| more festival tales |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|10:52 am] |
hello! i went to latitude and it was good and even though it rained it didn't get muddy (the suffolk soil is MAGIC) and i can't remember exactly what i saw when, but i know it included:
(basically, where there are gaps, assume we are listening to robin
ince shouting about natasha kaplinsky)
fri: richard dedomenici, quite a lot of sitting, DUCKWORTH/LEWIS METHOD who are GREAT,"bedtime story" which is Robin reading out a Horrid Henry story to 50 or 60 3-7 year olds and getting them to scream and shout (and SCREAM A BIT MORE) and invade the stage and leave them higher than kites just when perhaps they should be going to bed, the socialist trifecta of Mark Steel, Mark Thomas and Jeremy Hardy in the same day, pretenders, pet shop boys, mystery fax machine orchestra in a tent so small they take up more room than the audience.
sat: clive stafford-smith, david quantick talking to jonathon coe, stuart maconie talking to david morrisey and miranda sawyer, jeanne gruffalo DYING ON HER @SS and leaving the stage after 6 minutes (it would've been 3.5 minutes if the MC hadn't gone for a weewee), fever ray in stupid costumes, patrick wolf (where i bonded with the young man next to me who actually said "facepalm" to describe PW's incredible overreaching pretension), five minutes in the big tent where Guilty Pleasures was happening which is SO VERY SCARY (and also, frankly, skool disco, not GP) that we have to run away to the woods where club du fromage are playing pretty much the same records but to far fewer people.
sun: jake chapman (including hilarious "artists deaths" video and massive ten minute downpour), maggie philbin sheltering from the rain under a tree, kevin cummins talking about why he's fallen out with hooky, sean lock, slow club (the indie ting-tings, no come back, they are pretty good), karaoke circus which, despite my not getting to do pulp, is basically Indie Comedians Do Stars In Their Eyes, in a good way.
and loads and loads and loads of Book Club including nekkid pappy's fun club...
I dunno though, i liked it as a festival, but i don't rly see why ppl prefer places with only 25,000 people there in comparison to ones (ok, one) with 150,000. it's just a bit cosy and weird to me, but then glastonbury is my one true festival love and there's not a lot i can do about it.
also, for those of us going through the pleb gates the insistance that NO LIQUIDS could be taken in (i had to throw away half a cup of coffee) was a complete pain in the arse, also the compulsory bag searches. I can understand them not wanting glass in the arena, or people lugging in cases of carlsberg, but i really think the Lords way (as in the cricket ground, not "The Lord") of being able to take a couple of cans or a bottle of wine in is the best compromise, they can't be predicating their income on wet sales anyway, can they?
ALSO don't forget that it is DINOSAUR PLANET at the Wilmington tonight!!! |
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![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/35013207/751445) | From: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sbp
2009-07-21 10:47 am (UTC)
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I'm going to see her at the Bloomsbury Theatre, with probably a more sympathetic crowd. Glad I didn't go to Lat just cos she was there now.
I heard her on Loose Neds and she sounded dreadful then - to the point that I wondered who this dull woman was and why she was getting to much attention.
Maggie Philbin!!
I am scared to ever see Patrick Wolf now. I love his earlier albums so much but then he got all sparkly and dramatic and...ach. I love pretentious things, many many pretentious artsy things, but there's a line somewhere where such stuff crosses over into being embarrassing to watch.
All this festival talk has made me all excited about Secret garden Party this weekend! Hooray! Basically it is a bit of a '400 people sliding up and down grass thinking they're a burning man or something plus loads of bewildered members of the public wearing dresses and glitter wahey' festival, but these days they do let you take a bit of booze in and hopefully the weather will be ok.
"pretentious" was kind of meant without value judgement, but there was one song, possibly called Hard Times, where me and the lad next to me were just p!ssing ourselves (and i think that was actually more at the bombast and hamfistedness than "pretention" per se) but, as i said to him, i'd rather see people reaching and failing than listen to clodplay innit.
So why did Kevin Cummins fall out with Hooky?
hooky thinks that he should get paid from the pictures cummins took of joy division because he is a money-grabbing mental.
cummins apparently wound hooky up by getting one of his "joy division in the snow" pics put on his bankcard and telling hooky that the bank had given him £40k to use the image on everyone's card. hooky hasn't spoken to him since!
| From: sbp
2009-07-21 10:46 am (UTC)
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The problem is that 150000 has now become nearer 200000 where 120000 is about its useful limit.
I assume you didn't go before the fence? Hahahaha, well over 200,000
I loved Robin saying 'Ladies and Gentlemen, PATRICK WOLF' as a very tipsy Gary Le Strange staggered off stage
Glade rained lots but didn't get muddy really either! (On Sat evening it was a bit squodgy around the most trampled bits, because it didn't stop raining till quite near sunset; but by Sunday midday it had all dried up again.) Chalk is aces.
The thing with smaller festivals (which to me is 10,000 or so, like Glade. Or ideally fewer, like Waveform) is that it just becomes much, much easier to do everything. (Walk around the site, see stuff, meet up with people, randomly run into people you met earlier, etc etc.) Plus while there are probably a similar *proportion* of wankers in any given crowd, at least there are numerically fewer of them. Although Glastonbury is hugely improved in this regard by staying the hell away from the other side of the site, obv.
Aw well, some of us have panic attacks in crowds of 150,000 people, that's why! Latitude sounds nicer. Mark Steel! David Quantick! Shall I go and buy the Duckworth-Lewis Method album in my lunch hour then?
well it's not really a crowd of 150,000, given that the site is 650 acres or whatever it is...
anyways, i wasn't saying that ppl who liked small thing swere wrong, just that i didn't really get it, innit.
things about D/L Method:
it is all about cricket
it sounds a bit like steely dan in places
obviously to me these are Definite Plus Points...
I know! I was just trying to explain! Anyway, album purchased! | |
