Latitude 2011
I got back from Latitude yesterday. Fun as always, but weather was against us this year.
a long journey from London, plagued by combination of traffic, unclear signposting at festival site, and a confused throwback to the Sixties at the weheel of the coach. Eventually arrived to rendezvous with my festival buddy Inkognitoh and get unpacked. We strolled in to do some shopping at Oxfam, have a refreshing drink, and take a look around.
The site has been reorganized since I was last there. More space in key arenas, a much-needed second bridge making the Sunrise arena accessible from the main site without twenty-minute hike. Nicer toilets, but far far fewer of them. Vodaphone had a free-to-subscribers recharge station, which meant we could keep tweeting and checking on Hackgate news all weekend.
Friday was dry and sunny, but then the rains came down. Latitude is famously immune to the mud horror of Glastonbury, with its coastal location and sandy soil. Well, not this year. Not with weeks of rain softening the ground then more torrential downpours throughout the weekend. I was so glad that Oxfam stocked good quality wellies, my old ones having died recently. And it was cold at first - blankets, thick fleeces, waterproofs all came in handy. It was the year for snivel gear, all right.
Same array of top quality festival food as previous years - Sea Cow fish and chips, Pure Pies, Jamaican curry goat, freshly-baked pizzas. Hektor's Scarecrow was once more my drink of choice.
Plenty to enjoy on the kulcha front. Electric Hotel was a disturbing, suspenseful modern dance experience, with shades of MR James or Don't Look Now. Author talks - though I was a little disappointed by Kim Newman. His reading from Anno Dracula was flat, and he didn't really answer my question about why modern writers are still drawn to late Victorian characters and settings. Never meet your heroes. Inkoh got to audience-participate in Literary Deathmatch, and I failed at the last hurdle in Shappi Khorsandi's attempt to select a suitor from the audience. Was at Literary Arena with most blokish audience it got all weekend, for polar explorer Henry Worsley's talk.
On Saturday, we got up early to get to the front of the queue for the dash to get a place inside the comedy tent for the first ever live Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I'm not proud that we raced teenagers across the site to get there... heck, yes, I am proud. We raced kids half our age and outran some of them.
Rain decimated the Waterfront Stage dance programme. We did keep seeing the Ghanaian music group there at odd hours - basically, the Peruvian panpipe buskers of the festival.
Caught a range of music. Rockabilly grandma Wanda Jackson had that old-school country cheesiness about her, while her backing group tried to maintain their ice cool. Here she is singing her first number one: "but not in the US, or here - this was in Japan...". Sitting on a tree branch in the forest was the perfect setting for listening to Braids. Saw Caitlin Rose - in sixty years' time, she's going to be Wanda Jackson. Bellowhead proved themselves to be as infectiously raucous live as I'd hoped. Drifting into sleep during Deerhunter's set was blissful. They Might Be Giants were outweirded at a British festival audience's preparedness for, and acceptance of, terrible weather: "is this a tribal thing? It's raining, so you go out to dance in the rain with a field full of strangers?". We were bemused to find a load of hipster kids right at the front of Lyle Lovett's set, mostly looking bored. Then we discovered they were staking their place for the Vaccines who were up next. A couple of the kids were getting the music though. Lyle ended his set with White Freightliner Blues, and I'd like to think at least one of those kids will be giving Townes Van Zandt a listen.
Ultimately, the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Echo and the Bunnymen played an intense, epic set. It's pretty arrogant to introduce your next song with "this is the greatest song ever written!". Unless it's this song... Adam Ant was like a regenerated Time Lord - different to his younger self, but his swagger and panache back, and the crowd loved him. Suede were great, with Brett Anderson a front man to rival Jagger or Mercury. My favourite performance of the festival probably came from these guys:
"The name of this band is Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. We are not going to spend an hour playing intelligent, experimental music. We are going to play fifteen singles!".
And they played up a storm. Andy McCluskey regained his youth, "bad dancing" and all, and the band's joy at playing was reflected by the audience's joy in the music. They started early and overran, and dared the organizers to cut the power during their last song. This song. The organizers backed down. It's on Youtube, now.
Each time I've gone to Latitude, I've picked up an earworm. This year's is this one from The Naked and Famous:
a long journey from London, plagued by combination of traffic, unclear signposting at festival site, and a confused throwback to the Sixties at the weheel of the coach. Eventually arrived to rendezvous with my festival buddy Inkognitoh and get unpacked. We strolled in to do some shopping at Oxfam, have a refreshing drink, and take a look around.
The site has been reorganized since I was last there. More space in key arenas, a much-needed second bridge making the Sunrise arena accessible from the main site without twenty-minute hike. Nicer toilets, but far far fewer of them. Vodaphone had a free-to-subscribers recharge station, which meant we could keep tweeting and checking on Hackgate news all weekend.
Friday was dry and sunny, but then the rains came down. Latitude is famously immune to the mud horror of Glastonbury, with its coastal location and sandy soil. Well, not this year. Not with weeks of rain softening the ground then more torrential downpours throughout the weekend. I was so glad that Oxfam stocked good quality wellies, my old ones having died recently. And it was cold at first - blankets, thick fleeces, waterproofs all came in handy. It was the year for snivel gear, all right.
Same array of top quality festival food as previous years - Sea Cow fish and chips, Pure Pies, Jamaican curry goat, freshly-baked pizzas. Hektor's Scarecrow was once more my drink of choice.
Plenty to enjoy on the kulcha front. Electric Hotel was a disturbing, suspenseful modern dance experience, with shades of MR James or Don't Look Now. Author talks - though I was a little disappointed by Kim Newman. His reading from Anno Dracula was flat, and he didn't really answer my question about why modern writers are still drawn to late Victorian characters and settings. Never meet your heroes. Inkoh got to audience-participate in Literary Deathmatch, and I failed at the last hurdle in Shappi Khorsandi's attempt to select a suitor from the audience. Was at Literary Arena with most blokish audience it got all weekend, for polar explorer Henry Worsley's talk.
On Saturday, we got up early to get to the front of the queue for the dash to get a place inside the comedy tent for the first ever live Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I'm not proud that we raced teenagers across the site to get there... heck, yes, I am proud. We raced kids half our age and outran some of them.
Rain decimated the Waterfront Stage dance programme. We did keep seeing the Ghanaian music group there at odd hours - basically, the Peruvian panpipe buskers of the festival.
Caught a range of music. Rockabilly grandma Wanda Jackson had that old-school country cheesiness about her, while her backing group tried to maintain their ice cool. Here she is singing her first number one: "but not in the US, or here - this was in Japan...". Sitting on a tree branch in the forest was the perfect setting for listening to Braids. Saw Caitlin Rose - in sixty years' time, she's going to be Wanda Jackson. Bellowhead proved themselves to be as infectiously raucous live as I'd hoped. Drifting into sleep during Deerhunter's set was blissful. They Might Be Giants were outweirded at a British festival audience's preparedness for, and acceptance of, terrible weather: "is this a tribal thing? It's raining, so you go out to dance in the rain with a field full of strangers?". We were bemused to find a load of hipster kids right at the front of Lyle Lovett's set, mostly looking bored. Then we discovered they were staking their place for the Vaccines who were up next. A couple of the kids were getting the music though. Lyle ended his set with White Freightliner Blues, and I'd like to think at least one of those kids will be giving Townes Van Zandt a listen.
Ultimately, the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Echo and the Bunnymen played an intense, epic set. It's pretty arrogant to introduce your next song with "this is the greatest song ever written!". Unless it's this song... Adam Ant was like a regenerated Time Lord - different to his younger self, but his swagger and panache back, and the crowd loved him. Suede were great, with Brett Anderson a front man to rival Jagger or Mercury. My favourite performance of the festival probably came from these guys:
"The name of this band is Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. We are not going to spend an hour playing intelligent, experimental music. We are going to play fifteen singles!".
And they played up a storm. Andy McCluskey regained his youth, "bad dancing" and all, and the band's joy at playing was reflected by the audience's joy in the music. They started early and overran, and dared the organizers to cut the power during their last song. This song. The organizers backed down. It's on Youtube, now.
Each time I've gone to Latitude, I've picked up an earworm. This year's is this one from The Naked and Famous:
Click to view