Latitude Festival

Latitude was my first British festival (excluding the O2 Wireless, which doesn't really count). I was really intrigued, as I've been told many times that British festivals are "much less corporate" than the European ones. Considering that the British are by far the most corporate-friendly people I've seen, I was really puzzled at what this could mean.

Well, I now understand. Although the word "corporate" is not appropriate in my view, there is indeed a massive difference between Latitude and any continental festival I've been to.
- In Europe, a festival is a series of gigs, on various stages, through the day. That's it. The doors open 30 min before the first gig, and close 30 min after the last one. There are a few shops selling food and booze but nothing else.
- By contrast, in Latitude (and as far as I understand, in Glasto as well), the festival is open 24h, with clubs going on after the gigs, shops selling stuff from children toys to clothes.
In addition, but that may be specific to Latitude, there were a lot of things going on: Theatre, poetry, comedy....

That was, I must say, very fortunate, as the music wasn't really up to my expectations.
The headlines were really good: Franz Ferdinand are always fun and their new material, keyboard-loaded, sounds great; Interpol were much better than at Alexandra Palace, the singer was perceptibly moving; and Sigur Ros literally blew my mind, with a breath-taking show.

But apart from that, nothing to report really: The Go Team are a disgrace, Elbow is boring, Deus and British Sea Power a disappointment; so were most of the small bands I saw. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Grinderman was actually Nick Cave's band, and Foals were good too.

So without the theatre and literary tent, I would really had gotten bored at times!