IT BEGAN in a single street as a small event designed to celebrate Liverpool's rock and pop groups. Today, the Mathew Street Festival has grown to become not only the city's largest annual event, but the biggest free music festival in Europe.
Now in its 15th year, the festival has extended its musical tentacles to take in stages across the city, from the Pier Head to Dale Street.
The Liverpool Culture Company now runs the event, which this year for the first time runs for four days and starts on a Friday, today.
A special free concert at the Pier Head tonight, by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, complete with local guest singing stars, will kickstart the festival.
From that moment on, the streets of the city will be filled by thousands of music fans and musicians, including many from overseas who will be spending the weekend lapping up music of all sorts.
So large is the festival these days that the Culture company under events manager Lee Forde has three different teams .
There is an operations team under Susan Lees, a site and traffic team led by Ali Stott and Andy McNicholl, and a production and artists team helmed by Kirstie Blakemore.
And, despite reputations to the contrary, the team members - with just one exception - are all Merseyside-born.
Kirstie Blakemore generally starts work on finding acts to appear in the festival shortly after the last one ends.
DO get an awful lot of people asking to be in it," she says. "So next year we are going to set up a page on our website, liverpool08.com, with a form so that cover bands or new bands can fill out details for themselves."
