[Review] Latitude Festival 2010

[Zell1010]

Latitude Festival 2010, Henham Park, Suffolk, England. 15/7/2010 - 18/7/2010

This past weekend I volunteered at Latitude Festival 2010. Having missed out on a Reading ticket, volunteering is the only way to get in without paying over the odds for a ticket. As the company that does Reading did this festival too, my friends and I felt like seeing something a bit different and trying something new out. And if you are looking for a festival that's also very chilled, this is for you.

My initial wander around the arena with no punters in was that you could easily get lost in the acts in this festival. However, you have to know something about most things from what's there (Cabaret, Poetry, Theatre, Film and Music to name but a few) to get the most out of it. In some ways there is FAR TOO MUCH to see and do, which already puts a damper on things if you have clashes (not as bad as say, Reading/Leeds). There are about 5/6 stages, 4 performance tents, ALOT of food vendors and plenty of little things that I haven't seen at other festivals. For example, there was a gazebo set up on the last day for people to go play Scrabble (yeah... fun stuff), and also a harpsichord for people to play on. Soundwise, throughout the weekend the Obelisk Arena sounded very good. Every act we saw on this stage sounded brilliant. Very crisp. However on in the Word Arena, alot of technical problems arose, which lead to performers getting annoyed, and even the keyboard player in The Big Pink throwing his keyboard into the crowd.

Volunteering wise, we had to do 3 8 hour shifts. If you get the best shift pattern, you can pretty much see what you want to. However, due to my friends we got their late, meaning we had the pick of 1 pattern, i.e. the worst one. This pattern caused us to feel tired for most of the time, thus hampering how much we saw. Add that to the aspect of sleeping on the ground and the hot weather, and you can see why we weren't fantastically happy campers. However we lucked out by being assigned to the Performers campsite, where we met famous people (in the UK) such as Phil Jupitus, Keith Allen and Simon Bird from the Inbetweeners.

Latitude started out on the Thursday night with a set from the Welsh legend that is Tom Jones. However, as stated on the line up, he would be performing songs from his new album "Praise and Blame". Judging from most of the crowd reaction that we heard about, this went down a bit like a lead balloon. He was performing on a small stage, where the entrance was next to a bridge. This bridge nearly collapsed as we were trying to cross it. Scary stuff. The sheer volume of people that wanted to see him led to him performing again on the Obelisk Arena stage (main stage) on Sunday Noon. His new material, for most of us, was very dour sounding. The slow songs were very depressing, and the up tempo songs took inspiration from 60s Garage Rock. However the man still has his voice, and you can't take that away from him.

With working Friday 5-1am, we couldn't see much. The only band we caught a full set from was a band called Here We Go Magic. Avoid. They sound very boring and many people fell asleep during their set. I missed The Feeling which I was gutted about. However I managed to catch a bit of Florence and The Machine on my break. Very impressed. She can really sing, and pulled the biggest crowd of the festival.

Sunday morning we had a shift from 1-9, so Saturday had to be conservative again. We saw Frank Turner (second time in about a month if you recall my Green Day at Wembley Stadium review) and again he was awesome. And the headline act featured Belle and Sebastian playing their first UK gig in 3 or 4 years (I forget) and they were a pleasant surprise. You guys may have heard "I'm a Cuckoo" but don't know it. Go YouTube/Spotify it.

Sunday we had off, so despite our tiredness we manned up and made it through the whole day, catching The Big Pink, Yeasayer, Tom Jones (who I spoke about previously), Mumford and Sons, Rodrigo y Gabriella, The Coral and Grizzly Bear. We skipped Vampire Weekend as we'd seen them before and were a tad boring for me. I also caught a couple of comedy acts, namely Mark Watson and Rufus Hound. Hound's material was very very crude, but funny nonetheless.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention any Theatre/Film/Cabaret/Poetry/Literature. Despite not being interested as such in these fields, and volunteering, there still isn't enough time to see everything. That's a major flaw with this festival in my opinion, where I guess the name "Latitude" is derived from (i.e. the diversity of what's available). If there was less acts on each stage, or less fields there, perhaps we may have fitted things in better.

I would recommend this festival. Everyone is really friendly, there's not much violence and crime unlike other festivals (despite what you may have read in the news), and it's pretty solid all round. It's a tad expensive when you get there for food and drinks, and the nearest supermarket is a 20 minute drive away. Having said that, I'd happily go again, perhaps maybe not volunteering so I could see more.

[Jake]

there's not much violence and crime unlike other festivals.

Wasn't that the place some woman got raped?

But yeah, I was gonna go but I forgot to buy tickets :P

[Zell1010]

there's not much violence and crime unlike other festivals.

Wasn't that the place some woman got raped?

But yeah, I was gonna go but I forgot to buy tickets :P

Blimey that was a quick reply.

Yeah it was. But the girl (from what I was told) wandered off into the woods on her own, and asked for help. These guys then turned on her (it was more than one, again what I was told).

To be honest though, if you hang around in a group, you'll be fine against crime in most places

[Bobbyjames]

a couple of girls got raped I believe. I don't think it was me.

this is just down the road from me, I've been meaning to go to this festival every year since it started but never got round to it. sounds like a pretty good festival to chill at, where it's not just about music all weekend like other major festivals in the UK. kinda reminds me of a smaller Glastonbury.

glad you had a good time, if you go next year I can take you home with me and show you my Pogs collection

[Zell1010]

a couple of girls got raped I believe. I don't think it was me.

this is just down the road from me, I've been meaning to go to this festival every year since it started but never got round to it. sounds like a pretty good festival to chill at, where it's not just about music all weekend like other major festivals in the UK. kinda reminds me of a smaller Glastonbury.

glad you had a good time, if you go next year I can take you home with me and show you my Pogs collection

It is exactly like a smaller Glasto. Probably better in some ways as it's smaller.

And btw, Suffolk smells a little (where we went anyway), no offence.

[Bobbyjames]

ahhh, there is a reason for the smell at the minute. some meat factory burnt down a couple of weeks ago. well, the building is still standing, but at the minute there is still 700 tonnes of meat in there, slowly rotting. that's what you could smell most probably. it's smelt like that around here for like a week now.

[Zell1010]

ahhh, there is a reason for the smell at the minute. some meat factory burnt down a couple of weeks ago. well, the building is still standing, but at the minute there is still 700 tonnes of meat in there, slowly rotting. that's what you could smell most probably. it's smelt like that around here for like a week now.

That's really, kinda, fucked up. Is that place anywhere near Henham Park? Judging by the fact you live in Lowestoft, it might be.

I dno what I'd prefer - the smell of festival toilets or the smell of 700 tonnes of rotting meat.

[Bobbyjames]

it's about 10 miles up the road from Henham, but the wind has been blowing the smell that way for a couple of weeks now so you can smell it for miles!