REVIEW: Zoo Thousand and Eight [Festival Fever]

REVIEW: Zoo Thousand and Eight

Posted on July 15, 2008 12:05 PM
0 comments

Zoo Thousand and Eight
4th - 6th July

Review by Andy Hirst

The organisers of the Zoothousand festival really pulled out all the stops this time; their band selection was nothing short of inspired; a varied and intriguing mix of quality acts spread across 3 days in the beautiful Kent countryside. The mere thought of seeing Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Gallows at the same festival was reason enough for me to lust eagerly at the festival program and the prospect of attending. The fact that I had not heard of this festival through the normal avenues of advertising did not perturb me - perhaps I was not reading the right magazines or looking at the correct websites, a criticism I frequently fall foul of, yet a line-up like that was bound to pull a good crowd whether they were the fashionable presses intended demographic or not.
In addition to the expertly selected line-up, the organisers had even managed to challenge the infinite wisdom of the Met office; wind and rain had been rashly forecasted for the duration of the weekend yet when Friday arrived the weather, though not blistering hot, was certainly far more pleasant than we had been led to believe. Surely the weekend was all marked out to be one of the best festivals of the summer?!

A short answer to this question would be an emphatic ‘No!’ however short answers do not tend to suffice as far as reviews go, and moreover I will take great pleasure in explaining the numerous ineptitudes that turned one of the most promising weekends of the summer into little more than a poorly organised village fete.

Whilst I credited the organisers with impeccable taste in their booking policy, it must be said that just about anyone with an interest in music could come up with a dream line-up if you confine yourself to the realms of pure fiction. What the promoters seem to have overlooked on this occasion is that in addition to creating the line up you actually have to get the bands to turn up, a fact made rather difficult if you fail to pay the bands you have booked.

Despite the lack of some of the big name bands the atmosphere remained suitably positive, much to the credit of the crowd; a festival isn’t all about the headline artists, there is plenty to be said for discovering a new band on a small stage or giving bands you wouldn’t normally consider buying tickets to see a second chance and with such a big hole in the line-up there was certainly opportunity to carry out this voyage of festival discovery. I must admit to being pleasantly surprised by a few of bands I stumbled across; The Mexican Foolz, were rather entertaining and Hadouken, a band I had previously discounted provided an energetic and crowd rousing afternoon performance on the Saturday. Unfortunately even these brief moments of musical discovery were tainted by the negative elements that were becoming rapidly more dominant; Hadoukens lead singer was on a tirade against the festival organisers and the fact they hadn’t paid them, and any band playing on any stage besides the main stage were likely to have found a bigger audience in the local pub.

To make matters worse the Tap ‘n Tin Stage, the location for some of the big names still left on the bill, was rendered structurally unsound for all but the very end of Saturday evening, and whilst some of the bands were rescheduled to perform elsewhere, for many of the acts the altered location was the VIP stage which was off limits to anyone who didn’t have the appropriate wrist band, providing a further slap in the face to the majority of dejected festival goers.

The atmosphere of the festival suffered profusely as a direct response to all of these unscheduled and uninformed changes. With the crowd barely pushing half capacity the sparseness of bodies had already sapped much of the festival spirit from the arena and when fans turned up to see the bands whose presence on the line-up had been a contributing factor to their decision to buy tickets, only to find an empty tent with a scrap of paper informing them in a very vague and less than helpful manner that the bands were elsewhere (a fact that was all too apparent anyway for anyone with eyes and ears) the feeling was understandably downbeat. Had there been some kind of steward to point people towards the altered locations or even a poster listing the acts, times and stages, people would at least have had some kind of idea of what was going on however most of the information that could be derived came from overheard conversations in the crowd or from bands venting their frustrations about the organisers in a less than understanding fashion.

The festival organisers have officially apologised for all of the shortcomings the festival encountered blaming it on cash flow problems, however there was far more to be found lacking in the organisation of the festival than the lack of money and so I would be very surprised to see Zoothousand advertised for 2009 even if I do manage to align my reading habits in the correct direction.