Latitude 2009

The Latitude Kids Area have been organising a carnival type parade this weekend, and the incredibly long and hand crafted dragon wound it's way across the site this afternoon. Led by children beating drum sticks on wheelie bins, it was quite a nice urban/country juxtapostion.

OK, so far today I've caught some fine comedy from Phill Jupitus, and been dragged by Farah towards a showgirl workshop in the Cabaret Tent. Oh, and earlier this morning I bumped into a bloke called Danny Kerwin.

Last night, we went feral in the woods. It’s not often you see your editor at a rave, and a rave in the woods at that, but last night UNCUT’s Allan Jones was getting down with the kids to all manner of dub-step and breakbeat classics. And he didn’t even mention Nick Lowe until 2.40 in the morning.

It's been a night of being proved wrong, for me at least, at Latitude. As I'm walking across the site, I can hear The Good, The Bad And The Queen, and they sound really good. I'd previously pegged them as a rather self-conscious trip into psychogeography and musicianly fandom for Damon Albarn. But here the overworked fug clears and the elegaic true quality of the songs - and those Simonon basslines, of course - comes to the fore.

Damon Albarn, being something of a native as he hails from nearby Colchester, closes tonight's set by The Good, The Bad & The Queen by displaying his intimate knowledge of the A12. It's perhaps not the most rock 'n' roll way to end a festival, but then The Good, The Bad & The Queen aren't necessarily going to play by the rules.

Saturday night at Latitude. Another festival, another field, and another show-stopping performance from those bouncy Brazilians CSS. Which means another winning mix of weapons-grade disco sarcasm, sloppy-sexy funk and stoopid-kool attitood.

At some point in the last few years, Rickie Lee Jones appears to have subtly evolved from the Duchess Of Coolsville into a spiritual, raging poet-figure who comes across like a West Coast counterpart of Patti Smith.

Trekking down to Latitude's Lake Stage, I hear that the hotly-tipped Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong are the new Television. The bad news is they’re not the new Television, but they are a pretty good Strokes.

Ah, so this is art rock, Latitude style. Sad to report, it does nothing very much for me. But I guess it's always going to be hard to follow the Hold Steady.

It's all gone a bit Late Review round here. In the absence of Tom Paulin, here's UNCUT's Arts Blog. Latitude is not just about music but comedy, literature, theatre, film and cabaret too – plus various hybrids of all of them. Which can mean being assailed by armies of performance-art gonks and patchy student plays about the Iraq war in the middle of a forest.