Mildly strange afternoon here at Latitude, which culminated in what a few of us are optimistically calling the Ross Noble Riot.
I was wandering across the arena when suddenly about 2,000 people came charging down the hill, as if there were a fire in the comedy tent. When they reached a veggieburger van, they all started chanting “NOBLE! NOBLE!” Ross Noble (vaguely Paul Merton’s hairy stepson, if memory serves) then started jumping on the burger van, and proceeded to try and crowdsurf his way back to the comedy tent.
Pretty rock’n’roll, I suppose, and rather more rock’n’roll than one or two of the bands I stumbled upon today (not a big fan of The Do, for instance, since I was never much partial to Hazel O’Connor).
Anyway, apparently Noble had just ended a mass crowd rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a conga out of the tent, which soon turned into a hell for leather sprint across the field. The crowd gathered outside the tent for him actually drowned out a fair bit of a self-deprecating Beth Orton set, which featured a fine version of the deathless “Katie Cruel”.
What else? I discovered that my Blackberry only works during comedy science shows in the children’s field. I managed to arrive at the screening of Grant Gee‘s Joy Division film at precisely the moment when Ian Curtis died.
And I also found out that while The Go! Team are still playing virtually the same show they were playing three years ago (behaving as if that so-so second album hardly existed), that show is still tremendous fun.
Two drummers! Thurston Moore guitar! Cop themes and buffalo gals! A peculiar and invigorating Brighton concoction of big beat and indie! It’s hard to imagine a more energising – if potentially teeth-rotting – festival band, and it occurs to me that it’s something of a shame that CSS seem to have stolen some of their thunder. First great gig of the festival for me.