Field Day - Victoria Park, London - 11/8/07
3/5
By: Michael Cragg
So-called boutique festivals- think less people, less mud, more seats- have slowly gained in popularity in parallel with the general rise in festival attendance within the last ten years or so. For every Reading and Leeds or V, there's a Bestival, Electric Picnic and now East London's very own Field Day.
Now, on paper, Field Day looked to have everything any discerning festival fan could want, from the brilliant line-up (Battles, Bat For Lashes, Gruff Rhys, Four Tet to name but a few) to the eccentric stalls, which included a jumble sale, coconut shy and the promise of some old-fashioned tug-of-war. And yet, in reality, Field Day was marred by the same things that seem to blight the major festivals, things like a general lack of toilets, good food (especially if you're a veggie), and places to buy alcohol. The fact that we only managed to see four bands in total was due to the fact that the rest of the time was spent queuing for the loo, waiting for someone else to finish queuing for the loo, or queuing for a drink (by the time you got to the front, you invariably needed the loo again).
The first band we saw (as opposed to just hearing as we queued) was The Concretes. It was quite a weird sensation watching a band as icy cool as The Concretes in a tent so small and so hot that by the end it felt like you'd witnessed them in a sauna. Despite the heat and some sound problems, they were brilliant, a captivating mix of joyful music and maudlin lyrics.
It was a relief to venture back outside where Vetiver were just starting their mid-afternoon set, and beneath the blazing sun and with trees all round it all made brilliant sense. The near-seven minute 'I Know No Pardon' transported everyone back to how we imagine Woodstock might have been, only with less queues!
The people in charge of this event deserve praise for assembling the bands they did, but should also get a slapped wrist for managing to put Battles and Bat For Lashes on at the same time. Having plumped for Battles on the back of their sublime 'Mirrored' album, it was time for more disappointment as their start time of 7.30pm came and went due to 'technical problems'. Fifteen minutes late, and with the large crowd frustrated, they finally came on to a ferocious chorus of "Turn it up", the woeful sound no match for their complex songs.
Lastly, it was left to Gruff Rhys to raise a smile and as you would expect he did so with flying colours, his arsenal of instruments and kid's toys adding aural gold dust to a set made up mainly from the brilliant 'Candylion'.
And that's where we left it. Field Day was an exercise in managing disappointment, a day of brilliant sunshine and nice surroundings marred by awful organisation and woeful facilities. It all could have been so much better and given the line-up you would have expected much more.
Yet perhaps we can put these issues down to simple teething troubles and hope that next year they will have been ironed out. In fact, a message on the Field Day MySpace page after the event apologised for the lack of toilets and bars and promised a re-think, but was quick to point out the quality of the bands they'd assembled. Quality which there's no denying, it's just a shame you either couldn't hear them, or you only heard them from a distance as you waited in line.
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