31 Jul 2011, Posted by admin in Thoughts, No Comments. Tagged festival, london, rave, Review, The Fam
An Open Secret
Ever since Georgie wrote up our preview of Secret Garden Party we had been giddy with excitement. As the weeks turned into days and those days melted down into hours, the tension was palpable. We loaded up our little black Renault Clio with all our gear and dutifully followed our TomTom all the way to Cambridgeshire. SGP is nestled In the idyllic setting of Abbots Rippon, where a lake and woods become your home for the next four nights.
We’ve heard from Secret Garden Party veterans that its never really about the big bands, but we were pleasantly surprised and heard a great variety of good music and saw some class acts. Stand out highlights for us were David Rodigan’s history of Raggae set in the sun on Sunday, plus Ben Westbeech absolutely tore it up on Friday night with his soulful house show. And we also fell into a great performance by American band, YACHT at Where the Wild Things are stage.
Saturday’s fireworks spectacular and parade was another sign that the Secret Party organisers were committed to taking the festival that little bit further than the rest. While the majority of the crowds gathered on the grassy banks overlooking the lake and Great Stage, the lights dimmed and the floating dragonfly island was blown up in a glorious burst of gunpowder and fireworks.
Even more impressive was that this had all been done with a major lack of corporate sponsorship. We’ve gotta say that this has helped SGP retain that friendly, family feeling without the festival being swamped by too many trendy young tweens running around high on Red Bull, which isn’t good for anyone’s karma.
A word of warning, don’t be caught off guard walking past the Dance-off stage, throughout the week unsuspecting festivalgoers were plucked from the crowds and pushed on the podium. It’s a scary sight watching a tanked mid-thirties gentleman in a toga dancing his ass off for five minutes of fame at 2.30pm in the afternoon, but enjoyable none the less.
We’ve also never eaten so well while living in a tent and frolicking in a field, whilst forking out around £7 for a main meal, may sound a tad dear all food was made from happy cows and chickens and there was a plethora of choice to choose from, we ate scrumptious noodles, seasonal salads and custom stonebaked pizzas!
From Thursday all the way through to Sunday the majority of festivalgoers were decked out in weird and wonderful costumes, the naughtiest one was a Roman legionnaire with his gorgeous dominatrix slave on the end of his leash. She was cladded in black latex, skyscraper heels and a leather corset, with a horse’s bit in her mouth 
We kept things a little more PC, and rep’d the C&S army with our Russian squaddie uniforms from our first shoot, with SuperSoaker guns kindly supplied by Firebox.
The team behind Secret Garden Party also organise Glade and are launching a new festival, Wilderness in mid-August. See you there!
