1-2-3-4 festival 2010 – review
1-2-3-4 Festival 2010
When modish music promoter Sean McLusky decided in the mid-90s to ditch the over-exposed Soho night scene for Shoreditch’s dens he was venturing into pop culture wilderness. “We saw ourselves as pioneers of the area,” he says of those times. “It was a very dangerous East End [with] empty streets…. You couldn’t even get a pint of milk.”
Establishing himself at Old Street’s 333 Club, Sean began to showcase cutting edge alternative music, using the then novel format of multi-room/multi-sound club nights. The rest, of course, is history. Today Shoreditch is London’s main creative hub. It is the artistic vibrancy of the area that Sean’s 1-2-3-4 Festival in Shoreditch Park celebrated last month.
“Its main purpose is supporting East London’s music scene. It’s something I’m passionate about and have been working on developing for 15 years,” he says. “And it’s important that the festival is in Shoreditch Park – it’s the only green space we’ve got.”
Now in its third year, the 1-2-3-4 is attracting a growing number of international acts without losing sight of the local talent. And for better or worse, the festival is certainly a good representation of what Shoreditch has become. A massive queue of art scene hangers-on at the guest list entrance made a mockery of the hipsters’ search for exclusivity. Wearing a mask of perennial boredom, most of them spent the day networking and showing off outfits in the crammed gated VIP area, indifferent to the music.
“Fashion and music are really connected to each other in Shoreditch,” said Yuki Tsuji, a London-based guitarist for one of the festival’s best emerging bands Bo Ningen. “When we used to live in East London it wasn’t so commercial.” But, Yuki admits the area still accounts for the lion’s share of his band’s gigs. “Everyone still hangs out in East London.”
Frontman of this year’s headliners F***ed Up, Damian Abraham, has also seen the area change over the years. A Canadian, Damian visited London over 20 times while touring or visiting relatives and has witnessed the same gentrification pattern in Shoreditch he saw in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Parkdale in his native Toronto. He says hipsters come to an area once it’s been colonised by artists and punks, who are drawn to it by cheap rent in the first place. He adds: “The hipsters make way for the yuppies, and yuppies make way for convention.”
While acknowledging the gradual shift of the underground scene towards the cheaper Dalston and Hackney Central areas, Sean believes Shoreditch still retains its alternative edge. “It’s still here but it’s been pushed to the side slightly.”
Regardless of one’s feelings about Shoreditch’s social scene, the quality of the music on offer at the 1-2-3-4 make it well worth a punt.
London-based Invasion stood out in the early hours, delivering the most original set of the day. Frontwoman Shantal Brown wore the soulful influences of her former group Chrome Hoof on her sleeve, but her powerful voice proved an exciting match to the doom metal accompaniment of her bandmates.
Midlands’ The Sharks were another pleasant discovery. Their suburban punk, while far from groundbreaking, left a warm impression for its earnestness and charm. Lo-fi U.S. indie pop was probably the best-represented genre at the festival, with Vivian Girls, Mazes, Dum Dum Girls and Wavves.
Wavves’s mastermind Nathan Williams failed to live up to expectations, serving up unmemorable surfer pop fair in between dull anecdotes.
L.A.’s Dum Dum Girls, on the other hand, have continued showing a steady progression from bedroom lo-fi to a solid indie outfit. “My goal is to write songs that get stuck in your head,” the band’s founder Dee Dee told us at the festival. And plenty of them did, with ‘Bhang Bhang, I’m a Burnout’ and ‘Baby Don’t Go’ demonstrating her considerable skill at relaying the melancholy of lost youth on paper.
The rock old guard at the 1-2-3-4 was another disappointment. Supergroup Silver Machine – comprising Primal Scream, The Who and Sex Pistols members – did not leave an impression. Nor did a comeback gig by post-punk underdog Vic Goddard and his Subway Sect.
The decision by former Joy Division bassist Peter Hook to perform the classic ‘Unknown Pleasures’ album without the late Ian Curtis was always going to be controversial. In the end, however, Hook’s awful voice made all debate about the artistic integrity of such a move redundant.
The headline slot was split between F***ed Up’s all-out hardcore and percussion-led post-punk of the fast-rising These New Puritans in the Rough Trade Shops tent. Neither took the crown. F***ed Up’s intensity was drowned in the apathy of the main stage audience, something the band rectified at their secret show at The Macbeth in Hoxton later that night.
Meanwhile, a technical glitch ended the Puritans’s show after a very promising start. After a power surge took out the amps twice, the band abandoned the set. Despite the band manager’s attempt to explain the situation via broken a monitor system, the packed crowd stood there for the next half hour, leaving the festival on a bad note.
This left Bo Ningen to deliver the goods. The Japanese quartet duly obliged, taking the small Artrocker tent by storm with their ever-more powerful psychedelic onslaught.
Overall most punters agreed the 1-2-3-4 was a nice way to spend a summer day, although toilet problems once again darkened the mood, with one woman claiming to have queued for an hour. A drunk man arrested while trying to steal ambulance equipment added an absurd side to the event, as did the large-scale bust up of fake VIP wrist bands.
Whilst lack of big bands was a common complaint, few could object to the value for money provided by the £20 ticket. “You have to take it for what it is,” summed up a festival goer from Brick Lane. With Sean McLusky already arranging next year’s line-up, the 1-2-3-4 looks to be an even bigger event in 2011. Let’s hope it retains its DIY feel, warts and all.
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