Wakestock 2008

United Kingdom | | 30 June 2008

It’s just so laid back! Where else could you sit aside a stunning lake within the grounds of an English mega-mansion at twelve noon – pint or Pimm’s in hand - watching a world renowned wakeboard competition with your mates? Ears being kept alert by the likes of DJ Irk, everyone is delighted in the knowledge that by the end of the weekend they’ll be dancing like a bunch of (happy) fools to Supergrass’s ‘Caught By The Fuzz’. 

Wakestock is genuinely a music festival built around a wakeboard event, not a wakeboard event built around a music festival. Its nine year evolution from a close-knit after-comp party in a dusty Abersoch car park to a major date on the UK festival calendar gives testament to this. Without the sport, nobody would be here. But don’t think this means the music is compromised. Mark Ronson, The Streets and Groove Armada are headlining the main stage over the three – count ‘em – nights. Combine that with the fact that Supergrass and The Young Knives, two of  local Oxford’s biggest bands, are also on the bill and you’ll begin to ask yourself, ‘why the hell is this awesome event not sold out!?’  

The less well known bands are suffering because of this. Met by perhaps forty people, Esser’s “I don’t give a shit” expression exposes that he actually does. This quirky cult indie has the potential to make it big; instantly catchy and performed with exact precision, the gramophone sampling ‘I Love You’ could have been a top-ten hit, had there been more money poured into it back in April, and the main tent should be bouncing in a mental Eastern European style gypsy dance to ‘Satisfied’. But no … forty people stand; ‘appreciating’. 

Hadouken are the band that really kicks off the festival with a lively crowd. While they may not ooze credibility, they do their job brilliantly. So to all the music fascists who think they’re just a bunch of kids yelling “Get smashed gate crash”, just look at the massive crowd of kids yelling “Get smashed gate crash” at the top of their lungs in the pit (yes, a real pit).

Crowd roused by Hadouken, the mighty Pendulum take the stage. As the true professionals they are, outplaying headliners is their forte. Shoving their relentless bass through the stomachs of millions of people at fourteen UK festivals this year is only going to have one outcome: everyone in this crowd already knows they are amazing, either first hand or by word of mouth. Their biggest commercial success ‘Propane Nightmares’ is the highlight, and by the end of the set people at the front are ecstatically dripping with sweat. As soon as the big names come out to play it doesn’t matter that the main campsite is only 65 per cent full.

The flawless reputation of headliners Groove Armada is maintained. With 12 years experience in writing some of the world’s most recognisable tunes, this dance duo mix their classics such as ‘Superstylin’’ with mysterious voice samples, build tension, and then drop heavy beats so perfectly it’s as though they invented the idea. It’s flawless, yes, but tonight Pendulum did what they do best and undercut them. More people are talking about them in the morning. 

Today, the second stage is a Kerrang reader’s wet dream. Mix Guns ‘n’ Roses with Q.O.T.S.A and you’d expect a band to be the ultimate festival heroes. O.k., they’re amazing musicians, but I-Koma lack catchy songs and are two decades late.

So in 2008 a band needs to try something new to catch peoples’ attention. Example? In Case Of Fire. This young trio aren’t scared to change time signatures mid-song and have the natural ability to write awesome choruses. Their most impressive live track has got to be ‘Second Revelation’, in which they pull off the ‘quiet/loud’ trick wonderfully. But they too are haunted by the ghost. No movement. They’re on too early, of course (if you can call six-thirty too early!).

A 15 year old girls’ fantasy, Elliot Minor are a superb live band. So what if they’ve been taught to do it? There’s no room for musical snobbery here. If you’re in a band that can sing this well, play your instruments this accurately and put in this much effort, you deserve all the success that’s coming to you. Live, their anthem ‘Jessica’ beats anything Mcfly or Busted ever attempted.

Mark Ronson, the most controversial pop act in recent years, is back at Wakestock after last year’s washout in Abersoch. Opinions vary from “never touch a Radiohead song if one-hit-wonders Phantom Planet are anywhere within five-thousand miles” to “he’s a multi-talented sensation, improving numerous brilliant songs”. Obviously, everyone in this packed tent hold the latter. But the set is spattered with ‘OK’ guest performances by not-very-well-known artists ranging from rappers to female vocalists. For names like Amy Winehouse you need to be at Glastonbury this weekend. Not enough effort here, but the crowd are loving it regardless.

Happy Mondays should be headlining! Had they a care in the world, they would feel hard done by.  Feel-good rave classics like ‘Step On’ and ‘Hallelujah’ have got the true revellers young and old (well, middle aged) going crazy. Love in abundance, the Mondays are the second honorary headliner of the weekend.

Donned in white skinny jeans and t-shirts with red braces, Little Fish are The White Stripes in reverse. Female fronted with a male drummer, this grungy Oxford double act are dirty, greasy and sex obsessed – but so, so good! The only band of the weekend to gather a decent crowd before seven o’clock, lead singer ‘Juju’ is screaming ‘come to my room’ at the awe-struck fans. A great start to the music for day three, a standard that is admirably kept to throughout. 

He pulls off the ‘cool Sci-Fi geek’ image pretty damn well. But few other Sci-Fi geeks can play guitar and write songs as sensitively as Lightspeed Champion. Even his drummer, Anna, has a fan club at the front. A healthy thousand people have turned out and not one of them can prevent a wide grin spreading across their face when ‘Galaxy of the Lost’ is so elegantly performed, then again when an extended Star Wars theme brings the set to an appropriately geeky climax.

Sharing a similar comic-geek quality to Lightspeed Champion, local heroes The Young Knives are met by the same one-thousand people, times two. No one has left the second tent, but many have entered to witness Thomas ‘The House Of Lords’ Dartnall (bass) rolling over a giant WKD bouncy ball which is then punched around the excitable crowd until it is finally slaughtered twenty minutes later due to excessive abuse. Their massive stage presence makes The Young Knives the most entertaining band of the weekend – not best – but most entertaining. The fact that there music is ace is almost a secondary bonus!  

Meanwhile in the main tent, chart topper Estelle is proving what good producers can do. On the radio or in a TV studio she sounds amazing. But her voice seems to shrink to the size of a pea in a large tent and the crowd response is not what you’d expect from a recent No.1 artist. Anyone with any rationale is watching Young Knives right now, not pretending they’re enjoying a dodgy performance of ‘American Boy’.

Supergrass and The Streets don’t clash due to the main stage running early, so punters have the opportunity to witness both of the fantastic sets in their entirety. Mike Skinner really knows how to work a crowd and he can’t go far wrong when he’s written as many modern classics as he has. He splits the crowd, runs through the middle and then surfs back to the front during his encore ‘Fit But You Know It’ as if to say to Mark Ronson, “if you’re going to do something, do it properly!” This is an artist who can stir emotion with heartfelt poems such as ‘Dry Your Eyes’ within five minutes of energising the same people to go crazy to ‘Don’t Mug Yourself’.

But the thing The Streets lack that Supergrass have in abundance is pedigree. The drop in of the chorus to ‘Moving’ is the moment of the festival. They perform their many classics just as dynamically as in their heyday to a completely rammed tent. It’s the sole performance this weekend that has even the people who ‘feel a bit stupid dancing’ dancing. ‘Alright’ and ‘Pumping On Your Stereo’ have gone down in history as two of the songs that defined the 90s, so because most of the people in this crowd grew up in that decade and in Oxfordshire, the title of ‘band of Wakestock Blenheim Palace 2008’ is wholly justified. There have been some really outstanding performances this weekend and a few overrated ones, but Supergrass is really what everyone was waiting for and they’re not left disappointed.

Complete chill-out watching world class wakeboarding by day and the ultimate party hosted by the biggest names in music by night, the first Wakestock at Blenheim Palace is a huge success. Let’s hope more people show up next year.    

by Ed Moores