Heading down to Devon for the Beautiful Days Festival 2010, there was an unspoken anxiety that each of us held silently inside, I could feel it in myself, and sense its presence in everyone else also. Latitude had been a riot of sundrenched pleasure and musical lunacy, and it would be interesting to see if it could be recreated again. 7am last Friday morning, the sky was colourless and empty and a brisk and lonely chill that threatened us with typical British rain, the kind that washes away any scent of enthusiasm – a weekend best spent under the covers watching piss poor action movies? Fuck no, not for us anyway . . .
5 Hours later and we’d made our peace with the weather, and so too accepted that Beautiful Days might well be a very different festival than Latitude. No matter, we had our medicines, we had our instruments, we had the constant aggregative nature of each other’s company, so we were ready. On arrival we witnessed two burly security man handle some poor teen, release him of his tickets, and drag him away to some place I hoped never to stumble upon. Then en route to our parking place we managed a wrong turn into a field lined with police riot vans and hungry looking uniforms – at which point Bruce turned white with fear, reversing the hell out of there, luckily unnoticed.
By 3pm we made temporary camp, and for the next few hours, like trolls lurking on the bridge, led campsite folk into the main festival arena with our stripped-down gypsy set. This began what would turn out to be a whole weekend of performing, and as wonky as it may have been, by 12.50 the following day our efforts on that bridge seemed well worth it.
The Big Top tent was gently buzzing with excitement and nerves, ours and theirs, for it was obvious that hangovers and comedowns were aplenty. Apart from a general consensus that I should never ever be allowed to speak to the general public between songs, the gig was a joy. We appreciate everyone who made the effort and took a chance on us bunch of misfits, you made our weekend. And for the record, what I actually said, trying to explain my obvious sweats and shakes, was “we got on some 4 year old Mandy last night” meaning MDMA, rather than “. . . 4 year Maddie” which is how some of the audience apparently took it. Hmmm, well, moving quickly on . . .
3pm we headed over to the Dirty Dave’s stage where I punk rocked a short set between main stage Q and A. Perhaps the most diverse and interesting stage, more arts than music. We later saw ‘The Agitator’ here, who is well worth checking out if you get the chance, and also ‘British Sea Power’ providing an instrumental noise sound-track to some strange Black and White film. All bloody good stuff. As the weekend drew over we witnessed our dear Hg go all twisty and momentarily turn into a crooked question mark, whilst Bruce did his best to lead us into bog and huge filthy hog infested swamplands. The rest is probably best left where it lies.
So, turns out that Beautiful Daze wasn’t one bit like Latitude, but without a doubt equally as brilliant. Many many thanks to all those we had the pleasure of meeting and getting messy with, t’was a dirty and delightful weekend, some great memories, and many lost on the hills of that place in Devon. Whoever you were, we hope you keep in touch.
Xxx Mr CroOK.
