Blimey. Such was the amazingness of the weekend’s heatwave that Stag & Dagger, Friday’s festival in Shoreditch, quickly seemed like a distant memory. However, having finally sweated out all the night’s alcohol, I can still just about remember enough details to deliver the following recount, and ultimately, verdict.
Having met up with Adrian, who irritatingly works in the heart of Brick Lane, at 6pm, we exchanged tickets for wristbands at the efficient exchange, and quizzed the lady there about why Summer Camp, announced by NME as playing, weren’t on the timetable. She told us to ask the good folk at Hearn St Car Park – “they know everything”. Pleased at our snooping, we then repaired to Rough Trade East for Timber Timbre, who played the shoegaziest alt-folk you’ve ever heard, and rather militarily told a lady not to photograph them. Harsh. The singer seemed very pleased with himself, and did a lot of Michael Stipisms, ie strange facial expressions when singing. Each tune sounded a bit similar and it was pretty hot, so we left five songs in.
After holding up the entire 30-person queue in Sainsbury’s on Commercial St (you can’t buy single beers, fyi), we weaved our way to Hearn St HQ while Adrian revealed details of his latest love conquest. He’s such a slut. At Hearn St we spoke to a blonde lady who told us Summer Camp had cancelled. “What about Egytian Hip H-..” “They’ve cancelled”. I felt like I could say any band and she’d say “They cancelled”. But I didn’t, and we moped out. Off we went to CAMP, via a Jack Penate and someone from Foals double-spot, to see John & Jehn, but there was no John and no Jehn. They must also have cancelled. We were about to leave in search of some, any, music, until Adrian asked the singer of Class Actress what time they were on, and she bribed him to stay with a drink token.
Finally at 9 we saw our second act. Class Actress were pretty good, although the two songs I know and have blogged about (Careful What You Say and Journal of Ardency) were streets ahead of the rest, and they really didn’t have much attention from the room. But we were drinking rum out of old jam jars by then, so had a great time, relishing the synthy, La Roux-with-disdain effect of it all. Then we left, with no plan at all, and ended up at the MacBeth, where Gyratory System spent ages sound-checking and we got bored and re-skedaddled. One of the big problems of the night was the huge gaps between bands; it’s quicker at Glasto for gad’s sake.
Next we rocked across to Jaguar Shoes, and squeezed in downstairs. Fuck. Microwaves on full blast have been cooler than that place. Undeterred, we caught the end of Still Flyin‘s set, and kinda loved it – they were a large maverick band with saxophones, all sorts of keys and I think a violin, and they had a good old jam, a little Fools’ Gold esque. Back in the cool climes of outdoors, we went to Ziegfried’s next, after gasping at the queue for We Have Band at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, with like an hour until their set. Madness. At Zieg’s we saw The Molotovs, who played us some passable indie-rock. The singer had both nice hair and a nice voice.
The plan was then to salivate over The Radio Dept., but we had an hour to spare so jiggled our way to Old Blue Last instead, happy to see whoever was playing. Until that turned out to be Sky Larkin; a cruel trick on me by the guys in the clouds. Adrian quite liked it, but to me this is racket rock, songs at a zillion miles an hour and as loud as possible, with little to no artistry or flair. It just left me exhausted.
The Radio Dept then didn’t happen – again they seemed to take an age soundchecking, and it was stupid hot. The Legion is not very cleverly designed; the stage is next to the toilet, so you have a constant stream of people knocking your shoulders. Eventually we lost patience ((judging from Amelia’s Magazine’s festival review, we didn’t miss much); Adrian left for his bed, it now being midnight, and I scarpered down Curtain Road to The Queen of Hoxton for the last of Django Django. That turned out to be pretty fun; there was a real buzz in the crowd, and the alt-rock songs had a lot of imagination.
The last stop was the old Hearn St car park. I hoped to see Simian Mobile Disco, but they weren’t on until 2.30, a full hour and some change, and with the DJs currently playing nothing more than progressive blandery. Hardly anyone was dancing. Alcohol suddenly became that much more expensive. It was time to scarper.
So, overall thoughts: I didn’t think it was great this year. The gaps between bands was a problem as I’ve said; also the fact that so many bars in the Shoreditch Triangle aren’t part of Stag & Dagger really negates the festival atmosphere – walking around is no longer a great experience. Bar Music Hall was a big miss this year – that place was really the hub in 2009. Instead there’s a far greater sprawl of bars, making it mightily hard to see two acts on at the same time. The crowd is a puzzle: beery lads who don’t seem to give a hoot about the bands, and older folks getting increasingly frustrated at all the shoving. On the plus side, the stuff I saw was mostly good, and it was cheap cheap cheap.
If anyone reading this went along, I’d love their thoughts? Festivals are very subjective, personal things, so the more feedback the better.