chakras
The Elliots
The Flaws
The Ghostwood Project
The Keds
The Kybosh
The Laundry Shop
The Minutes
The Negative Way
The Radio
The Sensors
The Terribles
Tidal District
Twinkranes ***
Valerie Francis
Walter Mitty & The Realists
We Should be dead
White Noise
YoureOnlyMassive

"Walter Mitty & The Realists"

Band with best name

Dark Room Notes, Fight Like Apes & Panda Kopanda are all well worth a look. Best band name for me though, goes to Your Only Massive. It's a great festival to play in - we did it last year... all the people running it were sound as f**k. As for this year's venue.. I'd have no gripes with it at all - last year I'd to walk from seeing My Corduroy in Spirit to the TBMC. Nearly killed me (!).

Great band too.. we've done a couple of gigs with them, front man really gets into it..

Jape and Lovekevins are 2 other unannounced ones who are deadly!