It's kind of hard to review Bestival without reeling off a long list of its many good points, but here goes, for Fact in September 2007:
Bestival does what no amount of earnest costume drama, lame tube advert or eager yoof retrospective can: it makes you feel genuinely, honestly, a little bit proud to be British. Rob Da Bank’s Isle of White festival has been taking the logical step of recreating a dusky summer country fete for four years now, and how: it’s been voted the country’s best small/medium festival and this year, tickets sold out double-speed. You’ve probably been told how good it is. September’s event saw the world’s best tea party nearly double in size on last years. It was, in no uncertain terms, spectacular. Though still a “boutique festival,” its 30,000 festival-goers made up the world’s biggest fancy dress party, there were 14 different stages where you could be entertained, and whether or not you can call a festival that featured heavy hitters like the Beastie Boys, Primal Scream and Madness alongside the latest upandcomers “small to medium” is in dispute.
But, still… Bestival retained its small town character; this is a festival put together by people who actually really, really know what they are doing. Rob and his mates have been through the filth, godlessness and magic that marks any festival – though most sorely lack the last part of the equation. They totally get what you what you want at every hour of the day. It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve just got in, you don’t want to queue for anything, so the bars are fully staffed. After partying at the Introducing tent till the wee small hours, come Saturday afternoon, more than anything, you want to play on a Coconut Shy and drink lemonade while listening to dub. In the Bestivalley you can! Listening to Bat For Lashes and eating lemon drizzle cake lifts Sunday morning’s fuzzy brain fuzz perfectly. People stand around selling the Observer in organic cotton sacks, on Sunday. As an aside, this is brilliant – even lying in a field, having slept in tent the size of a coffin for 4 hours over two days while teenagers threaten to steal shoes while we sleep and crapping in toilets that set off ‘Nam flashbacks, we’re still middle-class. Strangers, even as friendly as the Bestival crowd, need something to talk about, so surprise guests are speculated about left, right and centre and some of the most exciting acts are on at the Hidden Disco. Where is it? No body knows! For the first two hours at least! What else do you want from a festival? How about the world’s biggest fancy dress party? 20,000 people dressed as pirates, Lego men, Amy Winehouse, jellyfish and biscuit packets, and everything in between, makes for one motherload of happy. Especially when people forget they’re in fancy dress – the sight of a Crayola crayon having a lover’s tiff with a Ghostbuster will be making me and my girlfriend grin idly at work for months. It’s weird – it’s almost like they want you to have a good time…
Not that Mr and Mrs Da Bank (husband does the music stuff, wife does the arty stuff) are obsequiously giving us what we want – there is an agenda at work here. Firstly, there’s the huge peace sign subliminally and unsubtly placed over the rig in the main arena. Then there’s the constant appeals to pick your litter up, not “poo or wee” anywhere but the loos, the biodegradable plates and the recycling bins everywhere. Your mum would be proud of this festival, but that’s awesome: your mum’s great, she makes lovely spag bol, she was right about that haircut you had in 1998 and she brought you up, so she must have been doing something right: it’s just nice to stay at a site you don’t want to burn down like LA in 1992. There’s also another agenda here with the programming – though each one of the 14 stages has a distinct identity, it’s hard to stay at the same one for more than one or two acts, so great is the musical diversity of each tent. A lovely effect is created; rather than shacking up in the Dance tent and not moving till shin splints set in, you’re gently coerced into mixing about, trying out stages and events you might never bother with. Artistic manifestos – so long as they’re kept completely deniable – are magnificent, and this extends to booking virtual unknowns main stage slots. Nathan – A & R not Guys & Dolls – Detroit played before the Chemical Brothers, and Beardyman (champion comedy beatboxer: far better than he sounds) was sandwiched between Kate Nash and The Beastie Boy’s instrument set. It’s a sweet, very appreciated idea – hearing people praise Beardyman for the first time feels like watching your kid win the egg and spoon race.
Not too surprisingly, with a festival that celebrated more than anything else crowdpleasing and fun dance music, young pup or leftfield legend, the only real disappointment of the weekend (apart from Rob failing to declare himself the messiah, or at least king of the world) was the Beastie’s decidedly selfindulgent headline set. A band whose greatest moments evoke teenage kicks more than any other should know that what every person wants to hear Sabotage played twenty times in a row really, really loud, not watch a man born in the 60s tell us that the Isle of Wight is actually the “Isle of Mike” before launching into a jazz-funk didgeridoo jam. Cheers, but… This lapse notwithstanding, the music was peerless all weekend – it was the last night of Patrick Watson’s tour, but he played like it was the last night of his life, Go! Team were revelatory, Digital Mystikz’s night bus blues were achingly beautiful, Tom Brosseau broke hearts, Buraka Som Systema were terrific, Foals predictably killed it – but the real highlights were the non-musical ones. Learning how to Mambo, chatting rubbish to strangers, the Cockney Knees Up, not getting lost once, listening to a poetry slam in a yurt and laughing at the cunningly titled Jestival all made the weekend, as much as any individual band. Comedy tent headliner Andrew Maxwell, in between howling at the moon and yelling at breakdancers summed the spirit up nicely a few week ago: “At every single festival you get a few arseholes waving national flags, even at Glastonbury, that haven of the British left, whatever the fuck that means. At Bestival, the only flags people wave are the skull and crossbones.” Bestival: the last refuge of the scoundrel.
No comments:
Post a Comment