Five teenage boys are standing in a circle, arms locked around each others shoulders but this is no group hug.
They are all urinating into the centre.
They are ten metres away from the toilets.
Welcome to Leeds.
Grown Up Gossip & Internet Villainy
By Si Sharp
By Si Sharp
Argghhh! Panic! The festival industry is dying! Run for the hills (well, the cities)! So, then Big Chill- what are you about? Should we be impressed or not?
You're run by Festival Republic who really aren't the leftwing revolutionary group that?your name would like?us to infer, but your line-up isn't exactly the warmed up Radio 1 tedium soup of V.
If our weekend was anything to go by, it's where the kind of punters who used to frequent Glastonbury now like to er.. chill.
By Si Sharp
It's ironic that the golden rule of capitalism is at work in something as historically left-of-centre as festivals. This summer the power of the market is separating the wheat from the chaff in festival-land.
The beauty of it is, that whilst money may be able to book a big headliner,? it requires imagination to create a festival that fills a gap in the market. Sure, the results might not always be nice (the unwelcome rumours that the marvellous Truck Festival may be bust for instance) but it's sure to guarantee that no-one?s complacent.
Camp Bestival was started as a more family-friendly version of Bestival. As the popularity of taking kids to festivals has grown, so has this (now medium sized) festival. The Sunday Best lot know their audience and they have enough confidence in their own instincts that they don't feel the need to schedule the acts in order of record sales. An obvious example is the headliner on Friday night. Other festivals might relegate Blondie to a tent, and stick the flavour of the year on the main stage, but Sunday Best know their audience. Obvious really since the man in charge is a DJ (Rob Da Bank) and therefore has an intuitive grasp of what the next tune should be.
By Si Sharp
Ah, festivals. Possibly the best thing about living in Britain is that because the weather is so dreary most of the year we party like idiots as soon as the sun comes out.
We used to have to either choose between about four festivals or go to Ibiza to combine hedonism and music. Now we are as spoilt for choice as a footballer in a lapdancing club.
So where are you going? There are small ones, big ones, dance ones, rock ones, ones for has-beens, ones for soon-to-bes. There are stupid amounts to choose from, but here are the ones that we would suggest?
By Si Sharp
Hyde Park?s a funny old place, what with it seeming to have two festivals sharing the same field. And as we walked in, there was a Radio 1 style pop-event going on. Ke$ha was on stage. She is profoundly irritating. Do we really need to justify this with serious journalistic observation? Well, according to her wikipedia page she cites Banksy as an influence. What kind of name-dropping wank-sack musician cites a graffiti artist as an influence*?
Needless to say, her performance successfully manages to reflect the pretentiousness of this notion. She puts on a show, and makes more of an effort than a thousand Snow Patrols but after watching her, even Nelson Mandela would have to murder a stranger just to let off some steam.
Retro electro**-pop duo Chromeo are a charming act on record, and on stage some of that charisma does come across but the intricate production that distinguishes their sound is lost in the field today. Their albums take the ?eighties if the eighties had actually been any good? vibe that Les Rythmes Digitales pioneered and add a sprinkling of synth-funk on top of it. Bands can sink or swim in open air, and even tracks like Fancy Footwork and Bonafide Lovin?, the Canadian duo fail to do themselves justice.
By Si Sharp
Is there any more fun to be drawn from rap/rock? Judging by Hyro Da Hero, the answer is ?Fun, yes. Essential music, perhaps not.? This is the straighter end of alt/noise rock (think a less experimental At the Drive-In) with rapping over the top rather that the normal approach of recreating hip-hop?s bounce and swing with live instruments.
A welcome change on a rainy morning after all the white men shouting, but ultimately inconsequential.
Norway?s Kvelertak describe themselves as Black n? Roll, and it's a good a label as any. Rock n? Roll with metal vocals. Like a less-pantomime Turbonegro, they sound like Satan?s favourite blues band. Another feather in Scandinavia?s already feather-stuffed cap.
By Si Sharp
Why are metal bands of such a high quality when playing live? We've lost count of the mind-numbing quantity of indie bands we've seen over the years that sounded passable on record but dreary once they sheepishly shuffle onto a stage.
Benji Webb knows how to work a crowd and Skindred are an amazing vehicle for his talent. The self-styled ?ragga-metal? [Jesus fucking Christ, really? – Ed.] band understand completely the musical forms with which they are playing.
Webb?s versatile vocals (roots crooning, rapping, metal roaring) allow the songs to change tempo all over the place so they are free to drop drum and bass rhythms without it sounding in the least bit contrived. Extra bonus points for getting a metal crowd doing the robot.
By Si Sharp
?Oh, goody, a festival review! I was there! I can't wait to see whether this review entirely shares my opinions, or whether it has its own mind. Tell us what you think??
Thanks for asking! There's an inclusivity to heavy metal that makes spending time with fans of it a total joy. They don't sneer at how you're dressed, and their music exists in a vacuum. Metal has had varying popularity in different forms but it hasn't been ?cool? since Nirvana were knocking around.
Free of the need to conform to notions of cool, they are also free to concentrate on rocking. Kurt Cobain was consumed with an exaggerated attention to the subtle cultural and intellectual differences that separated his band from the ?corporate? rock that it (temporarily) replaced. And look how that ended. Heroin addiction, history of depression, and permanent physical pain aside, we always got the impression that Kurt killed himself because he couldn't live in a world where Nevermind outsold Doolittle. The fact that it was outselling Dangerous meant the poor beautiful bugger didn't stand a chance. What we're trying to say is that Kurt missed the point. By a massive distance. You know the distance between the interesting idea of Lady Gaga and the piss-poor reality of her actual music. About that far.
By Si Sharp
Yeah, we know it's already June, and that with each passing day, the notion of it being a preview becomes more absurd. Shut up and read, because these are the festivals that you should be thinking about going to this month.
Arguably if you actually use us as some kind of tastemaker, then perhaps it's best to stay in and not inflict yourself on the wider public.
With that in mind, here?s what everyone should be doing while you stay in, looking at old photographs and wondering where it all went wrong.
By Si Sharp
We blame that April heatwave. Reminds us of when a warm winter fools some of the flowers into thinking that Spring has sprung early, only for the snow to launch a surprise attack. Like the gullible flora we were similarly mislead by the glorious sunshine only for the rain to remind us that it's not actually summer yet.
Luckily other people are perfectly willing to help with this deception, thus the festival season now starts in the first half of May!
This is Bearded Theory?s fourth year and is set in the beautiful grounds of Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. There's something very pleasing about old stately homes being given financial help by new-age travellers and ex-travellers. We've missed ?crusties?. They scout around all at peace with the festival surrounding and with an air of friendly dignity, their numbers depleted much like their fellow tepee-botherers the Native Americans.