Field Day @ Victoria Park
August 09 2008 @ Victoria Park, London.
Last year Field Day had a day of wonderful weather, perfect for sitting in the park, drinking beer and listening to great music. Sadly, they got the organisation horribly wrong and the result was a shambolic blend of loo queues, bar queues and bands you could barely hear.
Fast forward 12 months and here we are again having been promised a massive improvement and lured with cheaper tickets. Things have got better. The bars are better and seem to have more staff, the loos, while still not perfect, are better and the sound on both the Homefires and Main stages a whole lot better. Unfortunately, what they didn’t get this year was the weather. It rained, it drizzled, it sheeted and then it rained some more.
In years gone by this wouldn’t have disturbed me too much, I survived Glastonbury in ’98 for God’s sake, but maybe I’m getting too old because disturb me it did. I think the relentless drip, drip nature of it just wore me down, that and the lack of enough quality acts to hold my attention.
I think if I’d been going from one interesting band to another I wouldn’t have noticed the rain so much, but the waits between acts worth watching were up to an hour and this was not an environment to be just sitting around in.
Of the bands I did see, the stand out act of the day by far was Tunng. They absolutely rocked the smaller Homefires stage and captivated a surprisingly large and buoyant crowd. They seemed as surprised as anyone at the overwhelming reaction and this seemed to inspire them to greater heights.
After that we stumbled from one stage to another for a while, looking for shelter as much as anything. A brief stop for tea and hot donuts was one of the day’s high points and I think that says everything really!
Finally, just at the point of defeat, Efterklang briefly revived our spirits with a scintillating set, but even that wasn’t enough to persuade us to stay any longer and we trudged off in to Hackney in search of food and warmth.
I would love Field Day to be a success, I’m a big fan of the people that organise it and feel that London needs days like these, but after the last two years you can’t help wonder if it’s cursed and if it will make it to a third year.