So, as is the way with these things, Day Two began with a groan. But I shall not bore you with the small print of my hangover, lest to say it was bloody awful and waking up perilously close to a man did nothing to appease it.

    
Still, after dragging ourselves into the festival area (not open before 11 to those without the hallowed Press Passes) we proceeded to enter the period of ‘coming round’,  which essentially entails eating fried food, drinking some form of liquid before manfully getting back on the sauce before mid-day.  Today it was to be mojito’s (another festival classic?) that would bring us back from the brink, and after the really quite reasonably priced scram and booze had sunk in we were ready to, quite literally, face the music.

     
Unfortunately, and it is now that a very small criticism of Beach Break now comes into play, the music for most of the second day was pretty poor and geared towards a younger indie-boppin’ audience.  But then, I  guess, I am older than most of the student attendee’s so I perhaps wasn’t expected to be so looking forward to The Zutons, who were headlining that day. 

      
Things on the main stage actually kicked with a very different festival experience to the normal, with the smiley, dancey ACM Choir singing a selection of covers and a few of their own tunes in a manner that reminded me of Slick Boy and Cute Bird from American Pie.  You may note my tone of cynicism here and, frankly, you’d be dead right as I was convinced it would be a load of wishy-washy, finger-clicky nonsense that would have this Topshop Indie crowd rooted to the floor, reading their complimentary copies of The Independent and comparing the size of the pockets on their cammo shorts.


How wrong I was! How ignorant of the power of happy singing people! The crowd absolutely bloody loved them.  It took a few tunes admittedly, but after that and a couple of ‘come on everybody’s’ and the watchers were on their feet at the foot of the stage whooping, hollering and generally feelin’ the love in the room (below).  Big surprise that.  

  

  

      

      
Alessi’s Ark followed them, most of which I listened to from the comfort of a deckchair in the VIP bar.  She was lovely, something akin to Emilian Torrini with her achingly pretty voice and sparse musical arrangements.  If ever music was designed for hangovers it was this, whilst last song ‘Memory Locks’ upped the ante and finished the set on a pleasingly epic note. It was during this gig that we also met George, a whippety, feverishly excitable sort of chap who was to pop up at frequent intervals over the next couple of days, each time being the very definition of outgoing and always wanting to talk talk talk.  And if you had enough of talking, he would just turn to the person next to you and talk talk talk to them. And if they didn’t want to talk talk talk, he turn to the next person, and on and on and on. He’s just that sort of bloke, and quite impossible to dislike despite my wish for him to occasionally be quiet. Apparently he had sold 50 tickets at his Uni (Kent), and as a result got a free tickets and access to the VIP area where he seemed to venture at regular intervals to buy armfuls of drinks for his legions of followers, each time proudly taking a swig off the top of every drink in the type of taxation that Alistair Darling would have wet dreams about.


With the lack of quality musical distractions after this me and Mike decided to take advantage of one of the more pleasant quirks of Beach Break’s enforced cross country move, and pay a gratis visit to the Port Lympne zoo that sat next to the site.  Now, it might be thought by some to be unusual to go and look at wild animals in big (but not always big enough) cages in the middle of a music festival but, if I had my way, every festival would now have a zoo adjacent to the main site.  The chance to go and ogle monkeys fighting and grooming each others genitals really is a rather pleasant experience whilst covered with that festival glow, and veritable packs of festival goers were camped outside the chimp enclosure for hours, giggling, pointing and aren’t-they-cute-ing.  Quite what the ordinary zoo visiting folk made of the swarms of pink chests and cider bottles that were, somewhat inappropriately, popping up over the site is another thing altogether they but hey ho, there was a big queue in the cafeteria so everyone was a winner.


After Mike adjourned for a mid-afternoon nap, I found some company in our tent neighbours, and went off to explore the General Levy lyric twisting Jungle Is Tiny stage, accessed only through a tunnel on your hands and knees (see below).  Safe to say Jungle is not my normal musical poison, but watching people on Class A drugs sweat, sway and stare in the sun is always a pleasure.  Soon getting restless though, we went and hassled Mike before Alex- who despite working at the festival, at 2am the following morning would happily shout through our tent that he’d just quadruple dropped- had to go hand out ciders for 8 hours.  We went to check out the festival, and were soon to have quite possibly the worst musical experience of our lives.





          



Hadouken!  The name, taken from a move on Street Fighter (oh,brilliant), should have been a hint that they wouldn’t quite do it for me.  But I’d quite liked ‘That Boy That Girl’, and its perceptive lyrics about Hoxton Heroes and Indy Cindy’s.  Unfortunately, they didn’t play that, or they played it in such a manner that I didn’t recognise it and the whole set disintegrated into a sub-indie rave with a tirade of embarrassing not-very-rudeboy ‘rapping’ from Lead Cock James Smith.  At one point he felt the need to scream into the mic that ‘its just gonna get dirty for hadouken! now...I want  you to crack it uuuup’ before launching into a song I can only assume is called ‘Crack It Up’.  It was around now that I started to notice my age and wondered whether I just wasn’t ‘in’ or ‘cool’ anymore (as if I ever was), and that fulfilling these two requisites was essential for thinking Hadouken! to be anything other than a blight on the sonic landscape. However, with the benefit of hindsight I have realised that, while I certainly am not ‘in’ or ‘cool’, Hadouken! are a massive load of no-genre turd and if they had any respect for us or themselves they would stop recording music this instant.  George liked them though.

      
The Zutons then did their job very well, leading the crowd merrily along with their wealth of singalongs.  It’s easy to forget in my inclination to be slightly disparaging about them that they have a lot of well known tunes and, though they don’t do loads for me, they were perfect for a festival like this where mega-subversity is not the order of the day.  Ending with a ground-shaking ‘You Will You Won’t’ they were given an ecstatic send off by the crowd many of whom, like us, then toddled off to listen to DJ Yoda drop a constant set of crowd-pleasers.  Personal favourite for me was The Caesar’s ‘Jerk It Out’ , but that was just one of many that had the population of the Forest Of Kernow losing its rag.  Then after some tentative boogy-ing and a circuit of the night time venues day two drew to a close without, unfortunately, anymore adventures at the Mystic Swing.


Day Three kicked with a slightly more pleasant all round feeling, and less necessity to go ‘ohhh, I feel like SHIT’ every ten minutes.  This was a bonus, as was the fact that there was a lot more music to look forward to, not least Ladyhawke and Sir Dizzee Rascal later that evening.

   
Before that though, and in a replication of the ACM Choir the day before, 360’s came on to an early, largely sluggish crowd and gave me absolutely no inspiration at all.   Once again though, I was forced to rethink my tendency to jump the gun and admit that, though their emotive ska-pop leanings are not really up my alley they know how to get a crowd bopping along excitably.

  
The same cannot really be said for Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, who I’d been hearing a lot about from trendy cropped-trouser wearing types, and was expecting something a bit special.  Instead I got, well, I’m not really sure what I got as a puzzling conundrum Ou Est are.  On the one hand I think they are godawful, a kind of sub-standard geezer electronica.  ‘Better’, which was introduced as  a ‘song for the lovers’, was truly horrible; the sound of Mike Skinner and Chris Tennant wanking each other off, stopping only occasionally to make really really bad music.  The Pet Shop Boys are an influence throughout with big pounding beats parading over the likes of ‘The Key’, though the preening posing frontmen tend do tend to move around a bit more (too much, you might say).

      
Yet ,despite my general distaste for their music and what they represent, you can’t deny they are quite compelling.  They deal in big chorus’s, not much else and though they are intrinsically shallow, they had the crowd singing along to their tunes.  Final song ‘Dance The Way I Feel’ had a big brooding bassline that hinted at some filthy toonage; instead you get a couple of lads crying about how they like to express their emotion through the medium of dance.  If you think this is a bit nancy, it is, but a certain amount of respect is due for the way they had the crowd hollering along in no time. If anything they made me think they could be the Embrace of the indie electronic scene which, when you think about it, could be a lot worse.


After that an amble to Chai Wallah's brought The Ruskins to our attention.  After reading a scathing review of them by our very own Paul Schofield I was expecting little more than to make a few barbed comments in their direction.  Instead we got a set of nearly-raucous jaunty punk tunes, sang by a grinning frontman who apologised for his hoarse voice, blaming it on ‘3 gigs in 3 days’ (he wouldn’t last a minute on tour with The Boss).  Ripping through their short 3 minute numbers in front of an appreciative hugging audience, they were vintage final day fun, as was Killa Kella who demonstrated that being able to throw your voice in a thousand directions at once can still be tuneful,.   At one point he segued from ‘Renegade Master’ to ‘Love To Love You’ to ‘Milkshake’ in the space of three minutes.  Excellent it were, and the crowd loved it.  We were to see Killa later, chatting up some young looking but aesthetically pleasing philly’s which made he hrrmph in a manner that I tried to convey as scorn but was quite clearly jealousy.


The festival had gone eerily quiet, and me and Mike started to speculate that the (bloody!) students had run out of money, and were going to stay back at their tents for their evening.  Like most of my assumptions during Beach Break, it turned out to be complete bullcrap as they were all, in fact, putting on their outfits for the fancy dress themed final evening.   Slowly they returned in their hoards with all manner of get-ups were  on show, from the boring (angels) to the arousing (Arabian Princess), the ridiculously warm (Teletubbies) to the sublime (possibly simple cowboy stripper).   




         

George was in his absolute element now, and seemed to be bouncing around at every turn we made.  He and his group of disciples were constantly doing press-ups, a result of ‘ownership’ as he frantically told me at the VIP bar.  Apparently, if you got someone to hold your drink/hat/cock, you had demonstrated that you ‘owned’ them, and the slave would be forced to do ten press-ups, normally with people sitting on your back, kicking your legs and generally making life bloody difficult . Upon me suggesting that maybe you should just stop holding people’s drinks, he looked at me like a kid who’d just been given socks for Christmas, and I had another moment sensing my age.  Anyway, they had started to become wonderfully uncontrollable, flinging themselves on each other at no moments notice.  In fact, the only time they calmed down was when George (the absurdly open-mouthed one with his head above the two blond wigs below) herded them together so I could take a picture of them; though it is worth noting that in its immediate aftermath they all jumped on Mike, with arms open, after he invaded their picture. Serves him right.  




           




Ladyhawke then proceeded to send the kids into delirium, ho ho, as she belted out all her hits and the rest which, as it transpired, all sounded like hits as well.  A fine live act she is, though a little bit static there down front.  Still, a final song pairing of ‘Paris Is Burning’ and a euphoric ‘My Delirium’ cannot be sniffed at, and by the end utter pandemonium had descended as me and Mike observed wondering if ‘we were ever like this’. Naturally we came to the conclusion we weren’t.





           





There was surely only one man to top all this, and Mr Rascal certainly delivered what the crowd wanted.  Opening with his short of version of ‘That’s Not My Name’ proved a good idea, getting any potential naysayers on side straight away and gave him a chance to display the swaggering showmanship that carried him throughout.  Going from that into ‘Jus A Rascal’ then  had them in raptures ,and enforced Dizzee to stop the gig several times to ask the people ‘down front to calm down.’  The security even had the industrial water hoses out, which only seemed to get them even more riled up, to the point that Dizzee had to declare at one point that he ‘didn’t want anyone to die tonight’.  Again, this was ignored completely and like the proverbial red rag only got them screaming and pushing each other some more.  ‘Dance Wiv Me’ went down a treat, as did him freestyling over MIA’s ‘Paper Planes’, before the moment that the gig, the festival, had been building to; the dropping of ‘Bonkers’.  Never has a song title been so reflective of the mood it inspired as beautiful chaos reined all around, with flares going off, several people looking in danger of serious cardiac arrest, and several more skipping a few sexual bases.  That’s what music’s about right there.


So that was Beach Break 2009. It’s a fun festival but won’t suit everyone, least of all the type of muso snob that turn their nose up at anything that isn’t Glastonbury.  It’s not the most alternative, and the line-up is pretty much commercial indie, with a few well known dance names chucked in (not my genre I’m afraid).  But, at the end of the day, a lot of these put on a great show so who cares? It’s also cheap, only £84 quid for the three days, and there is a lot if imagination that goes into the different areas and stages.  The atmosphere is to-a-tee-friendly, only being disturbed by a few Sports Team types, but they’re no more annoying than the self-righteous knobs that can infect more ‘worthy’ festivals.  And frankly, everyone’s gone there to enjoy themselves, drink their weight and try and get a bunk-up, so even if you’re not a massive fan of the music you should have a great time anyway.  I left Uni a few years ago now, but if I was still a student I’d gobble it up.

Posted In Festivals, Jul 02 2009. Words - David