Isle of Wight Festival 2007
It might conjure up images of caravan parks, tacky seaside trinkets and theme parks falling into the sea, but this weekend it was bungee jumps, alcohol, hallucinogenics and seriously loud music as the Isle of Wight Festival 2007 kicked off, and I headed down with Mex from Black Grass and Dionne Charles from the band Baby Charles for a quick set in the place where Jimi Hendrix once set his guitar on fire. Jumping on the hovercraft over, we stopped in the pub for a few looseners before being picked up in a blacked out people-carrier to be escorted into the festival. The queue looked fucking massive, at least a mile long and ten deep, so it was with a sigh of relief that we bypassed it all and headed straight into the complex to the BLive stage, where the B stood for Bacardi, and the live, at that stage at least, stood for all the mentalists getting their swerve on in the tent. It wasn’t exactly the main stage, but hey, it was busy, and it wasn’t long before Mex was behind the decks and I’d managed to snaffle a microphone. Anyway, the set was dope, we had Justine from Bacardi bringing us booze and water to almost our hearts content, and the thronged masses were getting down to Mex’s set. It all seemed over too quickly, but that was peppered with relief as Groove Armada (not my cup of tea, it has to be said) were on the main stage straight after and the venue seemed to thin out after we’d packed up and taken advantage of the free food. An hour or so and a catamaran later, and we were back on the road to Brighton, as if it had all been some kind of tripped out dream. It would have been quite interesting to stay and check out some more of the festival, but with no tent or anything else, might have meant sleeping in a hedge, so it was probably for the best that we were back in B-town around midnight… Another show done with the Black Grass team, and with a residency coming up at Cargo from October, hopefully there should be more nights coming very soon…
On a completely differennt note, I watched Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto on Sunday night, and I have to say that I thought it was pretty dope. A lot more brutal than I thought it was going to be, but very entertaining. Check that out if you get a chance… 1.
