Miscellaneous - Escott Park, Devon, 18/8/2005...20/8/2005

  by Helen Tipping

published: 20 / 8 / 2005

intro

Beautiful Days is a small and largely unsung festival organised by the Levellers. Helen Tipping and her friends enjoy a very special weekend of music, camping and with giant seagulls while there

Beautiful Days is a small festival held at Escott Park in Devon. It's organised by the Levellers and the music is very varied, from folk acts, to rock bands, to indie bands and there's also a dance tent. It's very family friendly, with a children's area to entertain the younger children, and both a family and quiet camping area. I went to the festival with my partner, Neil and two of our friends Big Neil and Chele. We also met up with many people we knew and lots we didn’t know. This year the festival started at six on the Friday evening, which meant that instead of getting in pretty much straight away we had a two hour queue on the A330, but once we were set up and had met up with friends we went off down to start watching the bands. Here are some of my highlights and lowlights of the festival. The first band we saw were Drunk in Public in the Big Top. Drunk in Public are Mark, Simon and Jon from the Levellers and Exeter singer-songwriter Rev Hammer. They play acoustic music you can dance to. This was aided by some very nice cider from the beer tent. From what I recall it was pretty danceable and very full. Next up were Kip Keino, which consists of Nelson, the bassist with New Model Army, guitarist Glyph Owenson of the Hosepipe Band, and drummer Buzz. The band are instrumental and experimental and draw on diverse influences. A Middle Eastern-sounding track was to me the best song. There is a lot of repetition in the music, which gives it a dance element. I enjoyed it but a lot of people wandered off in search of other things. Perhaps it was down to a clash with I Am Kloot rather than a dislike for the music. That was also why we left part way through. I am Kloot are a Manchester band with indie influences and I enjoyed their set. A few songs were a bit bland, but on the whole they were good and I would recommend them. At 8pm each night there was a performance of Free Born John, by Rev Hammer. This was a musical exploration of the life of the seventeenth century radical political thinker John Lilburne, which featured music in the folk tradition and readings. Musicians performing included Rev, Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span, New Model Army frontman Justin Sullivan and the whole of the Levellers. Come to that most of New Model Army seem to be in the band as well. The English Civil War Society had created a living camp around the stage, where they were running workshops during the day - although I have to say we didn't attend any of these. The Freeborn John performance is an interesting concept but did rely on knowledge of this period of history, so the flyers that were handed out were a great help for the more historically ignorant of us. Having said that, I still enjoyed this - some parts more than others - and it was quite nice just to relax amongst friends, have a drink and watch something a bit different from the usual festival fare. On Saturday we managed to get down to the main stage in time for the Needles, a band I reviewed for Pennyblackmusic some time ago. They were better live than on CD, although the sound was way too loud for first thing on a Saturday or maybe that was just all the cider we had the day before. We moved on to the Big Top to see Dan Donnelly, a singer songwriter who plays guitar and performs folk / rock / indie. He multi-layers his music by recording chords and notes and tapping on the guitar and has an excellent singing voice. His lyrics are intelligent and funny. One song in particular was requested by the crowd - 'David Gray.' It's about how all singer songwriters in New York seem to be following the David Gray formula in order to achieve success, and Dan does a pretty good impression of the eponymous singer songwriter as well. We'd heard Anti-Product should be good. I'd seen them before as a support but wasn't all that impressed. They kept shouting out to the crowd to ask if they were enjoying themselves, but there was little to interest us in the songs. Having said that, other friends really enjoyed them and they appeared to be the love or hate them band of the festival. I'm afraid I'm pretty much in the latter camp. Being a bit of a New Model Army fan, I went off to see Red Sky Coven. Red Sky Coven are an offshoot folk and spoken work project from that group. Joolz reads poems and tells stories partially accompanied by music, while Justin Sullivan and Rev Hammer play songs. I hadn't seen Joolz read her poetry for a large number of years. In fact that may have been with Red Sky Coven, but alcohol and time have intervened since then. First up was Rev Hammer. I prefer him with Drunk in Public, but he's quite funny with amusing asides between songs. Justin Sullivan and Rev provided an atmospheric musical backdrop to Joolz's poetry. She's very eloquent and I wish I could use as many different adjectives writing reviews as she does in her poems. Her poems are stories of Bradford life, and illustrate the lives of people she's met, or are at least based on people she's met. They are highly emotionally charged and are about subjects such as lives wasted by both heroin addiction and homelessness. Justin played a track from the new New Model Army album, 'Carnival.' 'Another Imperial Day' deals with immigration and exploitation of would-be immigrants. I first heard him perform this track in Leipzig and it still sends chills through me. Flogging Molly were next. I've reviewed them elsewhere for Pennyblackmusic. They are an excellent festival band and really got the crowd going. This time their fiddle player, Bridget Regan, was with them.I was really pleased about this because when I saw them at The Corporation in Sheffield she was missing and, even though they were still very good, you could tell there was something lacking . The Wonder Stuff were last up. I was a bit sceptical.I seem to go to lots of reformed bands these days that I remember from first time around. Some work. Some don't. I'm glad to say that the Wonder Stuff did, and I had a good time. I remembered so many of their songs from the 90's, and I even managed to remember that I'd seen them before, but I'm not sure that was a good thing ! As well as bands at the festival there were lots of other things going on to entertain people between bands or when there was nothing on to us interest, which did happen a few times. There were quite a few performance artists - the best by far were the seagulls. A couple dressed as giant seagulls wandered around the festival squawking at festival goers and trying to steal their food. The kids loved them and they were followed around by groups of them. The children were also funny - some of them had been doing a workshop where they were dressed up in stretchy tube material so they looked like big maggots, with just eyeholes. They hopped around after the seagulls, causing (pretend) consternation and much amusement for Neil and myself. Others worth mentioning were the two guys in suits with neon tubes round the end so they looked like lit up Bertie Bassetts, and also a couple dressed as very small people carrying a lot of luggage. I presume their heads were up in the luggage. Most popular, especially with the men and an excitable lesbian, was the Fairy Glitter Wrestling. This took place in an inflatable swimming pool, the participants being two women dressed as fairies. who tried to hold their opponent down in glitter and get her covered in it. Sunday was fancy dress day for us. Chele and I dressed as fairies whilst Neil and Neil had some lovely flowery frocks and handbags. A purple wig was, I believe, also involved. Big Neil had a lot of admiring comments and glances, and got chased by a guy dressed as a stilt dog who was accompanied by a giant Scotsman on stilts. We were laughing so much that there are sadly no photos of this. The first band we saw on Sunday were the Fish Brothers, who are described as Victorian Musichall Punk and I can't better that description really. Having called Big Neil "Ann Widdicombe", they went on to play a disastrous set, which also proved to be very funny. The drummer failed to turn up, so Dan Donnelly came on the help out, then the guitarist's lead died on him and the replacement had the wrong sized connector. Neil and I left after 40 minutes to catch Nozzle, the Fish having come on early, only to discover that so had Nozzle and they'd played a short set. We enjoyed the one song we did hear though. About to wander back for lunch, we decided to stay when Skindred came on. The music was really good, but the front man veered between being funny and annoying. We faced more exhortations to enjoy ourselves. I think it's an American thing. Okay he was Welsh but they are big in America. The music was quite dark and heavy, with reggae, dub and programming joining together with a rock sound purveyed by the likes of fellow Welshmen Lost Prophets in an original way. They play the Casbah in Sheffield on 30 September, and I would recommend going to see them if you don't mind all that "Are you having a good time?" stuff. I won't say much about Billy Bragg or the Levellers, I think most people know what they're like and I had a good time at both. At the end of the Levellers set, Billy Bragg came on stage and they performed some Clash numbers as a tribute to Joe Strummer whose birthday it was. This seemed to end earlier than most of us expected and we felt a bit deflated. Never to be deterred, we found out that 3 Daft Monkeys were playing an impromptu gig at the Tiny Tea Tent at the top of the site near the Dance Tent. Big Neil and Chele went to bed, but Neil and I went up to see what was happening also in search of more alcohol as we'd run out. The beer stall had closed, but the Tiny Tea Tent was serving hot chocolate with brandy, which was really very nice. If the queue hadn't been so long I would have had more than one. 3 Daft Monkeys were folk rock, and sounded pretty good, although the tent was so full we had to stand outside. We listened to 4 songs, but it started drizzling so we wandered back down to our tent. Beautiful Days is a really nice, relaxed festival. There doesn't seem to be lots of idiots; it's very small, about 15000 people; it gives local bands a chance; and there's something for everyone music-wise. Oh and there's no massive corporate sponsorship - no big Coke banners, no Carling. The beer is by Otter brewery and the cider comes from a local supplier. There is a good range of vegetarian food, organic food, and even the sausage stall sells good quality speciality sausages.As for general supplies, if you don't want to drive to the supermarket near Exeter services, there is a stall on site called the Local Shop which is run by volunteers and sells bread, milk, general supplies and very nice hommity pies. Crime appears to be quite low compared to other festivals, though this year did see a few more "dodgy geezers" than previously - let's hope that the lack of Glastonbury next year doesn't result in any more. The photographs that accompany this article were taken by Neil Bailey, Lois Matteson and Helen Tipping

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