Radio 1's Big Weekend (From Western Telegraph)

Radio 1's Big Weekend

4:47pm Friday 29th May 2009

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It's been a while since my last blog entry, for which I have no excuse. I apologise – I'm a bad blogger. But anyway, The Boy and I won a pair of tickets for the Sunday of Radio 1's Big Weekend in Swindon (which was amazing, because I'm going to bring out the cliché of 'I never win anything'), so a couple of weeks ago, off we went.

If I'm being honest, the day did not start brilliantly. It takes about 3 ½ hours to drive to Swindon, and the gates opened at 12, so I wanted to leave at around 8:30am. I tried, and failed, to have an early night on Saturday, and ended up going to sleep around 1am, then The Boy rolled in at about 2:30. Drunk. Thus waking up on Sunday was not an easy thing to do. I overslept, obviously, but managed to pull myself out of bed not long after 9. The boy would not be dragged out of bed until 10ish. Then I forgot to take my travel mug of coffee to the car. Boo.

One of the acts I really wanted to see was Ladyhawke, whose album I bought a couple of months ago and love – I especially recommend listening to it while driving, it's quite relaxing, but you can sing along to it (I sing a lot, loudly and tunelessly, when I'm on my own in the car). I knew that she was going to be on quite early on in the day, so I sulked at regular intervals throughout the journey because I thought that we were going to miss her. But the gods were on my side, and she came on about 2 minutes after we got to the tent that she was playing in.

We'd been listening to Ladyhawke's album in the car when we arrived at the car park of the venue, so it was quite surreal to be watching her live about 15 minutes later. This was compounded by the fact that live she sounded almost exactly the same as on record. She played quite a short set, but it was energetic and satisfying – which short sets often aren't. She also came across as being shy and she didn't interact much with the audience, but the set was polished. There wasn't a very big crowd, but when she started My Delirium (the last song) there was a good reaction, and it was overall a very positive start to the day, which made us forget the narkiness of the journey. Live music always makes me happy.

Generally I found the crowds at the Big Weekend to be fairly unenthusiastic compared to those at events like Glastonbury. This could be something to do with the kind of sterile atmosphere of the place – which wasn't unpleasant, just unusual – and possibly the fact that it was free, so people who were there weren't necessarily big fans of the artists. Anyway, there was a friendly atmosphere and I could walk around with bare feet for most of the day without danger (I made a rookie mistake and wore shoes that give me blisters) which is not true of most festivals, so I'm trying not to complain unnecessarily.

We decided to go for a random band, who actually turned out to be a solo artist, called Marina and the Diamonds halfway through the day. I heard one of her songs on a Huw Stephens show on Radio 1 and loved it, so I dragged the boy to the smallest of the four tents. She was spectacular, especially considering the tininess of the crowd. Influenced by Kate Bush, with an amazing, deep, textured voice. I've downloaded her song, Obsessions, and you should too, or at least find her on MySpace if you don't want to commit (I understand). Also, she was wearing a white and gold sequinned leotard with gold fringing. Lovely. And she has loads and loads of energy. Anyone else who is, like me, going to Glastonbury should go and see her on Saturday at the Queen's Head Stage. You will not be disappointed. By the way, I'm not on her PR or anything, I know it's sounding like that, I just love her. I'm very into female artists at the moment.

This entry seems to be going on a bit (my rambling gene is kicking in again – I blame the parents), but the last thing I will say is that I am completely in love with Beth Ditto. She's incredible. The Boy looked on, drinking beer of course, while I danced in bare feet at the back of the tent occasionally hitting him with an errant elbow when I got overenthusiastic and getting more and more of a girl crush on Beth, especially when she started singing 'Swindon in the way of control'. Awesome.