Where The Wild Things Are

Richard Bowen on Prinzehorn Dance School, I'm From Barcelona, Mia Riddle and Of Montreal at Huntingdon's Secret Garden Party

July 27th, 28th & 29th, 2007, Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon 

Your mother isn’t here. That’s one of the points the Head Gardener made in the programme to dispel festival goer’s inhibitions. He really needn’t have worried. This was one of the most joyously uninhibited festivals I’ve had the pleasure of attending and no overbearing matriarch would have been able to change that. The festival’s theme was of Brave New World and people were happy to bring their on take on this; not akin to Huxley or Shakespeare’s vision, but a wild Brave New world full of feral children and hedonism.

The celebrated country estate location helps contribute to the atmosphere twofold: for one, it’s beautiful; literally set among fields and hillocks surrounding a boating lake that revellers can lounge near or row about in, it all felt like someone had turfed the Teletubbies out of their home for a weekend so we could have a party. Secondly, it’s small. If the only other festival you’ve been to this year is Glastonbury, it’s bloomin’ tiny. I wandered around the entire site twice looking for the Great Stage only to realise I’d already watched a band play on it.

There’s something fantastically relaxing about knowing that if you’ve lost track of time, the furthest stage is only a ten minute walk away, rather than a hopeless hour-long trudge through mud. With just 6000 attendees, at no point did the place feel crowded, either at the bars, the inventive food stalls (not a chip in sight!), at the stages or in the camping areas. And with dry weather for the most part, intoxicants galore and a lively music line-up, all the ingredients for a great festival were in place.

And yet something lurked. I felt deviant at this festival, like I really had been invited to a secret gathering akin to The Wicker Man film. I saw a procession of pallbearers solemnly pass by, occasionally breaking their funereal march to dance about their bespoke ghetto-blaster coffin. Later I heard that somewhere on the site you could accommodate a coffin for a night – imagine awaking to that drunken misadventure! I saw crowds ominously gathered aside walkways ready to pounce on passers by, as if ready for a brutal assault before instead delivering gropes and tickles. Nuns frolicked with Devils. Neon teens gulped at nitrous-filled balloons. Everywhere you looked there was an element of not-quite-rightness about things. The surreal cocktail lilted with tastes of a poisonous fruit. It was all very exciting.

FRIDAY

Arriving late Friday afternoon, I was disappointed to find that I’d already missed Euros Childs and Scouting for Girls. So I have nothing to say about them. My dismay grew when the first act I caught were The New York Fund on the Great Stage, who seemed a pretty uninspiring alt. country band. They were pleasant and keen and chatty so not knowing them on record I’ll say nothing more, except that I’ve no desire to allay that ignorance.

I took a wander to the Centre Camp Stage and had my first taste for the weekend of Beans on Toast, who I can best describe as being somewhere between a cockney Joie (Dead Blonde Girlfriend) and a contemporary, Chas and/or Dave. With hilarious songs about drugs, sex, politics and embarrassing personal revelations he had the crowd reeling.

The Noisettes brought a lively enough set to kick off the evening’s proceedings, and their upbeat indierock drew the first big crowd of the day but for me their fairly bland repertoire failed really to inspire. In honesty, I had expected more adventurous bookings than I found across the board at the festival in general, particularly when such a great deal of the names listed were new to me, but at points it struck me that the reason many of the bands are relative unknowns was not because they are underground or avant-garde, but just that they’re not particularly good. I’m not at all levelling this at The Noisettes, who just don’t happen to be my cup of tea.

It was great to see Echo & The Bunnymen in the flesh and they put on a good show, their back catalogue and the crowd they drew suggested they should probably have had top-billing, but Ian McCulloch’s swagger became a little tiresome, so I took a short wander to the Remix Tent where some bouncing duo were heaping breakbeats and piercing noise at a grateful throng, who must sadly remain nameless as the SGP programme failed me for the first of several times. That’s the only other thing I could take issue with at the festival, in general the scheduling and time-keeping were pretty poor. Two or three times I missed parts of or entire sets not due to my own crapness (which is a pretty big obstacle in itself), but due to bands going on early or seemingly not at all. The communication of problems or changes left a lot to be desired too, as most around me didn’t seem to know what was going on either. The nice thing was that nobody really cared.

I don’t really get the appeal of Alabama 3 and seeing them play that night hasn’t brought me any closer to enlightenment. I mean, they’re alright and they were fine live, but it strikes me that their whole career has been based around the fact that The Sopranos used ‘Woke Up This Morning’ (which incidentally sounds like the Stereo MCs regurgitated and spat out) as its theme –no basis for as headline spot above Echo and the Bunnymen as far as I’m concerned.

That night, Prinzhorn Dance School gave me my first taste of the Where The Wild Things Are stage and I never wanted to leave. Adjacent to the smallish stage area was a large raised platform with steps leading up to it where a veritable old-people’s-home of natty sofas and armchairs sat in a livingroom adorned with beautiful, huge images from the eponymous children’s tale. The band was relentlessly bass-driven, shouty and new-wave with Mark E. Smith evoking lyrics and vocal fulminations from both their male and female vocalist. Watching from my comfy armchair, I loved them.

SATURDAY 

First thing, I had a second bite of Beans on Toast as he now took to the WTWTA Stage, excellent hangover breakfast and again a really enjoyable act. Were there a comedy award for the weekend he would win with ease and with a uniquely satirical outlook he’s definitely worth checking out.

Evi Vine on The Great Stage was a bit of a revelation for me, she has a fabulous voice and beyond the dark girl-with-guitar act are moments of experimentation and lyrical quality that draw parallels with the likes of PJ Harvey. She was followed by Earl Okin, “Musical Genius and Sex Symbol”, who is of the Nouvelle Vague, Hayseed Dixie ilk covering contemporary pop songs to varying degrees of comic success. Whilst this felt a little like reinventing the wheel, I suspect Earl Okin has probably been doing this for years. His comic shtick was probably better value than the music and he definitely kept the crowd entertained.

The Deadbeats took to WTWTA stage and were really good. Rock ‘n’ Roll in the classic sense of the term, these youngsters blustered confidently through a set of foot-stompers that Bo Diddley would have been proud of and yet they somehow sound unquestionably contemporary. They reminded me of The Zutons, only not annoying.

And then it happened. I’d joined a parade (as you do) led by tribalistic drummers, everyone whooping and dancing, as it meandered across the site and around the lake, finally settling on a hill overlooking a 20ft handshaped pyre at the centre of the water, with a dozen or so flame throwers dotted about the lakeside. The drums stopped, then whoosh, the hand was aflame. My heart pounded as the drums began again, louder and faster. Ritualistic cries went out as the fingertip flames licked the nightsky, people danced and sent flocks of paper lanterns into the air. I was in The Wicker Man afterall.

New Young Pony Club capped off the only wet night at The Great Stage. Again, I’m highly suspicious of their credentials for top-billing on the back of their track ‘Ice Cream’ being used to sell PC processors – particularly as the rest of their gamut doesn’t really reach ‘Ice Cream’s’ standards. Nevertheless, they braved the rain and put on a good show of their wholly listenable poppy electronica.

SUNDAY

The I’m From Barcelona posse produced a wonderfully uplifting set in the Sunday afternoon sunshine, showering fans in balloons, confetti and their trademark catchy melodies and pleasingly covering Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ and other pop staples that had revellers dancing like loons. Then followed some unfortunate scheduling that saw Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan take the stage, putting quite a dampener on everyone, not just because their brand of admirably morose balladry was in such stark contrast to IFB, but the pair seemed utterly disinterested in being there at all and swiftly left after completing a set-by-numbers, barely uttering a word to the ever-enthusiastic crowd.

Back on the WTWTA Stage, Mia Riddle and Her Band won over a curious crowd with her sweet voice and general loveliness. Their bittersweet countrified indierock complimented greatly by the willingness and ability of her very talented band to play a wider variety of instruments than you’d normally find.

Parisian beauty, singer-songwriter SoKo then wowed The Great Stage with vocals often reminiscent of Bjork and brutally, refreshingly unabashed songs about sex and love and lots of things girls aren’t generally meant to talk about.

For me, the weekend’s highpoint and embodiment of SGP’s Brave New World came in the form of Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, the former proving himself to be some kind of electroglitchbeat wizard and the latter a modern day genetic splicing of Dylan and Chuck D. Chuck Dylan, if you will. On just their sixth live outing together, Scroobius Pip seemed genuinely and endearingly surprised at both the huge crowd drawn to them at the small WTWTA stage and at the tangibly electric response to them. “Who here likes UK Hip Hop?” he called at one point, most of the crowd taking the bait shouting that they indeed did, “I don’t,” laughed Scroobius, “I think it’s shit” citing just 5 current acts that he believes show intelligence and poeticism worth listening to. Whilst that probably harshly suggests that UK Hip Hop is somehow different to Hip Hop in any country, the hope has to be that with Scroobius at the helm many more would-be poets will see Hip Hop as a valid outlet to reach a young and vibrant audience.

The wondrously ethereal poptones of Of Montreal saw out the evening at The Great Stage, with offerings from their excellent ‘Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?’ album. Kevin Barnes sounds a great deal like James Russell Mercer live and it struck me that the band sound a great deal like The Shins would if produced by Kraftwerk. No bad thing at all.

On my way home I reflected upon my days at that strange place. I felt like I’d spent the weekend involved with a Mighty Boosh staged production of Lord of the Flies. Everything at Secret Garden Party relies on people giving of themselves to succeed. People here were so implacably friendly. I’ve never before had such a huge number of completely random conversations with even more random individuals, all of them absolutely lovely people. Naturally at points people got drunk and leery, but I didn’t hear a crossed word all weekend. Everybody buys into the Secret Garden Party ethos implicitly and whilst that may not necessarily mean joining in with the fancy-dress, at the end of the weekend I felt like we were all ready to instigate our own Brave New Worlds.

© 2007 Richard Bowen

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