Evolution Festival 2009 – A Bank Holiday of Sun, Bad Indie Bands and Underage Girls » The Music Mag

Evolution Festival 2009 – A Bank Holiday of Sun, Bad Indie Bands and Underage Girls

Every Bank Holiday Weekend in May, Newcastle/Gateshead host the Evolution Festival, showcasing the best in local talent as well as a number of hot UK acts. With the state of British Music at the moment, the majority of them have the Arctic Monkeys debut album so engrained in their head, they may as well be covering “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” for 40 minutes or bands are so desparate to emulate Dizzee Rascal, they’ll hitch on baggy jeans, speak like Dot Cotton and rap some silly bollocks about “bluds” or street crime. It’s all very repetitive and boring.

But, this year had the aforementioned Dizzee Rascal, the excellent Ladyhawke and two excellent upcoming acts in VV Brown and Marina and the Diamonds so for the low price of £10, I got myself a ticket, comforting myself with the notion that £10 for 4 bands is something approaching good value and somehow forgetting that 15 or so average bands for a tenner is approaching slightly-less-than-good value.

Anyway, I got a party together who were so starved of entertainment that traipsing around a car park in soaring heat seemed like a better option than watching Friends and made the long trek down the Newcastle Quayside around midday, with a goal to get there before Marina and the Diamonds started at 12.40. Somewhere along the line, this was sidetracked by the sight of a pub and the alluring idea of alcohol and a sit down. We quickly got both, talked about the usual rubbish and were more than a bit alarmed when an oldish man came and sat down next to us and initiated conversation. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem considering the brilliant people person I am but this was a man who was dressed from head to toe in home-made hippy rags and smelled like a mix of hash, hemp and a cat drenched in piss. The worst thing to do now, of course, was tell him of my love of Hendrix to which he responded by singing the riff from Crosstown Traffic and then singing about his guitars. Our pints were hastily drunk along with our goodbyes and we walked the rest of the way to the festival.

Getting into the festival after having the contents of my pockets checked (but oddly enough, not the contents of my wallet which had enough space to store cigarettes, rocks of crack and a hip flask), paid for another overpriced pint of lager and huddled by the stage waiting for Marina and the Diamonds. It’s weird what sort of people these festivals will bring out; there’s the likes of me who are vaguely normal people with an interest in music, (they’ll be the ones with the laid-back dress sense), the older crowd who probably paid for The Human League with a weekend ticket and decided to check out the Monday show (they’ll be the ones with the gut and the uninterested wife) and the gaggles and gaggles of stupid teenagers (they’ll be the ones dressed in bright green hats and pink fucking suspenders or something ridiculous like that). The stupid teenagers are the worst kind of people; not far enough along in their maturation to know that shouting at the top of your lungs and throwing things around is not how normal people act but far enough along to have an inflated sense of ego. They shouldn’t be allowed at gigs anyway. They’re all ugly and caked under more layers of make-up than I have paint on the walls (and that’s just the men), they don’t dance or mosh or generally move, they pester you to buy them alcohol despite them probably not even enjoying it yet and they all think music was invented in 2005. This is an elitist stance to take but I don’t give two shitting arses about that. When I go to gigs, I like to meet people with similar tastes as me and maybe make some friends out of it, have a bit of a drink to enhance the whole atmosphere and maybe perv on women with actual fucking curves.

Speaking of curves, Marina and the Diamonds (one woman) is one good looking lady indeed. Prancing around the stage in a fetching leotard, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the mix of her dancing and very good vocal chords didn’t add an all-together different feeling to the act. The music itself is almost perfect pop music, filled with tiny little touches that bring each song alive; the “OOH-OOH”‘s that punctuate ‘Mowgli’s Road’ pave way for a stomping chart-anthem waiting to happen. ‘Obsessions’ proves she can slow it down as well as she can create punches of catchy pop like the excellent “Girls” as Marina muses over the gossip mags and screams her “blah, blah blah”s with more conviction than on record. I mean, granted it’s not an original target but it’s all in the execution. Right now though, she lacks the subtle wordplay of a Lily Allen but has the tunes in plentiful demand. One to watch for sure.

After sitting around for Little Comets (average indie rubbish) and VV Brown (above average Motown-aping funk), we decided to forget the rest and go for a drink instead. When we returned to the old haunt, luckily the old hippy wasn’t there but the prices had jumped up considerably in 2 hours. Cursing the cheeky bar staff and the needless price hike, we nevertheless sat and drank a few rounds like miserable orphans before spending a couple of hours walking around Newcastle City Centre.

Newcastle is a great city during the day and was even better today with all the stupid teenagers down at the festival; it bustles with a vibrant energy, the buildings are supremely impressive and it has The Gate, which has more tacky establishments in one place than you’d think possible; Pizza Hut, Frankie And Bennie’s AND an Odeon? Shine on. Regardless, there’s tons to do so we had a walk around Eldon Square, sampling the delights in there, eating at that new Jacket Potato shop (which is exactly how it sounds; Jacket Potatos with all manners of toppings. It’s surprisingly tasty) and one of my friends mused that this shop seems to have come straight from the 1970s. He’s right, all it needs next to it is a Vinyl store and a LSD dealer and we’re all set to rename this part of the shopping centre as “The Fat Elvis District”

Finally, the sun retracted into the clouds and gave us an actual breeze to cool us down. However, in England, a breeze in inevitably followed by rain and rain it did. In fact, it began to rain as we were standing in the middle of an underage huddle for Ladyhawke who decided to match the damp conditions by being as thoroughly uninspired as possible. On record, she’s quirky, electric and presents a genuine interesting charm. Live though, she simply becomes as inspired as two day old toast and has the charisma of Father Stone from Father Ted. Also, she looks like a female Noel Fielding. We leave the rabble about 4 songs in to the scene of a large hippy grapping with two security guards in vain as his long-haired friend called them a string of intelligent insults such as “arsehole”, “wanker” and “dickhead” It didn’t help that he managed to look like all of The Beatles circa Abbey Road but since his friend was getting carted away by security, I can only guess that he was the one that was an arsehole, a wanker and a dickhead.

Since the rain was now coming down hard and fast (a bit like those security guards), we decided to high-tail it over to the River Tyne (by bridge, obviously) and catch Dizzee Rascal but along the way, ran into that old hippie who seemed to be busy accosting a bevy of 16 year olds and we muse that perhaps he would open The Fat Elvis District by passing out free Doors EPs and rocks of crack. Dizzee Rascal starts and we manage to worm our way to the front by aligning ourself with someone who appeared to have blessed with the strength of 8 men. With one swift push, he moved, what appeared to be, 50 people as we sauntered through to the front where girls had gathered on shoulders, men had instantly broke out in sweat and into a position where anyone with claustrophobia would have collapsed after 15 seconds. Someone asked the time and nobody could move their arms to check a watch or a phone so we all tried to tell the time from the position of the moon and stars. From the stage, we must have looked like molecules through a telescope trying to rebel against our chemical reactions. Anyway, Dizzee Rascal took the stage to offset my growing nerdiness and the molecules busted free of their constraints.

Amongst a wave of arms, legs and certainly some sexual molestation, Dizzee Rascal was excellent, spitting venom over his incredible beats and there’s nobody in the UK with a flow to match him right now. But, with a set peppered with “Jus’ a Rascal”, “I Luv U” and “Fix Up, Look Sharp”, it only serves to remind you how essential he used to be. When “Boy In Da Corner” dropped, it felt like you were on the cusp of a musical revolution in England. This was a man that was going to be our Run DMC and then he went away for a while and started writing crap dance songs. And no matter how good he may be live, there was always a feeling that our angriest young man has been reduced to being Bonkers and asking us to Dance with him. And that’s incredibly depressing for me at The Music Mag.