1, 2, 3, 4 Festival

For The Midnight Bell, school was out for the summer on Friday 23rd July and this festival in Shoreditch was quite an inviting way to start the holidays proper. It provided an opportunity to check out hipster acts such as Dum Dum Girls and Wavves, the bands you read about but don’t get the chance to see during ‘school nights‘. Venturing into Shoreditch for a day out was kind of dotted with nostalgia, as this was once a regular haunt for free-lance music scribes and I cut my teaching teeth at the Shoreditch Community College near Shoreditch Park too.

It made sense that some of the day’s billing tapped into 40something nostalgia. A key draw for many of us was the return of ex-Earl Brutus members plying their glam-kraut stomp under the moniker The Pre New, although it wasn’t quite the tribute to their former band as initially expected. Apart from a closing Navy Head, what followed was a fairly ordinary garage rock set with little of the menace, mischief and hilarity that made Earl Brutus such a glorious one-off. It must gall them that Kasabian have more or less copied their musical template and emptied it of any intelligence, wit and style, but that‘s always the drawback for true pioneers. Still, we liked the adoption of the old British Rail logo as their own. Always an eye for iconography these former art terrorists.

On the main stage, Peter Hook was taking a former iconic moment - Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures - and dismantling it with a rusty crow bar. When New Order started playing old JD tracks a decade ago, it sounded thrilling and vital. But Hook on his own with hired hands, including Happy Mondays vocalist Rowetta, could only reduce this to a Stone Roses at Reading Festival 96 experience. Oh alright it wasn’t that bad, just stupendously ungainly and foolhardy - why reduce this key moment in post-punk to a night out at The Witchwood in Ashton-under-Lyne?

Bobby Gillespie’s super group, The Silver Machine, were the outright winners of the day. Together with Glenn Matlock, Oasis/Who drummer Zak Starkey and Primal Scream bandmates Andrew Innes and Barrie Cadogan they pile-drived through a consistently invigorating set of covers of MC5, Creation, Troggs and the Flaming Groovies. Gillespie can sometimes be a cynical performer, but here free from pressure of expectations and/or rock’n’roll conformity, there was a passion, verve and enjoyment here that was translated into a dizzying performance.

Festivals are commonplace in a gig-frenzied market, but 1,2,3,4 had enough individuality and vitality to stand out. It essentially appealed to hipsters of, um, all ages and there was no sense that the organisers were out to rip off punters with inflated ticket and drink prices or shoddily organised facilities. And the fact that this was in Zone 1 London, and not out in a Kent farmyard, made it all the sweeter. Shoreditch twats no more?