Camp Bestival - Lulworth Castle, Dorset – 30/7-1/8/10 [Part 3]
4/5
SUNDAY
Local (Devon) musician Seth Lakeman, kindly drops in on Sunday to apply his boy-band looks to folk, playing a jaunty set at the bandstand in the sun, to a sea of pushchairs and grateful fans. ‘Riflemen of War’ (from 2006’s Freedom Fields) possibly engages with different topics than the bandstand has witnessed over three days of Mr Tumbles, but it provokes the sort of dancing folk music should. Despite being fiddle-heavy, his music seldom ventures into diddly-dee pastures of traditional folk, instead pulling wider influences from rock and C&W, particularly on his recent album Hearts and Minds, and his tight band are a joy.
Later on, Human League arrived with their usual minimal set up. Throughout, the ‘girls’ leaving the stage indicated serious, pre-1983 electronica, while their skirted-return heralded the obligatory roll out of ‘Tell Me When’, ‘The Lebanon’, ‘Love Action’ and their familiar ilk. Phil Oakey’s blunt banter about declaring “we are from the North, you’re the South”, shows he remains a Yorkshireman not only at heart, and adds his thanks for our support of live music. The band affix grins for ‘Don’t You Want Me’, while it is Phil’s solo hit ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ (with Giorgio Moroder) that stole the show for the encore.
They are followed by Friendly Fires, who have gone disco, and it suits them. They are the new Rapture, if such a phrase is legal. It demonstrates that cow bell can save more than just cows, as their energetic set is exactly what a Sunday festival crowd needs. The insistence of new song, ‘Running Away’ is genuine dance floor fodder, as is ‘On Board’, both indicating a new ambition on their forthcoming second album, while Paris and Skeleton Boy are belted out with nightclub intention. There remains the sense that their songs could be stronger, but this is more about the groove. That the Aeroplane mix of the former is not played (particularly by Rob Da Bank on his firework-lit closing set) might be a niggle, but otherwise they hit the exact spot.
Camp Bestival specialises in kooky side-events, most of which we missed, though the Insect Circus, the Human Duke Box was a great distraction – type in your track and the band (squeezed into a tiny caravan) are off; Eminem’s own ‘My Name Is’ will now be forever lacking a bicycle horn accompaniment.
With a slightly uninspiring band line-up it was the DJs who could have grabbed the festival where it hurt, and some did, such as Greg Wilson’s inspired, up-tempo set in the Bollywood tent, and the weekend’s ubiquitous Cuban Brothers being particular highlights, while others were less so, with ‘Rock The Casbah’ being heard at least 6 times in a single weekend, shows even good songs can be killed by overplaying.
For a festival playing ‘Zorba the Greek’ as the closing song, though admittedly in Cocktails and Dreams (or Bread and Buttered Crumpets as it was christened) and not the main stage, Camp Bestival was another great success, but perhaps the most prevailing memories will be of the Gruffalo, Bristol legend DJ Derek saying “I’ve never been to Jamaica, I let it come to me”, and some clown called Mr Tumbles. Who? No idea.
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