#MYHPSVLLE (05)

Me and my camera on a 60s weekender, my jolly up, my Hipsville

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Hipsville is a great festival, although when I told that to Ade, one of the guys who runs it, he said “its not a festival, its a party!” and he’s right. Its actually just one big jolly up. There is never more than one thing going on at any one time which makes those difficult decisions of who to go and see much simpler. Each event of the weekend is announced verbally by Ade who just shouts out to the crowd in a very raspy voice, “Alright folks, in about ten minutes the band is on, so go and get your drinks and get settled” – no programme, no board, no problem. Its beautifully sweet and simple.

The slightly odd thing about it is that takes place on a NRA base which is the oddest location for a 1960s weekender, the decade that championed peace and love is celebrated in a haven for weapon fanatics. So its basically a site full of guys with guns on one hand and go go girls on the other. At night you watch scantily clad girls shake their thing on the podium and in the morning you are woken to the sound of gunfire. Its a metaphor for something, I just wish I knew what.

The crowd themselves are a brilliant band of musos, car freaks, vintage scenesters, wasters and misfits as are all the acts on the line-up.  Fav acts of the weekend were The Tikiheads, the Deep Space Deviants and their alter egos The Deadly Stab ups, who were proper mental in quite a superb way. There was also a horror theme (in case you hadn’t noticed from the photographs) which only added to the bizarre experience as everyone wandered around in classic 60s b-movie horror outfits. There were also some killer cars there from the era, all beautifully decked out and you would kill at least a granny or two to get one. It got pretty messy throughout the weekend which was a great antidote to the usual clean & serene squeakiness of the vintage scene..hipsville 2015 we salute you and hope to see you in 2016!