Love Music Hate Racism Carnival @ Victoria Park, 27/04/08

(Truly awe-inspiring cameraphone photography by me)

Mmmkay. Sunday was fun but overall the day was quite badly organised, and whoever thought it would be a good idea to encourage every act to badmouth the BNP at every possible oppurtunity was foolish. Obviously the BNP are stupid evil racist nazis, but I didn't need to be told that by twelve different people at 20 minute intervals. Some of the politics were also a bit wonky too, such as the festival's organiser saying the BNP should be banned as a party, which is obviously wrong. If the government just goes around banning political groups on the basis that their political beliefs are wrong, then how can this country be any better than Nazi Germany, Apartheid era South Africa or McCarthyist America? Anyway - rant over - I spent most of the day jamming out in the dance tent to a load of trance/grime/dubstep/bassline/garage and old nineties house music, breaking all the rules of 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' and dancing like an easily amaused moron but it was very fun. There were a lot of 'Gyals wiv Attitood' who I can only assume hadn't been to the kind of musical event that might be described as a 'gig' before, and some of them got very annoyed at people like me who wanted to jump around. There were more than a few times when it looked like someone who'd accidentally stepped on someone's toe was 'gonn get slapped' for 'disrespecting ma family' or something. But it was alright on the whole.



After a bit I made the mistake of thinking it might be a good idea to check out Hard-fi, seeing as I figured the people dancing there might be a bit tolerant of getting brushed against by accident, but after spending about 5 minutes saying 'excuse me' I was at the front and I realised nobody was dancing or was going to. There were several thousand people crammed in like sardines with their eyes on the stage and no intention of moving. Ever. Which, all in all is not their fault because Hard-fi really are the worst band in the world. Ever.

With reference to me saying it was badly organised, I asked a million stewards when Patrick Wolf was playing, and it turned out they hadn't even decided which stage he was playing on until about an hour before he took the stage. It took a lot of asking to find out when he was actually on, but when he finally took the stage he was really good. We arrived a bit early and saw the last ten minutes of Akala, and heard a few tracks from his new(ish) album, and one bit where he managed to rap a whole song a capella at a rate of about ten syllables per second. Which I thought was quite impressive. Back to Mr Wolf - it was quite a short set, starting with 'Accident & Emergency' and closing with the brilliant 'Magic Position'.



The show started off with Patrick wearing a black shirt and trousers combo but in the middle of one song he threw them off revealing some rather brilliant Union Jack pyjamas. It was quite an upbeat poppy set, with a full backing band and Mr Wolf dancing round the stage armed with a microphone only. Last time I saw Patrick Wolf, at the Underage Festival (also in Victoria Park), it was a more piano-based ballady show that eventually I left to go rock out to Boy Kill Boy instead, because I couldn't see anything or hear it that well. As Patrick introduced the track 'Vultures', a massive pit opened up behind me and the rest of the set became a big euphoric crowdsurfing pile-up, as opposed to a million teenage girls trying to get as close to Mr Wolf as possible. It ended with Patrick Wolf climbing all over the crowd barriers and flailing around Alice Glass-style, and it was really fun.

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
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And the fact that I heard this song about 20 times means I am actually starting to like it. Please don't hate me, I am already full of enough self-loathing as it is.

T2 Ft Jodie - Heartbroken
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