Eddy Says

Eddy Says: The Secret Garden Party 2009

By | Published on Monday 3 August 2009

Secret Garden Festival

First things first: a tiger costume dilemma. The full suit with the big funny head – £150. Didn’t fancy the price-tag or the thought of baking my own head, so child’s Tiger Tabard (£17.99) it was, and I was ready for three days of music, pear cider, and extreme randomness.

Tiger hood up, the first thing I saw while trying to find The Remix tent, was a six piece band playing their set while suspended by a big oak tree. Welcome to The Secret Garden Party.

The Remix Vs Ninja Tune tent, as it was this year, had moved position, to a newly opened field, unfortunate for many people, who took until Sunday to find it! Still, the sun was shining, people were pouring into the festival and the promise of a great three days lay before us.

Friday highlights, for me, were Killaflaw, who played their hearts out in an early slot before the tent filled, and Sub Focus, who, in the words of someone who talked to me that night, “tore the place a new arsehole”. He started with ‘Rock It’ and it went off from then on.

One lowlight: I was SO looking forward to seeing Caspa, in the silent disco… Yeah, I know, but think about it: SGP has savage sound restrictions from the local government, so I booked Caspa to play a great post headline slot in a scenario where hundreds of people have their own headphones and individual volume control. Hearing everything in perfect stereo quality. He could have rocked the place to its very soul. But, tragically, his people hadn’t communicated to him that he’d been booked to play a *silent* disco. So from his point of view, he turned up to play and there was no sound system. If you look at it like that, his frustration was understandable.

To compound things, some enterprising so-and-so had nicked a couple of boxes of headphones, because it was £20 deposit on them, so they couldn’t release the headphones while the last band were on. It was late, it was poor luck and bad security combining disastrously. He walked, in a very dignified way, and left all of us who’d been queuing early to get the ‘phones in time, gutted.

But it was still only Friday, sort of, and there was so much more to look forward to.

Saturday morning, there is only one place to be, The Colisilium. Run by the fabulous Bearded Kitten crew, this expanded ministry of mirth had built a coliseum of straw bales around the mud pit and an area for the kind of high jinx they specialise in… giant gladiators, for one. Girls on boys’ shoulders, in a ‘giant costume’. Fight. With pugil sticks and rubber chickens. These boys know what they’re doing. Not only is a rubber chicken the distilled essence of pure comedy, it’s a really useful close quarter slapping tool.

Awesome costumes everywhere, and I love the little token gestures, a man dressed normally but when he walks by he reveals a tiger’s tail.

Saturday was interesting and a tiny bit disastrous. Interesting wise, Hook & The Twin dazzled me with their originality, likewise Midimidis charmed as ever, in their own unique way. Tom Losers played a joyous Ableton set of festival classics and Trip was in the middle of the most perfect power pop set when *dzzzzt* sudden power cut. Shit. We’re in the dark. And there’s no sound. It took the proper authorities nearly an hour to fix it, or find some money for the meter, and the night’s problems had started. Stereotype couldn’t get the gear they needed for their five deck mash-up set, so they bowed out reluctantly. Evil Nine rocked and I had a great time from the first tune, that gorgeous Evil Nine remix of Temper Trap (a musical doff of the cap their own way) to the last, StereoType’s All Time Top Ten (as a biggup to them), but the night, for me, was about three things. The ceremonial burning of the massive Tower Of Babel in the middle of the lake, Slagsmalsklubben, and King Cannibal in silent disco.

We got a prime spot at the pagoda, where the dancefloor is a pontoon on the water itself, to see the pyrotechnics. A lake on fire, ringed by flame jugglers is quite something. I almost welled up with tears as I watched the slack jawed crowd by the lake blown away by the spectacle of it all, and remembering that first year, when around 800 people came.

Now for the final disaster. SMK took so long setting up, I’ve no idea why, just that my set just kept getting stretched by the stage team and they went on, ooh, at least half an hour late. Now, like I said, the limits are draconian there, and I think you get fined £1000 for every minute you go over the curfew, so they got shut down, just as they were starting ‘Sponsored By Destiny’ – the big one. You could feel it starting to go really nuts in there, in the front half of the tent, where the sound was loud enough.
They were so pissed off, in their reserved Swedish way, and we felt terribly deprived of what would have been the set of the whole festival if things had run only run smoothly.

Silent Disco worked like a dream though. I still had my cans from the Caspa debacle the night before, and I was up for letting Dylan Cannibal mess with my head.
It was fantastic, just as I’d hoped. There was a phalanx of people at the front of the tent, but there were far, far more, scattered around, outside the tent, in other tents nearby, in cafes, around fires right over on the other side of the site. I saw people collapsed on the floor at around 4am, with headphones still on.

Sunday is all about the randomness for me, Colisilium capers and pear cider fuelled staggering around the gorgeous site in quest of bizarre entertainment. Sunday randomness highlight, I saw a ‘Dave Off.’ Yes. A DAVE OFF. This man that looked like a better looking Dave Gorman had found ten Daves in the audience, and was subjecting them to various tasks, to find out who was ‘King Of Daves’. Fucking hilarious. Chants of ‘Dave dave dave dave…’ every time anybody did anything.

They had to breakdance, answer questions, give us a speech explaining why they should be King Of Daves. There was ‘Birthday Dave’ keen to win for numerological reasons, and ‘Ketamine Dave’ as he became knows, who got the crowd on his side after he jumped in the lake in the middle of it all. Dave on Dave wrestling. Genius. Then a final dance off between Birthday and Ketamine Daves. Birthday Dave refused to get his cock out. Crowd not best pleased. Ketamine Dave whipped his giblets out and danced about until the crowd went completely insane. Happy days. And happy Dave. Well, the Ketamine one, who was duly crowned.

Head Gardener’s Sunday turn at the gorgeous pagoda, in the sunlight, provided a lovely moment, when he dropped that jaw dropping Hours-mix-debut by Dekker & Johan in among a deep and uplifting afternoon set right where I’d seen the Tower set alight the night before. Perfection. Sunday’s happy haze just got happier.

Along with the quite brilliant Hook & The Twin. The big surprise of the day was Shuttle, who really drew a great crowd with some techy, bass heavy, deep dubsteppy vibes. Very impressed. Black Pater: party-in-a-can.

I was looking forward to 808 State and Toddla T, they’d swapped sets because Toddla had spent the day in casualty dealing with a literally black and blue leg after falling offstage the night before…this was a gift as it turned out because only one of 808 State had turned up. No boiler suit. Disappointing.

Then Toddla T, Sundays crowning glory. What a trooper. He was skanking about gingerly to a wonderful set of electro-dancehall-skank-core. His set opener was ‘Baby’ by Major Lazer, which you may have noticed I have adopted on the show. He made me appreciate this amazing track.

Jagz Kooner landed a last minute set to end things in proper dance-rocks style, with a slamming set that opened up with an exclusive new Alex Metric album track. Whopper. Jagzy rocked it of course.

On the ground, it was the best one ever. Tighter security stopped the 10,000 people who it felt like just walked in last year, so the expanded site felt really comfortable, always buzzing, but never crowded. Lessons have been learned for next year, and it will be even better as a result, but it’s still, all told, the best festival in the calendar by a mile.

There are great things about Standon Calling, Latitude, The Big Chill, Bestival and the beloved Glastonbury, but when all is said and done, nothing can beat the all round experience Secret Garden delivers. The nicest crowd, the best location, and the most amount of money spent, per person there, on those wonderful random things that make SGP so unique.

I knew from the first year, that I’d be there EVERY year, and I know I’m not alone. Hear musical highlights and interviews on the show this week.

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.



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