overview

What Latitude lacks in hip festival “cool” is more than compensated by adventurous programming, which includes an eclectic mix of contemporary and new music with a dash of comedy, film, literature, theatre and poetry.

Set in gorgeous, Suffolk countryside at the edge of woodlands and a lake, the deal is this: you park up, take a short trek to the camping areas, pitch, exchange tickets for wristbands and saunter off to the fenced off arena where it all happens.

Inside the arena, the vibe is more akin to that of a traditional county show, except where there would be marquees for judging the largest marrow or a spot for the local scouts to display their skill with knots, there are stages and tents for a variety of music styles and the complete range of performing arts.

There is a good selection of food stalls including vegetarian and vegan outlets. There are even individual cigarette booths! However these are all sponsored by Marlboro so if your taste in gaspers is some other brand, this could have been an opportunity to finally keep that promise you made to yourself a long time ago to abandon the evil weed.

The beer tents were evidence of the way sponsorship is used in a mainstream event like this one. Only one brand of ale, cider and lager is available throughout the site. The lager was Tuborg, which in Denmark is a fine beer, but brewed under licence over here, is sufficiently devoid of taste to satisfy the most bland of American palettes. The beer was the rather fine in the guise of “Hector’s Pure”. But with one of the finest ales in the land brewed locally only four miles away in Southwold, why oh why wasn’t there any Adnams on sale?

The main Obelisk stage hosts those bands expected to have the broadest appeal such as Arcade Fire, Jarvis Cocker, Damian Rice and the Magic Numbers. Judging by the colour of the mud on the walls, ceiling and poles, the Uncut marquee had seen previous action a few weeks earlier at Pilton as the “John Peel” stage. Headliners there included the likes of Patrick Woolfe, Turin Brakes, Ricky Lee Jones and The Gotan Project.

The most disappointing act had to be The Good, The Bad & The Queen who came on stage like gunslingers with the crowd revved up by the wonderful energy, enthusiasm and boppy sound of CSS, only to deliver a set of tuneless dirges. The crowd thinned fast to the Uncut stage where two acoustic Spanish guitar players (Rodrigo Y Gabriela), thrilled a packed tent with their furiously paced fusion of flamenco and funky rock to a booming beat delivered by banging their guitar bodies in-between chords.

The Lakeside stage catered for the more rock/indie guitar bands and if you went for a walk in the woods on the other side of the Lake, you arrived at the magical Sunrise stage. This was where some rather fine new bands entertained appreciative crowds.

A number of stages had other lives after the main stages closed down around 11pm each night. During the day the Comedy tent drew huge crowds for a stellar line up of names which included Bill Bailey, Dylan Moran and Alan Carr. At night it was transformed into the Guilty Pleasures Discotheque playing all those infuriatingly catchy pop songs of the 70s and 80s which were also so annoyingly danceable. Think Tiffany and Lionel Ritchie and you’ll get the picture. The Lake Stage became an Indie disco and the Sunrise stage was more dance music orientated. I even caught some psy-trance from the campsite bar!

During the day the Film marquee showed the more arty shorts and works of music video directors but at night it transformed into a night club where the likes of Mark Lamar introduced acts such as The Alabama 3 and The Beat, interspersed with some pumping soul music.

There was a mixed demographic - plenty of families of all age ranges including the full spread of teenagers, many celebrating the end of exams. This is most definitely NOT an alternative vibe. In fact this is festivalling for the Centre Parcs generations – granny can come too!

The official programme was widely available and one of the best I’ve seen at these events. It was in full colour on recycled paper and the same size and thickness as an average paperback novel. There was at least a paragraph of biog on all the acts, even the poets. Main acts had two pages devoted to them. But it was £8 a shot!

There was an excellent kids’ entertainment area which included a section sponsored by Innocent Smoothies. If you knocked down a coconut or caught the rat down the drainpipe, you won a smoothie!

There was also a relaxed attitude to bar-b-ques and campfires in the camping areas. Firewood was not provided but could be purchased from a retail outlet.

But this fest needs to make substantial improvements, especially regarding camping facilities if it wants to consolidate its growth and attract more customers.

Sound quality at most stages was inconsistent. The main Obelisk stage appeared to be using the Glastonbury Pyramid Stage’s much maligned system. At times the sound was perfectly clear but lacked the punch and volume to give it a live feel. You don’t expect to be able to hold a conversation with your neighbour near the front of a crowd under the speakers! On some of the smaller stages the PA system was not man enough for the task with vocals frequently overwhelmed by the volume from the onstage amps and foldback monitors. Only the old fashioned sound from the bins on the Lake Stage seemed to have the necessary penetration and resolution. In the Uncut stage the mix was poor for many of the acts.

Quite a few of the marquees and kit had apparently seen previous active service at Glastonbury. It’s a shame that in the intervening period, the mud had not been washed off. The Comedy tent leaked.

Better use could be made of the arena regarding positioning of the stages. The Lake stage offers a more natural amphitheatre for a main stage. Although tiered seating is provided on the main Obelisk stage it slopes gently away from the front, as does the Film and Music tent but more severely. The Uncut Stage slopes in a different way – laterally from right to left! Perhaps the Uncut stage would be better placed in the Obelisk area.

Inside the arena there were thankfully many table and bench sets for resting up and refuelling. But there were not enough food outlets. There were long queues for most stalls with the longest being for fish and chips! It would have been nice if there had been some street theatre performers to up the festival feel and entertain the queues.

You expect to pay a premium at most festivals. Prices for most things are usually marked up and that unfortunately goes with the territory. Food prices were about a pound higher on average than Glastonbury at around £5.50 for a decent fill and booze was £3 a pint. But it was not until I went to the money grabbing “Cosy Campers” stall to purchase a colourful polka dot blanket and was asked for an extra £2 to use my Switch card that I truly felt ripped off.

There were long queues for almost everything. The comedy stage and cabaret tent were massively oversubscribed and inadequate for the crowds they pulled, as were a few of the other tents, especially when the music stopped and a crowd in a party mood, were predictably looking for further entertainment until closedown at 3am.

The toilets were of the portable long-drop type, probably the ones on the disused railway track by the Glade stage at Pilton. I rarely saw them being serviced and they cacked in true festival style. There were cubicles for pulling off toilet paper and for hand sanitising. But there were not enough of them in both arena and campsites and there were no urinals anywhere. This meant that blokes were peeing everywhere in hedges and against the arena wall. It also meant that ladies had to cross their legs for longer! Farcical! When will some festival organisers get that urinals are good for both ladies and fellers?

The festival has a responsible attitude to the environment. Beer is served in environmentally friendly “Eco Cups” which are recyclable a thousand times and made from reclaimed plastic. You had to pay a £2 deposit which is returnable. Ecover washing up liquid was being given away for free and was also dispensed at the water/wash points. There were separate bins for recycling but far too few of them. The site was therefore prone to fairly heavily littering. In the campsites, there were hardly any litter points. But East Anglians are a rural folk and respect their countryside. At the end of the fest there was no post-Glasto sea of rubbish. Litter was neatly bagged up in the bin liners supplied at the entrance and left in tidy piles as if they were bailing straw.

The single block of cash machines had horrendous queues, as did the one and only general shop. Seasoned festival goers are perhaps a bit more self-sufficient but this was a crowd more used to taking a day out to Alton Towers and who have higher expectations. The shop was under stocked in many things and unable to take credit or debit cards. It had sold out of beer by Friday even if it was selling Carlsberg at £25 a 20 pack when you can get it for £12 at Sainsbury’s. It had a few basics like bread and milk, but shelves of fizzy drinks, pot noodles and sweets were at the expense of other items like jam or marmalade.

Campsite facilities were beyond the woefully inadequate. They were inexcusably poor. There were two camping zones divided up into numbered sections. The Red Zone covered a wide area including the family and luxury camping area. There were only two toilet and watering points, sited to the side of these zones. Those camped on the field extremities, or even in the centre had quite a distance to travel to relive themselves and to fill containers with water.

I counted four water stations in total throughout the whole festival. Three of them had the facility to fill a container holding more than half a litre and two of them were in the main arena away from the campsites. Totally unacceptable! There need to be water stand pipes and latrines distributed throughout the camp site.There was a whiff of revolution in the air when the supply of water totally broke down on Saturday.

This is East Anglia where there is no “Hill of Doom” to conquer twixt car park and camp site. Despite this there are a few gentle undulations which are Suffolk’s excuse for hills. The weather was relatively benign; there were a few light showers. But if there had been a sustained period of rain, a number of walkways looked as if they would cut up rough, especially the walkway from the Red car park onto site. The campsites are in fields that have been heavily used by tractors instead of cows and as such are quite bumpy and rutted, making trolleying heavy loads a challenging experience. I was surprised to see no metal roadways laid down anywhere except incomprehensibly, in the middle of the arena!

The security was low key and there were plenty of stewards. The practice of searching for alcohol or food being taken into the arena was somewhat tiresome. You were even not allowed to take through beer you had just purchased in the camp site bar! Some of the marshals appeared to have no training or pre-orientation and were unable to answer some basic questions about the location of site facilities. One was even unable to recognise my wristband as legitimate for weekend camping!

The security staff were called “Customer Safety Officers.” As daft as calling train passengers “customers”! Instead of looking hard and depriving festivallers of their alcohol, it’s a shame they didn’t spend more time patrolling the camping areas at nighttimes to prevent organised scallies depriving festivallers of their tent possessions and wallets!

The Suffolk Constabulary’s interpretation of “light touch” policing meant they didn’t bother showing up. I didn’t spot a single rozzer from Thursday through to Monday. Astonishingly, this lack of the law’s long arm, extended to the site entrances and exits where queues to get off site on Monday morning were not helped by a complete lack of any traffic management whatsoever. It meant that vehicles had to play “Blindman’s Bluff” exiting into oncoming traffic take their chances unassisted, onto the busy single carriageway of the A12.

This festival is essentially, Mean Fiddler’s head man, Melvin Benn‘s vanity project. It’s meant to be “more that just a music festival”. Well he’s made a reasonable fist of it, trying to stage what is his concept of the perfect festival. The final assessment is that this is a good event with many nice touches, especially in programming, where each family member can have a good time. It deserves support and as such is a perfect introduction to festivalling for those new to the scene. In fact for some it was an introduction to camping itself! East Anglians are poorly served for decent music and this fest helps to plug a huge gap. But the arena and especially the camping facilities need to improve considerably if Latitude wants to develop and retain a following.

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