Lovebox Weekender - July 21st 2007 Victoria Park
- Posted on July 23, 2007 5:33 PM
- 0 comments
I last attended Lovebox two years ago and must admit to being semi impressed with the set up...
I got a ticket on the well cheap that time around and had an OK ish time....
I had second thoughts about going this time around but due to the mass promotion of the event, the attendance of some good friends and the addition to the line up of the legendary Sly and the family Stone we decided to go again on the saturday this year...
The first thing that hit me when we arrived was the growth of the event - compared to 2 years previously this festival has grown dramatically...... guessing about 5-6 times the amount of people this time around..
The line up didnt stand out for me with only a few things that I wanted to check out interspersed with plenty of "filler"...
We got in at about 3:30 and quickly jumped into one of the biggest tents to check out Gilles Peterson who had started at 3...
this didnt get the day off to a good start - this tent was uncomfortably rammed out which is never a good festival welcome but the worst part was the sound of lack of it....you could hardly hear anything above the bassline which was particularly dissapointing due to Gilles being one of the top highlights on the bill...
Now there was LOADS going on but we basically had no clue as to what was going on where so we headed to the Horse Meat Disco and basically stayed there for the rest of the afternoon..
Horse Meat constructed a New York city street themed tent which had an enormous queue.... - not proud of this but we decided to hop this queue (2 hours queuing out of a 7 hour festival stay - sorry that aint working...) - once purchasing a comedy tache (which was a quid - hadnt we paid enough already!!) we got in and this was the opposite to the Gilles tent - it was pumping in here!!!
This was full on New York disco on a pumping system, blacked out with a lurid 70s light show.... spot on!! - had to keep popping out for air, WC breaks and beers but this was our base till dusk...
Maurice Fulton DJed for most of this and he was on point - dropping proper disco and soul joints mixed up with a bit of house.. - i didnt know any of these tunes but got on the good foot...
When dusk fell it was time to hit the main stage for the headline acts..
We met up with some pals and watched Blondie come on about 8 ish... I havent seen them live before and thought they were cool.. they did all their hits and didnt bother with too much noodle or new stuff which was spot on... "Rapture" got played which was an unexpected treat...
Overall a good band to see at a Festie - Debbie Harry pretty embarressing overall and again the volume could have been a lot louder but good fun none the less..
It was all built up to the headline set of Sly and the Family Stone - now I must admit i didnt really know what we'd see from Sly - the reports of recent gigs have been tetchy....
Now how many of the band were actually in the Family Stone - I dont know (sure i could find out on the web if I looked for a minute) - but they kicked off the show 45 minutes late and started to power through the hits - "Everyday People" - "I wanna thank you" etc etc... the rain started to come in and the crowd were getting impatient - half hour into the show - still no Sly......... THEN he finally came out and the crowd went nutz - expecting it all to kick off... - they powered through "I want to take you higher", "Stand" and "Dance to the music" - Slys involvement was minimal.... just shouting into a mic huddled on a stool - but that didnt matter... Most of the festival was huddled round the main stage at the point and expected it all to blow - but then.... that was it.... 40 minutes of the Stone - 10 minutes of Sly - that was it... he was gone.... - Show was over - lights were on.... time to go home...
Not too much booing from the crowd - most people just wanted to get to the afterparties...
So overall a fun day but not sure I got my £38 worth and as for Sly..... well...... still none the wiser.....
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