Bestival has been an ever growing festival since its beginning in 2003. On the Isle of Wight in the week leading up to this years event it seems as though its grown again. Arriving on site Thursday evening, along with an estimated 36000 other people it seems as though the festival now officially starts the day earlier.
Although only the Big Top is open to performances the crowd and atmosphere is full of energy and the traditional Saturday fancy dress is becoming a standard of day wear.
Thursday night this year is '80's night, with the early arrivals being treated to a mix of DJs playing hits from the decade and bands that were either big in that era or are eighties inspired. First up on stage was Howard Jones – there after festival organiser Rob Da Bank finally caved in to a four-year campaign waged by the festival forum members to get him to play. Also playing that evening were Heaven 17, who played a crowd pleasing set of old hits, finishing up with the iconic 'Temptation' and 'Voice of Buddha'. La Roux also joined them on stage at one point for a duet of the Terence Trent D'Arby hit 'Sign Your Name'. The party continued on into the small hours after that, but we decided our beds were calling and left them to it.
Friday morning was overcast and a wind had risen up, but the forecast rain was staying off thus far. The daylight enabled us to get our first proper look round the site. For the rest of the year Bestival's site is actually an countryside theme park called Robin Hill and so the stages and tents are separated by Gypsy Villages, sculptures, exhibits about the local wildlife and the occasional ride. One of the things that Bestival prides itself on is its embracing of the surreal and eccentric, and the theme park elements do help to make a slightly unreal experience at times – a midnight walk through the wood in the middle of the site is a must, where the permanent sculptures take on a life of their own with the coloured lights and music piped round.
On the music side of things, the main stage was kicked off by local legends Level 42, a band who was almost as famous for lead singer Mark King's thumb as they were for their music. Time has not diminished their talent or the songs, and classics such as 'The Chinese Way', 'Lessons In Love', and 'Running in the Family' gave the crowd something to dance to, even though a good number of them wouldn't have been born when they were hits the first time.
The thing about Bestival is, like it's far larger cousin Glastonbury, it has so much going on that the only way to truly experience it is to meander around, visiting tents and stages at random. This was how we discovered The Bookhouse Boys, a band that play sleazy and dirty rock but layer it with a mariachi horns that give the music moments of beauty. If you find them playing near you I'd recommend a visit.
After more wanderings to try to fix the locations of the rest of the stages – Bestival has over 17 stages, bars and club areas spread out around the site – we returned to the main stage in time to catch Example: a rapper that, try as I might to think objectively, reminded me at times of Ali G. Still the teenage members of the audience seemed to like him.
A pause at one of the bars for a drink and a much needed break from wandering up and down the many hills that make up the Bestival site enabled us to catch one of the more eccentric acts of the day. Lewis Floyd Henry is a one-man-band who, as far as we could tell, performs cover versions in the style of Jimi Hendrix, or they may not be all covers, sometimes it was difficult to tell whether he'd written original songs that just sounded like covers. He would regularly play the guitar with his teeth, over his back and all the other tricks that Jimi made his name performing. He didn't actually set fire to his guitar during the performance, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he did so out back afterwards, just to get a truly authentic performance.
One of the gems of the site is the Gazebo in the Wood a stage so small that we managed to walk past it earlier without noticing it. This is a tiny stage that is often barely big enough to house the bands within it. Hosting mainly local acts and playing to audiences of no more than 30 or 40, it provided a welcome break from the more energetic stages of the main arena. One band in particular who caught our eye was the Weatherkings, who true to there own description, are lunatic funk, and with witty lyrics about the Isle of Wight they are definitely a group I will be looking out for around the pub scene this winter.
It was then a quick stroll back through the woods to see co-headliner Hot Chip on main stage. Self confessed fans of the Bestival, they were in particularly jubilant mood, and danced, and bounced their way through the set. A particular highlight for me was 'One Life Stand', with Alexis Taylor's vocals perfectly offsetting the keyboard riffs and steel drums. Absent from the band was Joe Goddard, whose wife had recently given birth to their first child, instead they had a video wall and played recordings of a close up of his face.
Deciding that we'd rather not see tonight's other headliner Dizzee Rascal, we set off in search of other acts, taking in brief snippets of The Cuban Brothers and Black Mountain, but with plenty of bands still to come over the weekend, we decided instead to take an early-ish night in preparation for the rest of the weekend.
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