Bestival 2008

Robin Hill Country Park, Isle Of Wight - 5 Sep 2008

by Jim Merrett

Island mentality

"The site itself resembles Disneyland meets the Battle of the Somme or The Little Mermaid’s enchanted undersea kingdom re-imagined via Apocalypse Now."

For years the smaller “boutique” festivals have been snapping at the heels of the big boys. And 2008 might be the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke. Record numbers of live events were supposed to happen, and then record numbers didn’t happen at all – victims of the “Credit Crunch”, a recession that sounds more like a breakfast cereal.

The current financial climate was not Bestival 2008’s most obvious concern – in a year where Glastonbury resorted to hawking tickets on the street like the very touts it introduced Israeli-levels of security to stop, Bestival sold out in record time. Perhaps word has spread, or maybe the “heritage” line-up (mostly 1980s and 1990s throw-backs) whetted long-dry appetites. But the consistently sunny shindig did face a hurdle – inclement actual physical weather conditions. We’re talking mud to test those designer wellies.

So, let’s take a boat ride to the Isle of Wight. Having already missed very probable weekend-makers My Bloody Valentine and Santogold, Ryde the day after festivities begin is vaguely reminiscent of the Dunkirk depicted in Atonement: steel grey skies and hoards of confused, dumfounded and dispirited casualties limping towards the ferryport. Reports come back from the frontline and the taxi driver complains that he’s had to clean out his car five times already today, with seemingly more people headed out of the festival than into it. Not what you want to hear.

Sure enough, the site itself resembles Disneyland meets the Battle of the Somme or The Little Mermaid’s enchanted undersea kingdom re-imagined via Apocalypse Now. In hindsight, the fancy dress blowout flaunting a “30,000 freaks under the sea” theme seems unfortunate, the sort of thing King Canute might have said before taking a paddle, if not ironic in the Alanis Morissette sense given the rainfall to pummel Robin Hill Country Park. Papier-mâché fish flap about, Old Gregs moan about their soggy manginas and once-pristine Beatles in their yellow submarine struggle to keep their heads above water, or mud. Those dressed in scuba gear or deep sea fisherman’s waterproofs seem well prepared, though. But one key moment says everything you need to know about this festival: as the crowds gather and patiently await the arrival of Amy Winehouse, the nation’s favourite drug addict (for the press’ love-hate affair with Pete Doherty, most of us still struggle to hum one of his songs), the hairs on the back of my neck prick up and stand on end.

With Wino still back-combing her hair back stage (possible euphemism), festival organiser Rob da Bank is left to entertain the punters by slapping on some tunes. Not an easy task with a potentially braying, burning torch and pitchfork-wielding angered mob. Among the old school rave classics, Jackie Wilson’s ‘(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher’ is a sublime choice. Think back to Ghostbusters II and this song was used to positively charge the slime that had engulfed New York City. The effect of the Bestival spirit on the mud is no less powerful.

Rewind a few hours and another Bill Murray film was the talking point. Last year, bent on journalistic detachment, I’d wandered into the fancy dressed throng of Bestival decked out as a figure I thought only a few “in the know” would recognise: Hunter S Thompson (bizarrely also once played by Murray, film geeks – he gets everywhere). This also afforded me the chance to cherrypick quotes from the aforementioned writer and talk about myself as part of the story – something this website tries to avoid, but is inescapable at an event like this (and if you like writing about yourself like I do). And this year’s attempt to blend in consisted of a powder blue shirt (actually a thinly disguised girl’s blouse) and a red bobble hat – a member of Team Zissou from Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was, I thought, an inspired last minute costume. And many others had come to the same conclusion. Half a can of lager into my Bestival adventure I was dragged onto stage in the Rizla Arena to join 20 other Zissous (Zissai?) for a bout of Hip Hop Karaoke.

It turns out scores of other revellers (sorry, I can’t resist that particular tabloidism) have also jumped on the Zissou bandwagon, creating an in-crowd within the crowd, with members of Team Zissou nodding, hugging and passing notes as they confront each other. A Team Zissou get-together is planned for the afternoon, but I miss it after reluctantly getting on with what I’m supposed to be here for: checking out and reporting on bands.

First up (for me, anyway), Jeffrey Lewis rocks the BBC Introducing stage. “This is the BBC Introducing stage,” he informs the crowd. “Weird, because I already know everyone at the BBC.” Capturing what Bestival is about, he encourages everyone to introduce themselves to each other before tearing up a Shins gone Ben Folds-slanted set that offers rules for taking LSD – something the young urchins in the tents next to me scrabbling around for ketamine and slurping Whiskas kitten milk (true story) at 10am the next morning should have noted.

Roots Manuva and Lethal Bizzle pass unnoticed as I lose a page of my hastily printed out timetable. After much tramping around in mud missing bands, A-Trak causes a stir in the Bollywood Tent similar to the possible outcome of the CERN proton accelerator being switched on, only with more churning of mud.

On the main stage, The Human League baffle with Philip Oakey’s sub karaoke turn and new material but finally get it right with a sing-along ‘Don’t you Want Me Baby?’. Toothsome comic Alan Carr is spotted in the crowd dressed as a prawn. And plugging a special guest-sized hole in the schedule, Grace Jones improbably winds up a highlight of the weekend. Still as scary as she was during my childhood (and so youthful she’s seemingly been kept in a Tupperware box ever since), she prances part peacock, part Darth Vader as tic-a-tape explodes from the stage and sticks to muddy grinning faces.

Hot Chip help the crowd manually plough the field with further disco mayhem. The fat sweaty one is dressed like a fat sweaty lizard and the one that looks like Joe 90 is at first dressed like a knight, then takes his helmet on and looks like he’s Joe 90 dressed like Kryten from Red Dwarf. Their closer, a heart-felt cover of Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, sets the scene for the stage’s grand finale. Should she turn up.

And so we wait. And wait. And wait. Rob da Bank’s airing of The Rolling Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ receives a collective sigh as the audience assumes it means Wino isn’t turning up. Then, after much whispering and flag pole-climbing, Amy Winehouse’s name flashes on screen and her band congregate on stage. And wait. And wait – for an embarrassing pause. Finally, a bedraggled bag of bones with Amy Winehouse’s hair teeters onto stage and slurs into action. A rotating crowd of campers clamber to witness a pop star off the rails with their own eyes and then make a swift u-turn when their ears catch up. Given the good things I’ve heard about the other day’s headliners (My Bloody Valentine and Underworld), offering Wino the prime spot is a shot in the foot, but there’s always more fun to be had.

In the Big Top, Hercules and Love Affair ramp up the 1980s disco pomp with a spellbinding set, with the ever-captivating Nomi Ruiz ensnaring lingering gazes from red-blooded men still unaware of what lies inside his/her knickers.

And out of the smoke and glitter, one man emerges. Aphex Twin’s set splutters at first but finds the pulse of the weekend with Cameo’s camp anthem ‘Word up’, then fires headfirst into the small hours of the morning (although a bit more sound – so we could hear the music above the general kafuffle – would’ve been nice). 808 State by all accounts blew everything that went before literally out of the water, but we’d already left in search of nourishment and, as it turns out, polka. 

The Sunday offers more mud and highlight acts shoved into the later slots, so with work on Monday and the promise of hot food cooked by my dad on the mainland, we escape the Isle of Wight, like mauled Jurassic Park survivors, hosed down and slung on a ferry.

This isn’t the island in the sun it seems from postcards of Blackgang Chine. And boiled down, Bestival is actually more Butlins than Glastonbury. The site may have looked like something out of the Book of Revelation come the Monday, discarded serpent-heads and all, but the mud wasn’t the end of the world.

And so comes the end of the festival season. Every year you wonder why you put yourself through it – and remember exactly why you do. Russian boffin Mikhail Bakhtin wrote of carnival being a breakdown of social constraints, a chance to let off steam so that society doesn’t explode, an orgy of consumption, hedonism and sex that allowed normality to resume in its wake. A festival is a moment where everyone is equal. And what could be more equal than everyone being dressed like a twat for the weekend?

Bestival is exactly the kind of unrestrained chaos we need to bookend the festival calendar and in that respect maybe the mud only helped. Despite the grey clouds and brown bogs, the site visual feast of colour totally detached from our everyday mundane urban lives. Unless you dress like a prawn for a living, obviously.

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