Benicassim Pt 1

Sun, sea and festivals...ahhhh, bliss!

So first day after meeting up with friends for sangria and a swim we made our way up to the festival site and boy I think that walk from town to site is gonna get a lot harder over the coming days. After spending time getting ourselves acquainted with the general layout…that be loo’s, pizza stall and most importantly memorising all beer selling areas we made it over in time to see Iggy Pop. Now I was expecting a lot here as a close friend of mine has spent the past 5 years convincing me that The Stooges are the best live act ever. Period. And the great Iggster did not disappoint. After missing the mass crowd invasion at Glasto I was very happy to see a repeat performance complete with Iggy’s mad ramblings of “Back down baby” and “Ciao, Ciao”. However I wasn’t sure of the reason for playing “I wanna be your dog” twice? They have enough good songs of which to play (as they proved) and seemed a shame. However, props to them all for bringing a bit of 70’s sleaze to sunny Spain.

Friday I managed to see slightly more bands. I was pretty bummed out at having to miss The Rapture but the tent they were playing was just totally rammoed! So the first band of the night was a nostalgic trip back to early nineties secondary school with the harmless Dinosaur Jnr. I remember pretending to like these guys when I was 13 to impress a friend’s older brother and I’m afraid it’s a similar story to night. They never really did anything in the nineties of any value and after 5 minutes I was left wondering why I’d bothered wondering over to the main stage.

So after being thoroughly embarrassed by a couple of my rat friends in the Vodafone Live tent (stupid dancing and jumping off sofas) I headed over to the main stage to catch the last ½ hour of Devo. Now one thing you can say about these guys is they look good. The sound picked up for them too, sadly one of the few bands they did manage to sort it for. Rolling through the Devo back catalogue is a lot of fun particularly when done whilst wearing shorts and not feeling cold. Their music is still relevant today and it’s pretty cool to see the tunes haven’t dated too badly either although I’m not convinced they were true headliners.

Tonight for me though essentially was dancey night Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip and Digitalism seriously kicked arse. DSvsSP were a refreshing antidote to some of the other more “aged” acts (B52's and Human league anyone?) appearing at the festival. The sound was tight, the rapping awesome and the tunes bloody good. But Friday night belonged to Digitalism. The German electro duo played a storming set which had be dancing constantly beer in hand and aviators on head…top, top act who are seriously giving Daft Punk something to worry about.