Sneaking in before the end of the summer

 My first festival day of the year!

I missed all the BST Festival days this year (due to a very poorly timed holiday), there was obviously no Glastonbury to fail to get tickets for and my free tickets to see Jorja Smith at All Points East went mysteriously astray, so my final chance to pop along to a festival this year was the rescheduled Lido Festival (which is like APE, but smaller and (allegedly) more carefully curated). I can't say I'm a huge fan of Maribou State who were the headliners, but I felt the need to pop along to something this year and so I toddled off to Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets on a Bank Holiday Monday with somewhat uncertain weather prospects...

The train journey in was interesting because there was a group of "young people" on the train who were, shall we say, in "high spirits" - and boy were they making a LOT of noise. Amusingly, you could tell that people disapproved of such behaviour, but at the same time they were all in such a good mood that it was hard to get too annoyed with them. I got off the train at Farringdon (followed by all of them) and was somewhat surprised to see many more such groups on the tube platform - until I remembered that the Notting Hill Carnival was on. Ah - I guess Lido may also have somewhat uncertain attendance prospects as well...

Victoria Park had hosted APE for the previous two weekends and had probably also had a busy summer beforehand - and boy did it look like it. Combined with a sparse early doors attendance, the whole place was looking amusingly post-apocalyptical.

Yes, it's possible I might have taken them whilst waiting for people to leave the shot, but that second shot shows the main stage whilst the opening act was on - I felt a bit sorry for him, but he didn't seem to care. So who did I see then?

Alabaster DePlume

Interesting (if completely bonkers) sound which was visited by at most a couple of hundred people.

Marie Davidson 

A decent enough DJ set which is faint praise, but she had a surprisingly decent crowd. Obviously this was nothing to do with the fact that she was in a tent and the heavens opened…

United Freedom Collective

Another decent DJ set but the crowd were way more stoned than you’d expect at four in afternoon.

Lady Wray

I don't know anything about her, but she's got a decent voice and made a pleasant sound.

Calibre

Not a great DJ set.

Collect 200

Another DJ set. Sigh.

Kelis

Well, it’s not a DJ set. To be fair to the lass she gave her all with her very decent voice in front of a crowd that was still pretty sparse and it was easily the best thing we’d seen so far. However, for some weird reason, she didn't play a full version of “Caught Out There” but instead chose to incorporate sections of it in another couple of tracks.

Theo Parish B2B Moneyman

Ah - back to the DJ sets. It had a very decent bass but that’s your lot on the recommendation front - and I’m intrigued as to who thought he deserved a 3 hour set!

Kelly Lee Owens

Another DJ set - but at least it was advertised as such, because I actually really like some of Kelly Lee's stuff so if I hadn't been pre-warned there would have been trouble.

Folamour
Apparently he's an influential French DJ, but I'm afraid I'd just had enough of DJs at this point...

...and it was still 90 minutes until Maribou State were due on stage, so I'm afraid I just gave up at this point. That's the problem with us free-loaders, we've got no stamina and just turn up for the bits we're interested in. Apparently Maribou State put on a decent show (with 27 musicians on stage, which would have made a very nice change from all the solitary DJs I experienced) so I suspect I'd have quite enjoyed it - and I hope plenty of other people turned up to compensate for the huge gap my absence left in the audience. 

To my credit, I did give it a good five hours but the environment was just a bit depressing - more people had turned up throughout the day but it still wasn't exactly packed and the bare earth across the site just made you feel a bit sad for the park. I hope it gets a good rest over the winter and recovers to host some great acts next year - and maybe not so many DJs.