BD 2021 Reviews

[Quark]

2 minutes ago, WS_Jack_III said:

Hahaha class! One of them stayed in place for ages in the urinals! I left some on cars too 😂

I was gonna take a photo, but I really couldn't be arsed explaining why

[WS_Jack_III]

3 hours ago, ChemicalBrother said:

I’m just going to add to your confusion I’m afraid!

I got there early and Shades of Rhythm were supposedly on. Got chatting to a couple who were there for SoR, but were leaving as whoever was on stage wasn’t even playing any SoR songs. 
I convinced them to stay for Altern8, as when I saw them back in the 90’s they put on a great show - but after 10mins I was in the exact same situation as they had been, no Altern8 songs & not even sure the bloke on stage was anything to do with Altern8.

Could be me being naive, could be me missing announcements, could be me being worse for wear at midnight at a festival - but I walked off & apologised to the SoR couple. 

There's photos on facebook of A8 on stage so they obviously turned up at some point. I walked off around 1AM but it went silent so I went back to check, everyone had the headsets on for silent disco at that point.

 

Every time I've gone to see A8 over the years, they've always been late. I think they were 45 mins late at Bearded Theory a few years ago and they were slightly late last time at Beautiful Days I think.

[WS_Jack_III]

1 minute ago, Quark said:

I was gonna take a photo, but I really couldn't be arsed explaining why

I'd rather you listened to a few tunes 😉

I'm hoping to break on to the festival circuit. Possibility that I'll be on at Beat Herder next year (was supposed to be booked for 2020 and the 2021) I kind of have backstage access at Beautiful Days but I'm always to chicken to try exploit it into getting booked.

[WS_Jack_III]

3 hours ago, blutarsky said:

As an aside, is it licensing conditions that mean all the stages bar the main stage are shut before the Levellers headline on Saturday or is it a massive ego trip they pull to ensure they get the biggest crowd of the weekend? Or that they just know most people attending are Levellers fans and will want to see them so they don’t want an empty Big Top for another headline act? 

It used to be much worse than it is now iirc, everything stopped at least 15 mins before Levs played. The festival is essentially a Levellers con so it makes sense as 99% of the people there will want to watch them. My dad is a huge Levs fan and it's the reason we've been most years since 06 but the rest of the family poke a bit of fun about the Levs having an ego by playing the opening and closing slots of the festival but hell, if you can do it then why wouldn't you?

[guypjfreak]

Nice festival imo

[themuel]

On 8/24/2021 at 8:59 AM, Maurice Mecca said:

Campsite and showers were generally awesome except we had some inconsiderate dicks near us who insisted on having their own festival until 5am each night.

Oooh me too, I don’t suppose you were up the path from the pizza and croissant tent on the left near the campervan entrance? 
 

I’m all for ppl having a lovely time but they were really inconsiderate and when approached they were also very rude. 

[gooner1990]

7 minutes ago, themuel said:

Oooh me too, I don’t suppose you were up the path from the pizza and croissant tent on the left near the campervan entrance? 
 

I’m all for ppl having a lovely time but they were really inconsiderate and when approached they were also very rude. 

Interesting.....that's exactly where we were camped and we had a big group keep us awake each night....

There was a massive group of about 20 people directly behind us who had a massive firepit who were up laughing and chatting till all hours, and across from them was another guy who had an acoustic guitar and insisted on singing until gone 5am each night. I'm not sure if the two groups were connected or not.

The camp the other side of us got really pissed off on Friday night and got out of their tents at 3.30am approx to tell them to shut up but it fell on deaf ears.

I'm fairly sure we are all referring to the same people!

[guypjfreak]

Met with some efesters which was great,, funny some were sat behind me.. Saw Mark from leves and had a good chat with Justin NMA who remembered me from kyps.. 

Nice festival but I'm defo outa shape lol 

[Skelts]

35 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

Interesting.....that's exactly where we were camped and we had a big group keep us awake each night....

There was a massive group of about 20 people directly behind us who had a massive firepit who were up laughing and chatting till all hours, and across from them was another guy who had an acoustic guitar and insisted on singing until gone 5am each night. I'm not sure if the two groups were connected or not.

The camp the other side of us got really pissed off on Friday night and got out of their tents at 3.30am approx to tell them to shut up but it fell on deaf ears.

I'm fairly sure we are all referring to the same people!

 

56 minutes ago, themuel said:

Oooh me too, I don’t suppose you were up the path from the pizza and croissant tent on the left near the campervan entrance? 
 

I’m all for ppl having a lovely time but they were really inconsiderate and when approached they were also very rude. 

We weren't too far from them either!  We walked past the group with the firepit each night to get to our tent.  Sounds like we were a bit further up the hill than you, almost under the massive tree at the top.  Good ear plugs are a must!

[Skelts]

15 minutes ago, guypjfreak said:

Met with some efesters which was great,, funny some were sat behind me.. Saw Mark from leves and had a good chat with Justin NMA who remembered me from kyps.. 

Nice festival but I'm defo outa shape lol 

Do you march up to the back stage access gates, hold your arm up and say to the steward 'good luck, the right wristband is in there somewhere' and walk straight in?!

[Maurice Mecca]

4 minutes ago, Skelts said:

 

We weren't too far from them either!  We walked past the group with the firepit each night to get to our tent.  Sounds like we were a bit further up the hill than you, almost under the massive tree at the top.  Good ear plugs are a must!

Yep thats exactly where we were just to the right of that group with the firepit and guitar.  Basically kept most of the north camping field awake by the sounds of it.

[gooner1990]

So my review.

My weekend

First Beautiful Days festival, had heard little about it until about 8-9 years ago when a guy I know who works in the music industry became friends with the organisers and started going with his Dad and some of his old uni mates. His Dad drinks in the same pub as me and kept encouraging me to come, so when we knew Glastonbury was off again me and another mate booked tickets straight away. The thought was that given my friend has been doing festivals for 25+ years and says its great, the line up wouldn't overly matter too much as long as the atmosphere was good. 

We travelled down from near Oxford leaving 1.30pm on Thursday afternoon, no major traffic hold ups and with just one quick stop we were parked up on site just after 5pm. Got in really quckily through yellow gate, and wandered up into 'North camping' and pitched up our two small tents.  Made aquantinces with the camp next to us who seemed to be a bunch of old dad rockers who had come as a group of about 10 of them with a couple of wives + kids for good measure.  Seemed nice people and remained on small talk levels with a couple of them across the whole weekend. 

As mentioned above, there was a big group of about 20 people camped directly above us, with another small cluster of tents to the left of them, both camps (who possibly knew each other) were up each night till 5-6am making all sorts of noise, general chatting, singing on auoustic guitars and when asked if they could quieten down, refused. The dad rocker camp got annoyed a couple of times and whilst we didn't say anything ourselves it did make it difficult to get to sleep...not helpful when you've been on one yourself and have just had a nice spliff to drift off to and can't because they are having a loud campfire singalong everynight.  But it is what it is and I'm sure i've been loud at festivals in the past when others have wanted to sleep!

I won't go into specific reviews of each band/act, however on Friday we saw Peat and Diesel, Mark XTC, 2 Bad Mice, Slipmatt and then the confusion of Shades of Rhythm and Altern-8 neither of which I'm sure turned up, but I was off my mash by that point so was just dancing away!  Saturday we saw The Skints, Gentleman's Dub Club, Gary Numan and James before finishing off with Mungo's Hi-Fi in the dance tent.  We met some lovely people in the forest bar next to the dance tent, two guys from Bristol and then two ladies called Cally and Joanne...we all seemed to lose each other in a state of fuckedness by the end though!

 A combination of a late finish on Saturday night, campsite kareoke next to us and general tiredness saw us struggling a bit on Sunday and we only got out of the campsite in time for dinner and then Skindred, The Orb, some dnb in the Rebel Tent and The Levellers, we called it a night after that and just had a couple of smokes and drinks by our tent before crashing at about 12.30-1am.  We were up, packed and at the car by 10.30am on Monday morning and were off site and on the road by 11am, we hit a fair bit of traffic around Illchester but still managed to get back home by 3pm (including a stop) so not too bad considering. 

General points

The toilets -  we met up with my mate and his Dad on the Saturday and he said the organisers had been let down with their toilet supply and had to at the last minute ring round and basically grab what they could which is why there wasn't as many and most of them were portaloos.  My mate said they are never this bad and hoped that next year it would be back to normal. I must admit it started putting me off drinking too much as the process of going for a leak started becoming a big chore each time.  The toilets near us were only really bad a couple of times. There was also a lot of people pissing in the trees/bushes by the Little Top late at night due to the queues.

Beer - were some good ales to try and I thought the general service was fairly quick, the only time we struggled was in the Bimble Inn on the Thursday night - took my mate ages to get a couple of ciders for us, pricing was very reasonable and I liked the reusable cups (which I now have at home 🙂 )  Was also good we could take in our own cans to the arena as this saved us a lot of money.

Camping Chairs - Far too many for my liking right at the main stage (close to the front as well), spent half our time weaving in and out of them and one couple refused to put theirs away when the Levellers came on (we were closish to the front on the left) and then got annoyed when people coming past knocked them over. Perhaps its an indication of the age demographic but it got quite annoying towards the end of the weekend. 

Food - was decent enough choice I thought, although £2 for a can of lemonade at the fish and chip van by Big Top was abit OTT. Had a decent pizza, some good chips and also had a halloumi and falafal wrap from the Egyptian stall.

Weather- Shame that given we had decent dry weather just before, and we've got it again now it didn't hold out over the whole weekend but is what it is I guess. We luckily missed the rain on Thursday as we were still driving down. Got caught in it on Saturday afternoon and had to go and change my t-shirt (waterproof was in the tent) which basically meant I missed the Selector, but at least I had two days of trainers and two days of boots which is better than some other events I've been to!

Atmosphere/other Punters - Thought it was great, and I've not seen that many 'alternative' types together for such a long time.  Didn't meet one idiot when out and about and most people were friendly. 

Would I go again? Yes, Would I necessarily start going every year? Not sure. 

Its a great little festival, family friendly, line up was possibly a bit weak for me but we occupied ourselves the entire time so it couldn't have been that bad....and you could even 'get on it' with a few people up in the late night dance bits if you wanted to (we did 2 out of 4 nights) Or just booze heavily and talk rubbish to strangers in the daytime.

I think I'd like to give it another go (possibly next year) without the COVID situation hanging over their heads making life difficult to book bands and causing mayhem with toilets.

Edited August 25, 2021 by gooner1990

[gooner1990]

13 minutes ago, Skelts said:

 

We weren't too far from them either!  We walked past the group with the firepit each night to get to our tent.  Sounds like we were a bit further up the hill than you, almost under the massive tree at the top.  Good ear plugs are a must!

Our campsite backed onto theirs at the bottom of their circle (if that makes sense) 

[Skelts]

8 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

Our campsite backed onto theirs at the bottom of their circle (if that makes sense) 

Yeah, we must have walked right by you too!  I'd have moved if I was that close!
Just read your review, glad you had a decent time and were able to get on it a bit with your mate!

[gooner1990]

5 minutes ago, Skelts said:

Yeah, we must have walked right by you too!  I'd have moved if I was that close!
Just read your review, glad you had a decent time and were able to get on it a bit with your mate!

The dad rocker group had a massive purple and blue bell tent that a lot of people were using as a landmark and we were camped next to that. 

[Pinhead]

I was at top of Arena over the path from Tiny Tea Tent. We had the Dirty Daveys bar crew camped behind us (in fact we kind of got assimilated into their campsite as more arrived), who spent all night blasting 80s pop hits, singing Spice Girls tracks and doing nos...

[Pinhead]

1 hour ago, guypjfreak said:

Met with some efesters which was great,, funny some were sat behind me.. Saw Mark from leves and had a good chat with Justin NMA who remembered me from kyps.. 

Nice festival but I'm defo outa shape lol 

Went drinking with Mark right after their Bearded Theory set one year, but that's another story....

[zico martin]

3 hours ago, guypjfreak said:

Met with some efesters which was great,, funny some were sat behind me.. Saw Mark from leves and had a good chat with Justin NMA who remembered me from kyps.. 

Nice festival but I'm defo outa shape lol 

Ha yeah I was one of those sitting behind you for hours thinking I was sure I recognised your face. God knows how but good to finally meet up with someone else from here!

[Quark]

2 hours ago, Pinhead said:

I was at top of Arena over the path from Tiny Tea Tent. We had the Dirty Daveys bar crew camped behind us (in fact we kind of got assimilated into their campsite as more arrived), who spent all night blasting 80s pop hits, singing Spice Girls tracks and doing nos...

When I got some signal I did see that you'd camped up there. Spent a lot of time (as always) at TTT so I was tempted just to start yelling PINHEAD at the top of my voice to see if anyone responded!

Only saw nos once all weekend and that was down by the bimble. One of your crowd wasn't a David Tenant looking type with a camel coat and massive sideburns perchance? 😄

[gooner1990]

21 minutes ago, Quark said:

When I got some signal I did see that you'd camped up there. Spent a lot of time (as always) at TTT so I was tempted just to start yelling PINHEAD at the top of my voice to see if anyone responded!

Only saw nos once all weekend and that was down by the bimble. One of your crowd wasn't a David Tenant looking type with a camel coat and massive sideburns perchance? 😄

Where was the TTT? Didn’t see it all weekend 😕

[Quark]

47 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

Where was the TTT? Didn’t see it all weekend 😕

At the junction between main stage and the walk up to the little big top where all the toilets were, head left up the hill. It's tucked away but it was signposted!

[guypjfreak]

7 hours ago, Skelts said:

Do you march up to the back stage access gates, hold your arm up and say to the steward 'good luck, the right wristband is in there somewhere' and walk straight in?!

Some times.. And some times it works but this time I just saw him and said hi... We've met before only I was sober this time lol

 

So think I met about 6 efesters.. Who are youuuuuuuu plus a few glasto stewards which was great... 

I've got a Tim ..... Who said hi you pjfreak.... a couple of. Chris's... We were a bit off our heads as I did the old son supply line.... Its something I enjoy... Watching my friends have a good time... I hope I at least spent some time with you and was on best behaviour.... I can't remember a festival where I was so normal.... 

I had quite a lot anxiety until the cider kicked in lol

Went into normal mode for NMA and the levs 

.. One bad bit of news is one of our lot has come down with covid so please do your checks 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by guypjfreak

[Skelts]

8 hours ago, guypjfreak said:

Some times.. And some times it works but this time I just saw him and said hi... We've met before only I was sober this time lol

 

So think I met about 6 efesters.. Who are youuuuuuuu plus a few glasto stewards which was great... 

I've got a Tim ..... Who said hi you pjfreak.... a couple of. Chris's... We were a bit off our heads as I did the old son supply line.... Its something I enjoy... Watching my friends have a good time... I hope I at least spent some time with you and was on best behaviour.... I can't remember a festival where I was so normal.... 

I had quite a lot anxiety until the cider kicked in lol

Went into normal mode for NMA and the levs 

.. One bad bit of news is one of our lot has come down with covid so please do your checks 

 

I’m the Tim you met Guy, bumped into you while you were wearing a Pearl jam T-shirt, made it a bit easier to recognise you!

[Quark]

9 hours ago, guypjfreak said:

Some times.. And some times it works but this time I just saw him and said hi... We've met before only I was sober this time lol

 

So think I met about 6 efesters.. Who are youuuuuuuu plus a few glasto stewards which was great... 

I've got a Tim ..... Who said hi you pjfreak.... a couple of. Chris's... We were a bit off our heads as I did the old son supply line.... Its something I enjoy... Watching my friends have a good time... I hope I at least spent some time with you and was on best behaviour.... I can't remember a festival where I was so normal.... 

I had quite a lot anxiety until the cider kicked in lol

Went into normal mode for NMA and the levs 

.. One bad bit of news is one of our lot has come down with covid so please do your checks 

 

Ah gutted I didn't say hello now old son! Glad the anxiety sorted itself out over the weekend 🙂

[Pinhead]

19 hours ago, Quark said:

When I got some signal I did see that you'd camped up there. Spent a lot of time (as always) at TTT so I was tempted just to start yelling PINHEAD at the top of my voice to see if anyone responded!

Only saw nos once all weekend and that was down by the bimble. One of your crowd wasn't a David Tenant looking type with a camel coat and massive sideburns perchance? 😄

Lol - no, but I know the one you mean. He was camped just down and right from me...