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home » festivals » Beautiful Days » Beautiful Days 2006
Sunday overviewBeautiful Days reviewsWednesday 23rd August 2006 It’s the last day for us as we’re driving home tonight and I’m feeling a little errrr, the worse for wear. I blame a multitude of bottles of flavoured vodka and about two hours kip! It takes a bit longer to get motivated as the flags flutter and the sun appears rarely behind fast moving dark clouds. We get our kit packed and the tent down and then I go in search of a cycle trike to take our stuff back to the car park. When I arrive at their camp they aren’t quite ready to start the day and I need a sit down, so I get an opportunity to at least hear for a few minutes The Fabulous Good Time Party Boys Medicine Show Sunday Morning Prayer Meeting Revue and briefly see Rev in his mask and suit before the journey back to camp and then up to the car park. We’re back in the arena in time for Paignton’s own Nixon and the Burn who sound loud. I think I liked what I heard from the local band about to support Muse at the Eden Project later this week. They sound not too dissimilar to them, but I’m broken at this point as photo evidence shows and I’m only able to lie face down in the grass and hold my head! Fortunately a few paracetamols and the return of Hobo Jones & The Junkyard Dogs outside Mad Planet for more of the same as yesterday and primarily American Idiot, Ace of Spades and Gordon is a Moron (again) gets me wobbly but back on my feet. I shuffle off for a pint of Otter Ale before the Demon Barber Roadshow. My mates are expecting traditional folk and handkerchief waving Morris Dancers. Instead we get Maurice-dancing (our friend Maurice that is)! Some furious pounding precise clog dancing which gets the crowd interested and it rapidly grows. Then out come some Morris Dancers and leap about like loons – it’s not normal folk this! These acrobatic, crazy, spinning Morris Dancers (those words don’t seem right to describe them) are now armed with long knives and dance about at high speed while weaving the blades of the long knives into patterns! Mental or what! Bet they weren’t on the cider last night! The music is also hybridised. It’s folk Jim, but not as we traditionally know it - the concertina is played like Jimmy Hendrix was using it, over the head, whirling it around – crazy! A blaze of fiddles, some sweet vocals and roots rhythms to dance to – a surprise hit. These guys are something to see – excellent festival fare! Next it’s don a white one piece suit, rally the troops and follow my daughter around the arena shouting ‘Mine!’ repeatedly. Only downside is we forgot the beaks, but the eFestivals flash mob works reasonably well, although numbers are lowish however the audience appear to get the reference to Finding Nemo and it’ll be better next year! Next up the boys destined for future headliners and on the cusp of taking the festival scene by storm the mighty (if still relatively new) Subgiant! I still don’t know their tunes yet but I know I couldn’t resist a bop to their dub-electro roots rhythms. They totally blow the crowd away and before long the crowd is doubling, then trebling, then quadrupling as people rush into dance to their infectious groove of samples, scratched and re-scratched over and through the live percussion and pounding tight chops of the bass. Totally in their thing the sampling, percussion, scratching and bass chops are layered tight and gloriously delicious to those in an any kind of altered state after the night before. It’s like delicious psy-trance ice cream poured in through your ears! Everyone around me is loving it, and I’ve only seen this sort of reaction once before – as Ozric Tentacles broke onto the scene! Testament to how good they are is that afterwards in the merchandising stall, there’s not enough copies of their CD and the guy next to me blags the copy I’m about to buy! Least the Levellers were able to hear them as they’re next door signing breasts and stuff! Breakthrough band of the weekend - indeedy – future headliners and huge in the future? Abso-Sub-ing-lutely! Revitalised, I was on my last legs before them! I stay for another polished performance by Pauline Black and The Selector and chat about the good old days of Taunton Cider while skankin’. The sun even comes out, clearly a fan of 2-Tone, and the main talking point of the set is the clever slide from Too Much Pressure into Pressure Drop. A whole pork pie hat full of hits and a wonderful crowd, what more do you need on a sunny afternoon? Then I realise, dammit, the band I most wanted to see all weekend The Cole Porters have just played The Big Top and I’m left with King Creosote! I’m thinking their some kind of rockabilly band with a name like that, but no it’s emotive twaddle! Maybe it’s cos I’m kicking myself for missing Sid Griffin but to me the Creosote lot sound woeful. I decide to console myself with breakfast. Only to discover the Goan Fish place stopped doing kedgeree six hours ago! It’s been a weekend packed full of loads of stuff, most of which I can’t remember. I remember somehow spending hours at this point in the kids’ field. Chatting to people, watching the Deep Sea Jivers, seeing two guys in the bath saving water, pink rabbits bouncing around and a chef chase a chicken! I hear there about the Levellers five aside footie match against the kids and how it was more like 60 aside. Tried to work out how the Mystic Swing worked but was unprepared to find out by having a go. Last week at Endorse-It they’d announced a record for the most people vomiting in it – nice! The kids area has a lovely vibe to it though and is unsurpassed at any other festival, even WOMAD lacks the feel of this place. My black mood lasts as long as it takes to buy a curry with all the trimmings from Manic Organic, and then The Buzzcocks play the best punk singalongs of the weekend and everyone’s happy. Their new stuff from Flat Pack Philosophy sits up wonderfully beside the old stuff and of course there’s the huge Ever Fallen In Love. I’d never seen them before they sounded tight and the hour just flew by. They may be punk survivors from a golden era, and they’re gloriously good tonight. Elder statesmen, who prefer to deliver their punk classics rather than mess about or chat. Wish I Never Loved You, I Don't Exist, Harmony in My Head and many more are fired out in quick succession and some of our party sang out every single word – they know who they are! Steel Pulse was up next. Beautiful reggae to dance to and a sizeable crowd enjoyed the synth driven roots with percussive jazz beats. They were scorching, the highlight for me being their cover of Brown Eyed Girl, delicious! Their set was criminally short though, they got on stage late and had to truncate a few of their songs. Their anthem album Handsworth Revolution was trotted out in short bursts and was pure quality though despite them leaving out the title track! They were another highlight of the weekend for me. As the night filled the arena, the glowing things emerged, everyone was in masks as the masked ball really kicked off with huge glitter balls suspended either side of the stage. Walking through the crowd to the bar was brilliant as strange faces and bizarre masks peered at me. Many were wearing face masks on the backs of their heads causing confusion for me and some costumes were unbelievably complex, EL Wire and glo-sticks utilised to full effect! The crowd swelled and swelled, and there was a carnival atmosphere to the place as The Levellers took to the stage to thunderous applause. We were hailing the very band that brought us here and provided this magical festival for us. From the off it was delirious, dancing, jigging, wild singing and punching the night sky were order of the day as a very much in form Levellers brought us the singalong of the festival. Fathers leapt and swirled with children on their shoulders. People laughed and joked and when the lights hit the crowd it was an amazing spectacle! From Men An Tol, Another Man's Cause, England My Home and Dirty Davey to one One Way. From Carry Me to Riverflow and of course the festival theme song What A Beautiful Day the whole set was blinding! Didgeridoo and Seth Lakeman a blur on the fiddle the whole place become a whirl of hot sweaty dancing for me! Boy can he play a fiddle! And then to end it all with a bang a giant ‘Lev’s A’ high in the sky ignites and looks awesome! The lights come on (finally some decent light in the arena) and Mad Planet’s resident band come out. We say our goodbyes and head off to the car for an easy journey home, not a car on the road, as lanterns fill the night sky. A brilliant weekend, we’re already planning next year’s surprises and thanks to DMF, The Levellers and everyone else for putting on the best value festival of the summer, and the friendliest - packed with stuff to do and looking lovely. See you all next year. We better get our tickets quickly I think! review by Scott Williams |
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