Bacardi B-Live

United Kingdom | | 19 September 2007

In a festival dominated by guitar bands, a tent packed with a great selection of dance DJs and a variety of drinks, opposed to the typical warm lager, is always going to be filled to the seams.

So it was no surprise to be faced with a mass of bodies and smiles whenever we ventured inside the impressively solid-looking B-Live 'tent' (it looks more like a permanent building than your standard canvas construction) for a dose of dance music that was a cut above your average Saturday night disco fodder.

Amongst the highlights was the ubiquitous Norman Jay’s set. He treated the crowd that was spilling out onto the grass to a lesson about house music in all of its forms as well as some classic dance tunes too. The in-house mix-masters’ display of percussion mastery was also something to behold and the rest of the DJs, including Colin Paterson and Spiritual South, played sets that mixed serious dance music with some classic records and mash-ups. The music tastefully steered away from the monotony of some other dance-orientated festival areas - much to the delight of several hundred dry people.

Backstage at the Bacardi B-live stage was also pretty action-packed. As the weekend went on, more and more celebrities, of varying levels of respectability and fame, were treated to cocktails and giant umbrellas (not in the cocktail, they were a bit classier than that) to ward off the rain. Girls Aloud, Gareth Gates, Lily Allen and a certain Miss Moss were all spied sipping a mojito or two.

T4's Miquita Oliver was also backstage enjoying cocktails with her mate Lily Allen, luckily she kept smiling despite having to work over the weekend and VF saying that she was only "vaguely interesting" shortly before doing an interview. We're sorry Miquita but honesty is the best policy, if we'd interviewed Lily Allen we'd have told her to stick a few more layers on if she wanted to smuggle those peanuts onto the Channel 4 stage without getting busted later.