REVIEW: Wireless, Hercules and Love Affair [Festival Fever]

REVIEW: Wireless, Hercules and Love Affair

Posted on July 7, 2008 4:01 PM
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02 Wireless Festival
Hyde Park
July 3rd 2008

Review by Malcolm Black

The clouds open up over London’s Hyde Park as this year’s Wireless Festival gets underway commencing with UK Grime MC Wiley and some heavy b-lines from XL’s b-boys, Cool Kids.

Each day at Wireless is carefully programmed to appeal to a certain type of music lover and typically the opening night of Wireless is tailored towards dance and urban music and this year’s line up is certainly the cream of the crop, Roisin Murphy, Hot Chip, Mark Ronson, Hercules & Love Affair and of course the main man himself, Jay Z – whose performance at Glasto can only of amplified the excitement of seeing the Hip Hop superstar headline at the Main Stage.

To be expected there’s not that much is going down upon arrival late afternoon, entering the stark, dark and near empty Scan Disk tent to hear Alice Smith who tries her best to warm the tent with her charisma and lusciously powerful soulful voice. She jokes with the handful of loyal fans “Wow there’s so many people here”, but carried on un-phased.

Gutted that I’d missed Roisin Murphy – who was on surprisingly early on in the day, we make our way to the main stage to see Mark Ronson and make a quick reccy of the festival ground bypassing corporate branding everywhere – even Blackberry had their own mini tent. I popped my head in to have a nose and an aerobics class was in full swing!

By the time Mark Ronson & The Version Players make it onstage the sun is beaming and it turns out to be a pretty fine evening music and weather wise. Mark – the former hip hop dj is accompanied by a full band and keeps his show interesting with his versions of other people’s songs, and a variety of guest appearances; Charlie Waller, the lead singer of The Rumblestrips sang an OK rendition of Amy’s Back To Black and the crowd witnessed another great highlight of Lily Allen’s career who had to restart ‘Oh My God’.

Although the sun was shining and the music was good, I felt a visit to Hercules and Love Affair was much needed after having seen them twice already this year and being massively disappointed, I was desperately hoping that Anthony Heagerty might at least make an appearance at one of the shows, but sadly no. However, at least Kim Ann Foxman , a Hawaiian lesbian and Anthony’s stand in did a better job than on previous occasions, but unfortunately both her and Nomi – the transsexual vocalist just did not do “Raise Me Up” justice.