Beautiful Days 2004

United Kingdom | by Jon Wright23 August 2004

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Last year, Beautiful Days redefined the way smaller festivals should be organised. Holistic, friendly, inventive and diverse, with enough people to lose yourself but not so many that you lose your friends, Beautiful Days Mark I was a triumph. This year, the blueprint is built upon more stages, more bands, more activities, and more colour.

Huge, pink, alien flowers dominate one corner of the site, on the other, multi-coloured day-glo stars run half the length of the camping field. The main stage looks like it's in the grip of a fluorescent sea-monster, it's tentacles encircle the entire arch of the dome, and all round the site banners, flags and bunting billow and sway in the refreshing Devon breeze. The colours on show are as diverse as the activities on offer.

This year a huge effort is made to provide the most comprehensive children's activity programme of any small festival. The trampolines are never empty, the double swingboats are filled with beaming kids, the circus skills tent proves to be so popular no-one could practice for fear of injuring someone. Elsewhere, Cyber-dog stilt-walkers tower above the crowd, 6ft men in tutu's wave wands at passers by, kids with fairy wings try to fly, face paints turn kids into tigers and elephants, stomp-rockets made of pop bottles drip paint onto the grass; Spoons honed from logs of Lime wood are clutched by their proud makers, steam boats powered by candles chug round bathtubs, pinballs rattle round machines powered by eco-gas, and grown men shriek as they are spun in the human gyrascope. All this and more is Beautiful Days, and the soundtrack isn't bad either.

Looking down the list, it seems the line-up cannot match last year's - no Lee 'Scratch' Perry, no Dreadzone, no Senser - boy are we wrong. Saturday proves to be a day full of blinding music on both stages, acts known and unknown all seeming to capture the vibe of the day and run with it. One of the great things that can happen to you at a festival is being completely blown away by a band you have never seen before. It gives you hope, makes you think, it's inspiring, and seems to make it all worthwhile. The Bays do all that. Never playing the same song twice, though clearly improvising around their own templates, the only way to hear The Bays is live, for they do not release records, and, as they say, the performance is the product. Playing a hybridised mix of Ozric Tentacles-like jams that flirt with techno-beats, progressive house, jazz styles and dub rhythms, The Bays improvise to live audiences better than many bands play endlessly rehearsed songs.

They rule Saturday afternoon and kick off the first evening in seemingly effortless fashion. Also worth a mention are the main stage openers, The Lovegods, winners of the Virtual Festivals/Beautiful Days new bands competition along with Poor Old Ben. Seriously on the way up, The Lovegods, who also won Radio One's unsigned bands competition this year, prove they are worthy with a tight performance here. Speaking of unknowns, She Said, who play Stage Two in the afternoon are just excellent. Fronted by the beautiful Dominique Noiret, their hour-long set proves to be another revelation. Mixing country, blues and very dark subject matter, Dominque looks for all the world like the next... yes, you guessed it, PJ Harvey.