I went to the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park last Saturday. If you haven’t got time to read this full report then you can pretty much guess what it was like from the fact that I didn’t go back on Sunday.
WORDS: CHARLIE LYNE
I’d been to see Blur there the day before (LUV U DAMON) and although that wasn’t the best crowd in the world, it certainly didn’t prepare me for the 50,000 strong twatstorm that is the Wireless Festival.
To be fair though, they were probably having a great time and there’s probably another blog somewhere out there writing about how it was a great festival, apart from that superior twat with the press pass and the digital camera.
These people are listening to ‘Bonkers’. Someone important has decided that it is the ‘Soundtrack of the Summer 09′ so it was on about every half hour.
This is a photograph of 1000 people trying to have conversations over Frankmusik. Poor Frankmusik, once he might have been mentioned in the same sentence as La Roux. Now he’s stranded at the bottom of the line-up of a sponsored tent and she’ll be on the cover of every Sunday magazine from now to Christmas.
Soon after, we began to realise that we’d missed the ‘no shirts’ memo. The testosterone levels were getting high. People were drinking cider and failing to deposit the bottles in the provided bins. We weren’t at Field Day any more, Toto.
A few people still had shirts on, but most of them had jokes on them:
If you can’t read that, it says ‘Be good! If you can’t be good, be good at it!’
We went to the Guest Area to try and seek out ‘fellow media types’ who we could talk to about 3Oh!3 or discuss the future of blogs with. There wasn’t much going on and most of the people there just seemed to be the friends of people who work at EMI. Even Grimmy was nowhere in sight. We suspected that he might be in the ‘Press Garden’ but we weren’t allowed in there because we had the wrong type of pass.
The loos were a bit nicer in the Guest Area.
Next we went to the merchandise stand and had a look at what they had to offer. Who could fail to be tempted by a £20 t-shirt you’ll only wear once with Alesha Dixon’s name spelled wrong on it?
Or maybe a £20, yes £20, pink cowboy hat.
£20. Unbelievable.
This is a group of people looking quite confused as to who Delphic are. You can’t blame them. I was quite excited by how much one of Delphic looked like Stephen Merchant:
Uncanny.
We ended up retreating to the very back of the field and leaning on a metal fence for ages. Obviously the photo above is not the actual fence we leaned on because that would have required me to stand up, walk several paces, turn around and then take the photo, whereas it was much easier just to take one of a nearby and practically identical fence.
If you want an idea of just how long we spent leaning against the fence, take a look at how much the shadows changed between Afrika Bambaataa and Dizzee Rascal:
It was a while.
This is the lid rim off of a water bottle. I had quite a lot of fun twisting each of its segments in a different direction in order to create interesting mini-sculptures. At one point we left our spot to go and buy some chips and when we came back I thought I’d lost it, but it turned up again and now it’s sitting on my desk.
I also devised a new system allowing festivalgoers the satisfaction of removing the label from a bottle of water, without the annoyance of exposing one’s hand to the sticky glue at the label’s end. Simply tear off a small section of the label and apply it to the sticky patch, creating an instant cover. Copyright me.
Here’s a nice nest I made from some dried grass. It was surprisingly difficult to make.
This is a picture of my friend Joe. He paid for his ticket and was a bit annoyed that all we wanted to do was lie around by a fence. He even managed to stay in the Digitalism tent for ten extra minutes after we got sick of it and went out for some fresh air.
Here he is looking down at me despondently. I felt quite bad but it’s his 18th birthday next week and I’ve bought him quite a good present so hopefully he’ll forgive me. Feel free to post nice ‘Happy 18th Birthday Joe!’ messages in the comments section as well, and I’ll print them out and give them to him on the night.
This mother is covering her young son’s ears during ‘Bonkers’. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.
We eventually moved further forward (and even stood up for bit) for Basement Jaxx. This was the semi-redemptive bit of the evening because Basement Jaxx are always amazing. We saw about half of their set and then left early to avoid the rush (WE R HARDCORRR).
As we left we saw this heart-shaped cloud. For lots of people in Central London it probably meant quite a lot.
This is the last photo I took, on the bus home. It was about half nine. As I took it, a friend of mine said, ‘I know exactly how you’re going to write this up. You’re going to use all the photos and do funny little captions about how we’re going home at half nine and sat at the back all day.’
I certainly proved him wrong.