GUILT FEST 2 Review

On the grounds where they hold the international balloon festival and where that Ben Fogey filmed part of his 'Country Tracks' series saw the monumental Guilt Festival 2. Due to the recession Beagle 2 couldn't afford to book Benny Andersson Band or Johnny Geddes (despite how much Geddes claims he was here).

Among the tens who attended there were rumours and rumblings about what surprise guest was going to crop up on some hasty duet. Sadly, Thomas Yorke, Selina Dion (tribute act to Celline) or German footballing legend Karl-Heinz Rumminige couldn't be arsed.

In their quest to mythologise the festival, everyone upon entering and getting their cheeks stamped were asked by HTV news and Fucked FM what was their Guilt Fest highlight. One punter offered 'when that bloke out of The Dead Zones mended his bike puncture during 'Weed Me a Pleb For Xmas.' So here are the acts who apepared in order of importance due to the success of their street teams.

THE DEAD ZONES
APESHIT
MUSTARD GAS
VERONICA AND THE PISSING MUMMYS
TUBBY QUEENS
ASK ASPEL LIGHTSHOW
BOIL IN THE BAG STUS

Personally with Guilt Fest being the nine thousand and fourteenth trending topic on twitter we are seeing that Guilt Fest is becoming THE festival to be at. So here are my own private highlights.


THE DEAD ZONES

Described by some knobhead I bumped into at a concert by the underated Dulux Gloss as a nod to Jame Murphy, a wink to the Wonderstuff you can enjoy, and a casual grope in a new build house to a scratched Belbury Poly bootlegged remix compilation, the Dead Zones were on form. They kicked our faces in. The uncharasmatic front man, Zack Heiss invaded our senses with a suit made from dish cloth, sunglasses so wide you needed four heads and a voice cherished by years of vomiting petrol. When he introduced 'High Def Adulterer' with 'Let's all big up these South African mother fuckers! Let's bring some shitty sunshine to their crappy, simple, fucked up lives! Ye-ahh! Lol! District niiiine!' and produced a vuvuzela which he hurt his knee trying to snap, I nearly choked on my paper cup of mushy peas. One highlight was The Dead Zones bizarre 'Carter USM' version of Lennon's 'Beautiful Boy'.


Set list

High Def Adulterer
Weed me a Pleb for Xmas
Beautiful Boy (Unstoppable version)
Solvent molestation
Armchair Nazi
Mark. E. Smith doesn't give a fuck about you, I don't give a fuck about him too.
Dizzie Rascal (He's WELL BONKERS, the cunting ledge!)
Shut the fuck up and put another shit record on



MUSTARD GAS

Much as already been written about Mustard Gas. Most of it boring and quite irrelevant. This festival was pre-empted by a contraversial war of words between drummer, Andy N and Stevie V (of Dirty Cash fame). It came to a head when Andy N offered the ultimatum 'The first one of us to die is a horse-freaking muppet on the dole!' This had no effect on the hypnotic and bothersome set of postmodern rock/J-pop/dubstep/hauntology. In fairness it was quite crap. A kind of teen Peter Kay-esque crowd pleasing journey into living suicide. Songs such as 'Michael Moore Has Feelings' and the balaeric sun-kissed 'Self Published Failure' were genuinely indulgent, so much so that Jonathan Ross wept.


Set list

Take the chavs to the chambers
I used to be a boyfriend
Michael Moore Has Feelings
Blow Your Whistle (DJ Duke cover)
The White Album in Five Minutes
I liked the Guardian more when I had some money
Barbie Girl (ironic cover of the Aqua classic)
Self-Published Failure


VERONICA AND THE PISSING MUMMYS
For music writers of the Queitus website, Veronica and the Pissing Mummys represent a kind of Florence and the Machine for non-Dido fans and Zane Lowe loathers. They did fuck all last year untill they infected the charts with their soulful version of the poppy house classic, 'The Only Way Is Up'. Since then, everyone wants to have purple hair, suck lollipops, hold hands, and pretend to be 22 years of age. They want to speak like Sarah Ferguson and be twats. Oh go on. Here's the set list if you must.


Set list

I'm so hapy that I could pee untill I die
The only way is up
Annie Lennox
We're all spirtual (except for Nick Griffin and India Knight)
I don't think...too busy feeling
Cosmos, order me a new heart
Annie Lennox Part 2
The only way is up...again


So that's it. Would have watched them all but I thought I'd have a creep. So what else was going on? There was food as you'd expect. Fairly reasonable I have to say with ice cream vans offering economy burgers at £5.23 and Mr Freeze ice pops a measley £7.50. There was all kinds of shit going down, throwing bricks at Paul Crone, sharing sweat boxes with James Corden and Nick Clegg, or joining the Tubby Queens for an aftershow of baco funk and oral chav homosex. It was all in the spirit of things. Some bloke was asking for a quid to watch the young mothers, and pissed up rich sons having a piss anywhere they could find, once the single cubicle has a queue of about 40 people. And I'll never forget the Silent Disco Culture Beat special which was disappointing.

Come on En-ger-land!

See this guy in the picture, he's not patriotic, he's a nutter. Albeit a harmless nutter. (Oh it's not there anymore. Oh well. Basically it was an eccentric old guy with his body and house all decked out like a neo nazi) Maybe it's where I live but once upon a time all the things I used to view as a novelty and fairly endearing such as barbecues, laminate flooring and small gatherings of the community to watch the football are quite, quite unbearable. Common. I realise that my hatred and derision partly stem from my general dislike of most people but the fear goes deeper. It's the fear of hysteria spilling over and infecting everything, transforming all our lives, dumbing it down further than it is already. And when it's been adopted by the chavs as well, well their tack becomes our tack.

This commercialisation of world cup fever in part isn't just fuelled by The Sun but the supermarkets. You can get England themed tents, sunglasses, pillow cases, wigs, shirts, boots, cakes, bead, tic-tacs, erm flags, bunting, cigs, burgers, pens, gobstoppers, dogs, pubs, council houses, car kits, tortoises, calculators, and lipstick. I tried looking for French and Italian flags in the suprmarket but they didn't have them. It's not so much the ubiquity of it that worries me but the aggression behind it, the mentality, the force behind 'Come on En-ger-land!', not being a rallying cry but almost a call to arms, with death to those who refuse to join in, or get in their bloody way. It's the threat of the English defence league and the BNP, the fear, oh yes, the fear that woe betide us all if England don't at least win the world cup, as our immigrants and basically anyone will get it.

I do love the world cup. Not as much as I used to. The loss of interest is because of the commercialisation, is because of the sponsorships, the naff world cup themed ads and how it's hi-jacked and allowed everyone on to its bandwagon who may have been indifferent. 1982's finals in Spain which remain a big part of my childhood and my life, being the first one I engaged with and even filled duplicate Panini sticker albums is precious to me. I don't want it's memory tainted. I don't want the world cup to be a game of one upmanship on which house has the most ridiculous England decorations and union jacks. It's one of the reasons I'm losing interest. I blame supermarkets, 1966, Euro 96 and people for it being dumbed down. And I blame James Corden for being effortlessly unfunny for trying to hi-jack his own place in its televisual history, the gobshite, with his really shit programme.

So I'll be pleased if England don't do too well. Not because  it'll upset people. I just won't be able to bear the street parties, the forced jollity and the media banging on and on about it, the way they do about 1966, Euro 96, Germans, Argentina, the hand of God and the second world fucking war. Get over it.