Our last port of call at Ben & Jerry's Summer Sundae is the lovely Nerina Pallot - and what a nice way to end it. She's clearly happy as a bee up on stage, jumping from guitar to keyboard, grinning with her band and mellowing out an already horizontal crowd even further with her relaxed upbeat tunes. Oh bless her. We like seeing musicians having fun, it just makes it look way better than if they clearly don't want to be somewhere. That's just inexcusably crap. Due to other stuff going on involving saucepans and windows, we've got to head off early, but scoot on over to the Ben & Jerry's gallery blog and check out the awesome pictures we got from the weekend: cows, ice cream, ferrets and helter skelters, you name it, it's up there. We've had a surprising amount of fun. Roll on the next weekend!
Ducks are really hard to catch. Watching someone try and catch one however is BRILLIANT. Gloria and Mandrake, the City Farm's two ducks, are going to be raced which is why one of the volunteers is knackering himself out pursuing a duck. They were brought over to an alley lined by haybales and dropped in where they got a bit bewildered and started going the wrong way. After a nailbiting three minutes, Mandrake proved to be the least nervous, stopped walking backwards and, well, got the closest to the finishing post. So we guess he won. His trainer got to keep his sombrero, poor old Gloria's got doused in water. Excellent. Oh, in other news, the Ben and Jerry's PR has thought we've been writing really long text messages all weekend and thus that we're probably a mite unprofessional. Oops. Such are the perils of phone blogging. We need t-shirts made: "I'm not a tosser, i'm working."
It's the third time we've seen them festivaling this summer (we shall NEVER get bored of listening to noise like *that*) and Captain are already kissing new heights. Aloud's close personal celebrity friend ice cream Jerry introduces them (the only band he has thus far) as the reason he hasn't been able to sleep for the last two nights. So, yah boo sucks to Chris in the office who dismissed them as "Coldplay, only worse" the other day - you're ever so wrong. The shimmering glory of their pitch perfect summer riffs make us feel like we're flying. Or maybe that's sunstroke. Er...
We were at a work do last year with someone who was genuinely called Vincent Vincent. No joke, the man must have been hated by his folks. A strong line of fans line the front of the stage bopping away and security's come out for the first time all weekend which is a bit odd. Maybe they reckon the scenesters will get overexcited and start bottling their idols. Hmm. Trooping back from the photo pit we notice that Jose Gonsalez has changed his shirt for a navy blue polo neck. Thank Christ.
Well, we've had our first ice cream of the day (Glastonberry, appropriately) checked on the animals and now we're drifting off to the gentle wig-out sounds of Breaks Co-op. It's very relaxing and, contrary to what BBC Weather told us this morning, it's blissful weather so it's quite easy to have a doze. We're wearing jeans, which is rubbish. Boo hiss to you, spawn of Michael Fish! Very excitingly, the City Farm is doing duck and ferret races today, although sadly not against each other. There's also a fancy dress monkey chasing some women dressed up as bananas which is er, nice. Bananas are Satan's fruit. Blech. Backstage there are two enormous buses and Jose Gonsalez is hanging around outside wearing a very yellow t-shirt. Jose's stylist, have a word.
Damon Gough is a funny man. Like, really funny. Slightly nervous about his first gig in ages, he's wry as you like and makes us all chuckle. He's showing off new material tonight which bizarrely sounds like a cross between Audioslave and Nirvana, had they had bigger beards and locked themselves in their bedrooms more. It's mardy grunge. It's alright. But not great. We'll see what we think when we listen to it again on the album. That's all from day one, it's been eventful, but we've still got four more flavours to get though tomorrow. Rrrock!
We're not really affected either way by Echo and the Bunnymen so can't really say if it's any cop. They play songs. People seem happy with that. Bothered.
Dude, we totally met Jerry! When The Pipettes shouted "There's Jerry!" from onstage we weren't sure, but yes! This bearded glory is the ice cream supremo himself! "Go and say hello," said the nice lady handing over our Cherry Garcia. "He's very friendly." We rather unstylishly stalked him over to the rug stall where he shook hands with all the staff and had a chat, then we started questioning. He's over here promoting the new Fair Trade Vanilla flavour, he's only here today, his favourite variety is Heath Bar Crunch (Vanilla Chocolate Brownie) and very sensibly he thinks Cookie Dough's too sweet. Still sells like hot cakes though (excuse that horrid joke.) It's not everyday you bump into a man with ice cream power so we had to ask: why did they ditch Chubby Hubbie, the greatest flavour in the history of anything? "It didn't sell," he explained. People are really stupid, we blurted out. The Sundae staff laughed nervously. "I guess the mainstream's tastes aren't as advanced as yours and mine," he said. Damn straight. Jerry, you're a god. Now go and resurrect Chubby Hubbie, immediately.
Polka dots: annoying on scenesters, ace on Pipettes
Wow, we haven't grinned and danced this much before dark in a goodly while. Since we were four, actually. The Pips are on glorious form today thanks to a thrilled crowd who keep on making Gwenno giggle happily whenever they cheer. 'One Night Stand' gets a typically droll intro from Rose - "This is a song about love. Aaaah." - while 'ABC' gets rapturous applause from a crowd who can't quite believe their ears. The Cassettes play solidly as ever, half dapper gents and half scruffy blokes we love them a little bit. New single 'Pull Shapes' has everyone clapping along and the topless gentlemen in front of us start twisting which is ace. What do you do when the music stops? Cry.
There's something about liddle fluffy animals that turns us faintly psychotic. Maybe it's growing up in the country, but show us a cow and we'll be spewing inanities quicker than you can say "biological clock." Vauxhall City Farm have brought loads of animals just for us, like llamas. "Actually, they're alpacas," explains one of the farm staff. "Oh alpacas! They make lovely jumpers," says Aloud's friend, who should know: he has five. Ooh look, sleepy ducks, a pregnant cow, rabbits and a goose called Lunch, who does a balancing act on the fence staring beadily at everyone. There are two Brahma chickens from India with impressive fluffy legs and a rather terrifying roar. Best of all, they have a tiny baby goat which they pick up and let you stroke. We freely admit to monopolising that goat - tough luck tinies, we've got four feet on you and we're not afraid to shove.
