Im currently sat on another island of a slightly different longitide and latitiude as I’m in Iceland for the Airwaves music festival.. which is a proper eye opener. Airwaves itself is set in 9 venues across the small city or is it a town?! of Reykavjik. From a grand modern art museum to a disused cold store and old concert halls it’s a lot different from most UK festivals where you’re sitting around in a field drinking warm cider. Reykavjik itself is a fun and very trendy place with cool people leaking out of every bar, clothes shop and restaurant – some of which are serving puffin and whale blubber. Hmm, tasty.
Anyway this is kinda downtime from running Bestival – October and November allow us a small breather before we gear up for the 2008 season. Having said that we’re launching a new festival next summer called Camp Bestival. It’s happening in Dorset in July and is all about being the ultimate camping show with every kind of tipi, yurt, bivouac and tent under the sun. Lots of folk, reggae and rock n roll and a bit less electronic music than Bestival. Its gonna have Bestivals core magic but in a much mellower way.
Our spiritual home is the Isle Of Wight though and I hope no-one gets worried that we’re moving or taking our focus off Bestival – we’re not! It’ll hopefully always be at Robin Hill. We had a great Bestival 2007 with balmy tropical Island sunshine like last year so we felt blessed after a rainy festival season in the UK. Overall the 30,000 odd mixture of festi goers, artists and crew (who numbered over 6000 this year!) made this our best one yet and we’ve had great feedback. As ever a few teething problems with toilets not being serviced regularly enough being number one complaint and quite a few traffic management issues which we’re gonna resolve for next year. That’s what I love about the festival really – spending the whole year planning for 3 days seems daft but it’s such a challenge to get everything right and we are perfectionists so one day it’ll come! I was down on the Island again last week doing a ‘masterclass’ at Platform One.
I was blown away by what the Pontin brothers have done there, and very impressed with the facilities and the enthusiasm and drive of the students. To be frank I hate public speaking despite being a Radio 1 DJ, doing TV and being in the public eye. So it took a lot of will to stand up in front of a room of pierced, strangely coiffed and generally cool kids but they were nice to me and pretended to be interested in my ramblings of how to get ahead in the music biz.
Well now that im an ambassador for the Isle Of Wight I got me duties haven’t I!? Am looking forward to the Virtual Festival Awards in a week or so – we’re up for loads of awards as ever and we’ve won Best Medium show for the last two years and hoping to make it a hat trick but que sera sera. Congrats to John Giddings too for being given the Outstanding Contribution gong – big up the island festies! So over and out from da Bank towers and thanks for reading – give us a shout if you see me ambling round the island. Increase the peace! ;)
Rob da Bank, Bestival and Radio One. Isle of Wight Ambassador.