To read the first part please go 'ERE



...Beers and Burrito’s- there’s a combination to get you back on your feet surely? And surely enough, after this Mexican culinary classic I was back to a state of almost-conciousness, and all ready to go and have a nice lay down by the lake, though not before watching a big-haired busker and his Jimi Hendrix inspired set. He was to pop up regularly throughout the weekend, always with a big crowd who quite rightly appreciated a man playing the guitar with his teeth.


We managed to catch some of Mercury Music nominees The Invisible who, like the best festival discoveries, were an unknown quantity beforehand. Their funky post rock was not lost on the mid-afternoon crowd who swayed and nodded in all the right places and, though the band put little stock in interacting with crowd, they put on a performance that suggests those Mercury judges do sometimes know what they’re on about.


We then stumbled upon another cracker, The Alice Russell Band. Again, I knew absolutely nothing about her prior to the festival, but her kooky powerpop was a refreshing departure from the electro-lite posturing’s of the Little Boots’ and La Rouxs' of this world. The crowd were reacting to it too, with Mums, kids and mashheads all wavin’ and hotsteppin’ as one, especially during ‘Dress To Impress’, wherein Alice and her 10-15 strong band proceeded to run around and behind the stage for the duration of the track before getting back up front for the vocals. This girl knows how to entertain.


So, back to the tent and I was flagging. Orbital were on later, and I had no idea how I was going get through it. After some impassioned arguing with Mark and Mikey, I told them I was going to stay at the tent for a bit, then meet them later (I knew full well I wasn’t going to). After nearly getting in a fight with some twat in the tents next to us for the crime of, it seems, sitting in my tent I laid myself down. Naturally I was woken by various people throughout the night, not least that twat’s (sound) friends who, when they weren’t throwing their mates tent around, loudly ruminated on the fact that he’d been starting on people all night including, I gathered from their descriptions, Chinook Jonny from yesterday.


Day three starts with a Bloody Mary and a conversation with a man in a sparkly gold dress. Unlike me he’s been up all night, is hopping from foot to foot, and is my ideal breakfast entertainment as he tells the chap standing next to me that he thinks the face on his t-shirt is actually him (it isn’t) .


First to the Words In Motion tent, where a man dressed as a pirate was giving a talk on spiritual crystals.  Swathing around his prostate crystal covered lady subject in the middle of a circle of onlookers with a plastic cutlass and gun tucked into his leather belt, he brought to mind the younger, camper brother of Jack Sparrow.  Hippy types in tye dye sat infinitely more transfixed than everyone else, legs crossed and nodding unironically as he spouted what could be graciously referred to as twaddle, whilst the rest of us didn’t know what to make of it but in the spirit of the festival gave the guy his stage, refrained from throwing fruit and didn’t even laugh when he minced round the circle to waft incense in everyone’s face.


Next up was a woman with short hair and hairy legs giving a talk on how hemp is the most superest duperest thing in all the world.  To be fair, most of what she said did make sense, but she lost me when she insisted upon reciting an absolutely awful poem at the end called The Duchess [not to be confused with the rather good 'The Last Duchess' by Robert Browning), which was too long and full of sub- Jack Johnson ‘embrace life’ clichés of the sort that people are loath to spout when they’re travelling in South East Asia.  After my education for the day, I caught some of Tom Brosseau who was waking everyone up on the main stage with his deceptively complex finger picking.  Unfailingly polite and nice, he’s not going to set the world on fire but he’s also am awful lot better than James Morrison.


Sheffield hero and Arctic Monkey influencer John Cooper Clarke was the first in a spoken word triple header for us, and by a long way the best of the lot and probably the most natural entertainer of the weekend.  Coming across like a more haggard (!), intelligent Ronnie Wood, he delighted the crowd with his poems full of cynical whimsy, inbetween wandering, acerbic tales of his own life.  Final poem ‘Evidently Chicken Town’, a skewed homage to his hometown, was received rapturously after he insisted upon apologising for the copious amounts of profanity that was to come, as you can see from this snippet;


the fucking view is fucking vile
for fucking miles and fucking miles
the fucking babies fucking cry
the fucking flowers fucking die


Onto Noel Fielding who was trying to get a lackadaisical crowd singing The Soup Song (from The Mighty Boosh), among another poetic efforts I presume are also from the TV program that made his name.  I’m not actually a big fan of the Boosh and its wackier-than-thou humour, but Noel’s a likeable enough chap onstage and looked like he’d been living it up with rest.  Much more up my alley was Dylan Moran, who was as wide eyed and wild haired as we’ve come to expect from Black Books.  Endearingly pessimistic about everything but especially fatherhood and growing up, he struck a chord with the child-carrying crowd who tittered appreciatively when he frequently bemoaned the perils of weekends where one now has more responsibilities than that of partying.


After returning to camp and observing the lads next door now putting their friends tent in a nearby tree, I managed to persuade the others that Broken Records were worth their precious time.  Dubious they followed muttering ‘that twat don’t know what he’s on about’ and the like, only to bowled over by a performance that, frankly, even I didn’t expect. They were astounding were astounding, even better live than on their brilliant debut album Until The Earth Begins To Part-which I purchased as soon I got home- and kept a disappointingly small crowd in a state of rhapsody throughout.  Visually arresting throughout with their band of guitarists, violinists, double bass players, not to mention frontman Jamie Sutherland who howls and growls in his Scottish lilt as if the fucking world depends on it.  Lazy comparisons with Arcade Fire are inevitable, but only because they use folky instruments and are concerned with emotive, unfailingly massive tunes, to such an extent that you could say they are not a million miles away from a Coldplay or a Springsteen.  If you want string-influenced spine shivers by the bucketload, it is very important you check them out as soon as is possible.


Unfortunately, David Byrne provided nothing of the sort with a set that could be described as middling at best.  He came onstage with a band and dance troupe all dressed in angel-strength white and the man himself was fairly chatty, informing the crowd that this was the last night of their year long world tour; indeed, the performance seemed tired and somewhat uninspired (though the flipping, twirling dancers deserve praise).  He wasn’t helped by a crowd that were clearly just waiting for some Talking Heads tunes, nor the fact that a halfway through his set the giant Wicker Woman that had looked down on the festival since Thursday was set alight, shooting out fireworks and drawing the attention of anyone who wasn’t yet too enamoured with the performance by the legend (us included).


As is the way with these things though it didn’t matter at all, and we just scuttled off elsewhere with me and Mikey somehow ending up helping two barman dismantle the depressingly empty bar at the Green Campsite, despite their protestations that they didn't really want us to.  From there to the local lads camp next to us, where they had picked on a new tent to harass and were hammering it with sticks until the poor incumbent had no choice but to rejoin the party. By now we were all pals-other than the chap who started on me who wouldn’t look me in the eye- so in one final Final Night push we went to the brilliantly named Crap Bar on the other side of the site, which was blasting out tunes to suit all tastes, where we haggled mercilessly over the price of balloons with some charlatan who was trying to charge us 5 quid for something I know damn well only costs about 30p.  After being caught, in the spirit of ‘levelling things up’, trying to pilfer a bottle of beer from his pocket we thought it might be best to talk to other people which as ever wasn’t a problem


Come 3.30 things were starting to get a bit, well, weird, and knowing a sub-8 start was coming in the morning I took myself back to what I hoped would be some sleep.  Of course, it being the last night, everyone was over excited and parties and laughter could be heard across the site, so nothing of the sort was possible.  Instead I ended up sat in the entrance to my tent, watching the lights on the other side flicker and intertwine in a mesmeric light show designed for the big of heart and twisted of mind.  Unable to drop off and ruminating on the plus and minus’s of The Big Chill, all I could come up with on the negative side was the headline acts who underwhelmed slightly. However, this seemed so irrelevant to the bigger picture as it is, undoubtedly a festival to challenge and usurp the immortal Glastonbury in terms of atmosphere. This is primarily, I think, down to the proliferation of families and a lack of urban trendies, there to say they were, break in their Hunter’s and get some wacky pictures for their Facebook page.  Instead, there really is a sense of different groups of people coming together to enjoy the festival in their own way, whether it be as a family holiday, musical odyssey or mess-fest. Pretences are unseen.  It’s also worth noting the small touches the organisers chuck in; the guitar playing Jimi-a-like, the Brazilians teaching capoeira to hoards of hungover revellers, the exercise bikes linked up to the huge Big Chill sign that lit up when people rode them, the group of pretend photographers and ditsy bombshells who descended on Mikey pretending he was a celebrity before disappearing off into the festival. All these and more, mixed with the top-notch atmosphere, impeccable green credentials, great catering and diverse line-up all combine to make The Big Chill a very special festival indeed. See you there in 2010. 

Posted In Festivals, Sep 04 2009. Words - David