Bestival Robin Hill Country Park, Isle of Wight 9-12/9/10
5/5
By: Theo Krekis
“Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? My name’s Josie, I’m here to help you.”
I eventually come round and remember where I am. I’m in the Big Top Tent, watching LCD Soundsystem. There’s a balloon hanging out of my mouth and this girl called Josie, who I thought was a paramedic at first but is in fact a white Rastafarian, is cradling me on the floor as if I was her new born child.
Welcome to Bestival.
I shake my dazed head back and forth, spit said balloon out of my mouth, say goodbye to my temporary surrogate mother, leave her arms, and walk back into the chaos of the festival.
THURSDAY
Rewind time, and my girlfriend is giving me a lesson in how to put up a tent. I just nod whilst sipping on beer, and let her carry on putting up our new home for the next five days.
We walk to the main stage and watch someone who I can’t remember. A bottle of vodka and a twenty deck of Marlboro Lights later and a man has grabbed me in a headlock, forcing me to inhale poppers. Either I’m about to be raped or he’s a sick, sick man.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I get a headache, and the last thing I remember is the tarpaulin being cold under my left cheek.
FRIDAY
I wake up in the morning with gold sequined leggings around my ankles. Before you think it, the man with the poppers is nowhere to be seen. My girlfriend tells me my breath stinks of stale feet, but this doesn’t get me down. Today is Friday. Which means The xx. Four Tet. Dizzee. Nathan Fake.
We make our way to the Big Top for Four Tet, and soon the place is filled with eager faces and shifting jaws, all waiting for the first beat to start the Friday off. Before Kieran Hebden even comes to the stage, I leave. Anticipation getting the better of me, and the oath I swore not to break is broken.
Fast forward time and I’m trying to push my way through the crowds to see The xx. I get to a butch female security guard who has a French crop hair cut and a BON JOVI tattoo on her forearm. She shouts something which I don’t hear, but on second deliverance she makes herself clear - “THIS IS AN EXIT, NOT AN ENTRANCE.” In between her testosterone filled voice screaming this unnecessary fact, the faint melancholic strains of ‘VCR’ find my ears, and for that moment I’m content.
Fast forward time once again and I’m sitting outside the Bollywood Tent waiting to see the second King of Border Community Records, Nathan Fake. (His album, Drowning in a Sea of Love, is excellent). I lean against the side of the tent, and it’s at this moment I look down and see a baby frog. I pick it up in my hand and go over to a blonde wearing too much glitter on her face. I hold out my hand, look into her deep blue eyes and say “RIBBB-IITTTTT”. I expect her to jump, scream and make a big ordeal, only she doesn’t do this. Instead she gives me one of the most disturbing “Low fives” I’ve ever experienced in my life.
You can only guess how the scene unfolded. Screaming. Bloody palms. More screaming. Heartbroken frog parents.
Despite the minor incident of frog killing, Nathan Fake storms the Bollywood tent with a mix of deep tech and IDM, finishing off with the incredible James Holden remix of ‘The Sky Was Pink’.
Splendid.
The rest of the night is a blur, so let us move to Saturday.
SATURDAY
Today is dress up day.
I’m in my tent making myself look like the blue face-painted Baseball Fury from the cult classic movie The Warriors. My girlfriend is shouting at me for wearing muddy boots in the tent, only I can’t take her seriously when she’s dressed up as Elmer the Patch Work Elephant. We go and watch The Wailers who I can’t help but feel are lacking something, or someone.
R.I.P. Bob.
My serotonin levels rise and rise throughout the day until someone asks me if I’ve dressed up as an Avatar. I don’t take to this nicely and find myself back at my tent, wiping anything from my face which might give the impression that I’m from Pandora.
I catch the last of Mumford and Sons who I scream obscenities at, asking them to travel off the side of the world on their pirate ship, but by the end I’m singing along to all the lyrics. Their performance is then complimented by three girls truly raising their fingers to conformity and throwing away their bras and appearing topless on the big screens.
Magnificent.
The Flaming Lips put on an impressive show despite Wayne Coyne’s insistent sycophantic tone of voice telling us how much he loves us as a crowd and that we are all freaks, but we soon find ourselves at the Arcadia watching a show involving live music, acrobats and two men passing electricity bolts to one another. A show which made everyone OOOOOOOO and AAAAAAAA and left me in a state of a shock.
After the show a voice comes though the speakers and announces the special guest...Fake Blood. I scream like a small girl from all the excitement, the same way my sister did when she got her first Barbie Doll. Fake Blood’s set is one of the most fluid and progressive sets I’ve ever heard, taking us on a voyage through electro, fidget, house and tech and finishing with his infamous tracks ‘I Think I Like It’ and ‘Mars’.
For the rest of the night, we stumble around the smaller tents whilst I contemplate whether or not the permanent marker spelling out the words EYE and LIDS will rub off the tops of my eyes.
It doesn’t.
SUNDAY
We wake up and begin to feel the strain, sobriety being a distant memory and a thing of the past. Today is Ramadanman, Fever Ray, LCD Soundsystem and The Prodigy. A line up which makes me go weak at the knees. Before Ramadanman, we walk to the “I LOVE BESTIVAL” sign on the top of the hill and get our photo taken next to a drawing of a woman with her legs spread open. We hear a girl in a purple wig shout at her boyfriend, a shout which is then added to with hysterical tears, all because she can’t climb down the seven foot high “I LOVE BESTIVAL” sign.
I laugh at her.
Ramadanman plays an upbeat set, filled with iniquitous beats, making every last person painted with the soft red glow of the Bollywood tent dance as if it were their last night alive, as opposed to it actually being 3p.m. on a Sunday afternoon.
Fast forward time for the last time and I’m standing in front of The Prodigy thrash around the Main Stage. The keyboardist is standing in front of a laptop with the words TAKE ME TO HOSPITAL taped to the front. Perhaps the most fitting statement which encapsulates my time spent at Bestival.
They leave the flashing stage and come back on for an encore, which starts with the sound BOINK, followed by the lyrics “I’M DESCENDING FROM OUTER SPACE...”
The crowd erupts more than it has done the entire weekend. Drinks, mud, hay, bottles of piss and even a pair of wellington boots find themselves being hurled in mid air. Hedonism and nihilism seeping from every sweaty pore.
We make our way to the Big Top Tent to catch Fever Ray, the solo act from Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson, lead singer of the electronic duo The Knife. The stage is decorated with vintage lamps, which give off a dim yellow light, silhouetting the band. I try and squint to see where Ms Andersson is but fail in doing so.
Andersson: 1. Theo: 0.
Her voice is pitch perfect and the elongated bass notes penetrate my chest and I find it difficult to stand upright.
Climbing like Tarzan, some marvellous moron has decided to climb one of the four poles holding the tent up. He keeps climbing and swinging from the pole but fortunately refrains from clapping his hands on his chest. I’m waiting to watch him slip and fall to his death when three security guards push past me. The man climbs down and is applauded.
The next hour I don’t recall, but I come round when I hear these words repeated – “drunk girls”...
We dance to LCD until I hear ‘Get Innocuous’, and that’s when I see a man selling the double canister laughing gas.
I believe this is where you first came in.
I inhale until I black out and wake up to Josie the surrogate mother cradling me like her new born. I push her off and stumble into the last night of the festival with my friends around me. I reflect on the days which have past me here on the I Love Wight.
My words or photographs will never do it justice. Go and experience it for yourself.
Artists in this article: The Flaming Lips, The XX, Mumford and Sons, Nathan Fake, LCD Soundsystem, Fever Ray
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