Incipid Vita Nova

Neil Jones on Flipron and the opening evening of Shambala 2008

A journey up to N********** (name asterisked in respect of the festival organiser’s request to keep the location secret) with some cats from Bath gets ever more festive as we go along the motorway, so that when we arrive at Shambala I’m able to bound out of the car whopping crazily like Daffy Duck, bouncing towards the grass settlement that’ll be my home for the weekend and putting my tent up with alarming alacrity.

I have one eye on Flipron, who are starting their gig at 11.30 (it’s 9pm now), and one eye on a re-union with a special person from last year, so my heart beats that much quicker as the tent goes up at first inside-out, before I’m able to reverse it so that it’s respectable. All this construction work though naturally means I’m tired out, so I dip into Hesse’s magic book of short stories for a short while, before, with a strangely soothing air of anticipation, finally emerging to wander westwards towards the twinkling lights that mark Shambala out in the distance.

I seem to have parked the tent in an esoteric part of the site, but, this being the Theatre of Childhood Dreams, I smile when I see I have to emerge from under the giant mouth of the Kids’ Play Area's painted monster to enter the festival itself, where I quickly bolster myself with a drop of Sloe Gin from an “African Witches” Tent, a robust braided lady pouring it for me and looking at me slightly disparagingly as I take fifteen swigs to drink the single measure. I proffer a quick apology for my lameness, and forge on further through the site like an intrepid explorer.

There seems to be a completely different layout this year. The festival seems to be stretching in a zig-zagging square, which would be a pretty complex route to follow at the best of times, never mind when it’s dark. There’s the Dome Dance Tent here; a fleet of stalls that include someone’s living room just chilling there next to the African Witches stall I’ve already frequented, a piano sitting humbly at the back (mental note to check this out further on in the week); the Kamikaze Cabaret Tent is a welcome memory from last year (I wonder if we’ll be treated to a road-kill auction there this year?) and then I drift past a subtly lit Geisha House and a double-decker restaurant contraption that reaches charmingly into the sky, before seeing a shimmering in the distance, and following the magic trail onto the moonlit lake, near where the magic meeting with Flora takes place, our first for a year since the last Shambala, and Flipron emerge onto stage.

I'm on a natural high already, but still there’s something about seeing Flipron at a festival like this. And I can't help showing them to Flora like a treasure I've kept in my pocket for a hundred years. The first time I ever saw them was three years ago at the Secret Garden Party (which is only slightly less mad than Shambala). They set Scott and myself’s virgin hearts on fire then with a poetic and fantastically musical outlandishness, and are about to do the very same thing now. Their sweet and profound concoction of haunted house folk jumps off the Lakeside Shambala stage in splendid spectral shapes, Joe’s organ bouncing up and down under its garland shelter, joining Gregg’s bass in the most insane dance, while Jesse Budd spouts his lyrics on top like the outsider genius the modern philistine music media could never understand.

We get old songs like ‘Biscuits For Cerberus’, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On The Dead’ and ‘Hungamunga’, slow, blinding poetry turning into utmost festivity before our eyes. Whoever else but Budd, here at this hedonist haven, would get inside the head of the monster Cerberus and etch an affectionate tale of unrecognised tenderness and beauty, weave a silky, shimmering ode to love, death and destiny, and then turn his hand to a song of golden surrealist melodies that make the crowd reel in pure dizzy euphoria? And the new songs, ‘Mess It Up!’, ‘Book of Lies’ and ‘Zombie Blues’ are beautifully considered additions to the sacred Flipron repertoire, brilliantly, raucously, succinctly and strikingly poetic, and buzzing with musical magic.

Jesse picks up an accordion in ‘Rusty Casino’s Casino Rustique’ and we get a taste of the special, special lyricism, humour and hallowed musical atmosphere of a song that on a better planet would be number one every summer; and the perennial highlight of ‘Skeletons on Holiday’ sees Jesse’s lapsteel guitar resounding deep into the enchanted night like a lost poem from Roy Smeck. Flipron are a magic potion that from the first piquant taste made my head spin and heart jump, a magic potion that if put down for any inordinate length of time calls me back with crazy whispers, like now. It’s just a shame they can’t play for half an hour longer, and treat us to more gems from their dusty, handmade chest, but we do get a splendid encore of ‘A Trip To Jaywick Sands’ on the lapsteel.

Oh yes, this is a band that makes instrumental Hawaiian music for the modern age with serious intent. It’s a band that makes Pop music where the magic of poetry hangs like a spider on a long-dead folk web. Their tide flows under lights from ageless moons, and when they finish their set and I turn around to look at Flora once more, we wordlessly agree that that was Really Saying Something. Shambala sprawls out before us with all possibilities, the wonderful moonlit lake, the stalls, the hedonism, and the intrinsic poetry, and we’re left to delve into it all with extra magic in our ears.

© 2008 Neil Jones

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