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But it began with the sight of Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey performing covers in an poorly attended Big Top, a sight that made you wonder: What the hell ever happened to Supergrass?
Speech Debelle has to ask the empty Big Top tent twice if they saw the Mercury Prize ceremony. Speech, a piece of advice: if you have to repeat the question, people are probably just being polite. Unless you're on the main stage, in which case it's more likely they haven't heard.
On the back of her recent success she has been upgraded to play an extra set today. Curiously, the genius responsible for the Mercury-winning album fails to manifest. Sure it's a short afternoon set, but it idles by uneventfully with little to distinguish it. VV Brown, who follows, by contrast has the place bouncing to her tuneful folk-soul numbers.
It's becoming increasingly hard to dislike Little Boots. Here in full Lady Penelope garb - presumably in a nod to this years 'Space Oddity' fancy dress theme rather than some sort of perverse puppet based dressing fetish - she buzzed through a set which, despite its familiarity, was far from contemptuous. Particularly when she blitzed through Remedy, which was a pulsating bundle of high-energy joy.
And we could hear it. Sweet mother o'mercy, we could make out her Tenori-On, her theremin, her every throbbing beat, even if the couple in front of us decided to have a quick chat. Hallelujah! Praise be! Take that, eardrums!
Dirty Projectors sounded less experimental than may have been expected, but the well attended set was still offbeat and endearing. As was Lily Allen. She seems to have become as ubiquitous at festivals as curious food stalls, but she's become a better performer than she gets credit for.
She turns It's Not Fair into a mass rave-up, she delivers her now traditional cover of Britney Spears' Womanizer and she even manages, seemingly quite absent mindedly, to call George Bush (remember him?) a c**t.
Saturday at Bestival is, unofficially, Diplo night. He begins with the raw, booty shaking, ragga freak out that is Major Lazer, bringing the mayhem of last month's Carnival to a teeming Big Top. His partner Switch being nowhere to be seen, it's down to solo-Diplo to lead an almighty party.
Beeper noises are buzzing out of the PA, dancers are swinging off light rigs and the woodchip on the ground is getting pulped as furious dancing breaks out. It's over the top, it's outrageous, it's downright dirty and it's so right for the moment.
Diplo-produced Buraka Som Sistema's electro-fused brand of Angola-via-Lisbon kuduro follows. The furious dancing begins to border on the x-rated, the stage is invaded by girls, there is nearly a mass brawl with the stage manager and they command 5,000 people to sit down before jumping up during the crescendo of an explosive set. Fantastic stuff.
Later, Klaxons prove to have something in common with Mark Twain: rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated. It was brave of them to toss out Golden Skans early in their set, although if you were cynical you might well point out it'd been braver had they also tossed out It's Not Over Yet, but the new material had an energy and a purpose about it. After a year of setbacks, they may just be on the road to recovery. Or the road to releasing some new material at the very least.
For many here this weekend, Bestival is all about Saturday's German headliners. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the frantic all-energy, stamina sapping live performance from Kraftwerk. True, they don't do much. True, they're pretty much the only band in the world whose encore involves them not being on stage. Truer still, their robotic replacements are marginally more animated. And yes, saying this is Kraftwerk is like saying if Paul McCartney went and grabbed the three first people stood at a bus stop in Liverpool and put them on stage he would be reforming The Beatles, but still.
The chameleon-like costumes which blend in and out as the stage morphs; the sheer fullness of their sound and their position as real-life, genre defining pioneers leaves Bestival utterly transfixed. Cold War commentary Radio-Activity and the heady medley of Tour De France stand out as set highlights.
With that we waved auf wiedersehen to Day 2. Just 24 hours on the Isle Of Wight to go.
 Bestival 2009:
Day 1 |
Day 2 |
Day 3
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