Located somewhere in Victoria Park in London was the festival site for this years Lovebox Weekender. I'm still unsure why it was a huge secret to inform the public of which of the several park entrances would be correct for the 45,000 people to pile into when arriving. However, when this major oversite was resolved, it was a relief to head to the main stage and only encounter the front row filled. With the VIP concert goers paying a maxium of five times the regular ticket price I had paid, I felt like handing out lollypops for the suckers. The real VIPs turned out to be the lucky photographers who had a whole security team standing in front of them in a pit in front of our barriers.
While most of the concert goers had the freedom to walk around the site experiencing the other attractions-rides, food, smaller music performances- I chose to ignore all of this and wait for all the main stage performers. Sitting on a plastic bag that my friend and I stretched out to sit and rest our legs, I spent time slapping on suncream and staying hydrated. Luckily, the weather for most of the day was bearably warm.
The format for the concert was about one music act an hour. The first act was Tommy Reily, followed by Chipmunk, an 18 year old hip-hop singer with a DJ. During his set, a girl danced with a plastic bag packed with her worldly possession which kept smacking into me. I just stayed calm but her antics were mild compared with the crap I would encounter later.
The next act, VV Brown, was someone I was really interested in seeing. A singer whom gets lost in the Amy Winehouse/Duffy category is a great singer in her own right. She was classy and I enjoyed hearing her two hits("Crying Blood" and "Shark In The Water"). Mark Ronson prodigee's Rumble Strips came on stage and should have kept walking. It just like felt dull modern rock with too many brass instruments.
Eventually, with each act more popular than the next, the crowd was no longer breaking up after each set had ended. It took the stage crew ages to set up for Florence and The Machine with a harp appearing along with hundreds of fake flower arrangements on the instruments. By this point, waiting many hours, I finally started to encounter people I wanted to strangle for various reasons, mostly attempting to jump in front completely unaware that their reasons were laughable. Florence and The Machine came out and suffered from too much hype- The only thing worth seeing was the lead singers fierce outfit, a shiny emerald dress with peacock styled feathers and matching shoes. It was hard to say what the audience reaction was because we were all throwing on rain ponchos when the singer was tossing out the stage flowers.
It was time for N.E.R.D with Pharrell and with the audience now dangerously crushed together, security decided to relocate the wheelchair patron. This meant everyone behind me would try to body slam their way in front of myself and friends. I did not want this to happen, so using some sort of instict, I followed the closing gap quickly and got up against the railing as my friends were along together. N.E.R.D was pretty good until they started inviting girls to come up on stage! Security were instructed to pull girls out and being up front we were seriously having trouble as our chests were ramming into a barracade. I tried to keep my head down at the same time to avoid getting hit in the head from the girls getting ejected and I made sure to focus on getting enough air. "Thud" a beer can hit me from the left side but no permanent damage. Similar things were happening to my friends but we managed through until N.E.R.D left and security kindly asked if we needed assistance. With the crisis over, I took the free water being handed out and removed my poncho. I can only imagine what Glastonbury is like, but given the option of the people worse off behind me(with a harder time to attract security attention), I could manage for the rest of the night being it was the very last appearance of Duran Duran for 2009.(we can only hope and pray, as I couldn't keep up with another festival crowd for more than the day of this show).
Duran Duran's set was slightly shorter than two nights prior due to sharing the bill with the other acts. Simon Le Bon comes out wearing a top hat and Nick Rhodes had his walking stick due to a leg injury(They reminded me of Charles Dicken's characters). The opening song was "Wild Boys" followed soon by "Hold Back The Rain." The sound was perfect as Le Bon didn't forget any lyrics. Most of the audience sang along to most of the hits and as a good surprise, the band wound up playing Arcadia's Election Day. The set was very smooth without much incident for a nice change. By the end, the "Special Guest" Mark Ronson, who is producing their next album, came out to join in for a new arrangement of "A View To A Kill." Ronson's smugness suggested he demanded some respect which I don't really think he deserves at this point. While the song was great with an intro featuring a complementing string section, the sound levels of the brass section drowned out Le Bon at times, but his white dinner jacket assisted to bring the attention back to him. All in all a great performance with a few minor complaints not worth dwelling about. As my blog suggests, most of the complaint were focused on the audience.
My camera decided that this was the time to die on me! However, I did get to take a few pictures and videos. http://www.youtube.com/magicmeri
