Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
This was lovebox at victoria park on the Saturday..
this was citadel at victoria park on the sunday
Lovebox used to run for the whole weekend but for some reason this year they did 2 days of lovebox and then the 3rd day was called Citadel.
On the friday & saturday Lovebox was a bit of a wild affair. the largely 18-21 inner city demographic seemed hell bent on getting properly wasted from the off. And they did. They demonstrated the wild spirit of youth and even though it got a bit messy it gave me hope for London. No matter how expensive and exclusive it becomes they will never be able to crush the diversity and the energy that fuels this city.
To see the full lovebox gallery please click here
On the Sunday it turned into a completely different festival. same location. same promoters. same stages and food trucks but was now called Citadel and was a totally different line-up and as a result a totally different crowd. Lovebox had the likes of Snoop Dogg, Rudimental and Cypress Hill and consequently generated an urban racially mixed largely working class crowd whilst at Citadel the singer songwriter Ben Howard was headlining and consequently attracted a very white middle class relatively sedate audience. I was there all three days (because of Despacio – see tomorrow’s post) and it was so weird coming into the same location which looked exactly the same but the people couldn’t have been more different from the previous two days. The queues for the smoothies was now longer than the queues for the bar. There was more eating going on than drinking. It was a very family atmosphere. Children were running around and getting their face painted. And as you can see above they were playing croquet for god’s sake. If they had had mallets and Lovebox there would probably have been bloodshed.
What was fascinating was how a change in music could utterly change the demographic of the audience. It really felt like a class divide and made me realise how the art we consume and the culture we come from are interlinked and intertwined, to such a degree we aren’t even aware of it.
It feels music festivals are going the way of Citadel. Calmer, more family friendly, more food orientated and it feels less and less about the music….and in all honesty I am not very happy about it. Festivals should only be about music and getting loaded and having a wild time. That is what they are there for. They are there so we can all let off a bit of steam so we can deal with the rest of the shite. The festival Grinch has spoken.