Sunday review (2)

Sunday is hot and humid, and I’m determined not to turn into a pumpkin after midnight for a third time, so chill at my tent until mid-afternoon, before heading to the Fat Tuesday tent for Son Of Dave. His one-man-band blues is exciting some, but I’m getting the day started with SoCo cocktails – far more interesting.

Walking to the main stage, it’s noticeable that some of the food stalls are shut – they’ve obviously sold out of everything they had – and those still open have even bigger queues than on previous days: this is silly, and someone has balls-ed up big-time with the festival planning. I’m lucky, I’m not hungry.

The Stranglers are mid-way through their set, but where’s the frontman of 16 years - Paul Roberts - gone? (Reading their website now, I discover he left at the beginning of the summer.) The vocals are shared by guitarist Baz Warne and Jean-Jacques Burnel, and although more than competent it’s lacking something on previous band versions.

Entertainment then comes in the form of Guilty Pleasures, and Bestival shows that this crowd aren’t too cool to dance. A false start by the highly rated Hot Chip has Guilty Pleasures play a couple more songs, and then Hop Chip get to start. Perhaps I didn’t give them long enough – there were lots of comments later from people who thought them fantastic – but to me they were the very worst of retro-eighties electronica. Two songs, and I’m gone.

Bestival aren’t afraid to mix it up musically, and Amadou & Mariam have drawn a reasonable crowd. A cover of Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ (was it in French?) is a little confusing, but as the crowd builds up towards to the end the party they’re definitely a big hit.

On Saturday night I felt that Scissor Sisters would have better followed those Saturday acts than PSBs, but tonight I’m glad they’re the closing act. I hate the (first) album with a vengeance, but I’ve seen them several times before and know they’re one of the best live acts around right now – they certainly didn’t disappoint. Tonight’s incarnation has them as the Scissor Clowns, with them having ignored people’s clown phobias.

The early part of the set was mainly new songs from their forthcoming album, and these don’t come across brilliantly even though the crowd is going wild. But when they switch back to familiar songs these are delivered so perfectly and with so much energy that I’m willing to forgive those new songs as less rehearsed. Saving the best till last, the encore is current hit ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancing’, followed by ‘Filthy Gorgeous’, and they’ve really done the biz – this was a closing set to eclipse them all.

Although the main stage has finished, there’s more going on for a few hours yet, and Carl Cox is playing an ‘old skool’ set in the big top, and the dancing crowds are spilling out of the entrances into the field. He’s playing songs I’ve not heard him spin since every ‘rave’ DJ had the same small set of toons to choose from in the late eighties - and they’re sounding as good as ever, then he moves into the nineties and more beats and bleeps, and all too soon it’s finished. There’s still a little more music to be had around the site before the earlier Sunday night shutdown, but the energy is draining away as Bestival comes to a close.

There’s an old festival saying:- the more you put in, the more you get back. Bestolians (or should it be Bestiltes, or Bestivalites?) are there for a party, and it's almost as though the bands are an added extra, not why people went in the first place. With its Glastonbury rip-offs* simularities, this is as good as it gets ... it's like another well-known festival, but with a personality!

* come on Bestival, surely you can do better than stealing Glastonbury's "Queue here to complain the festival isn't as good as it used to be" sign idea?

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