We left the Yorkshire Dales on Thursday, travelling down to Kent to attend the Hop Farm music festival on the Friday and Sunday. (Headliners were The Eagles on the Friday and Prince on the Sunday). The journey of around 300 miles to our Holiday Inn Express in Crawley took around 5 hours.
Friday arrived, and on a sunny early afternoon, just after lunchtime, we left Crawley for Hop Farm, a 45 minute drive away. Access into the venue was quick, and with chairs and picnic items in hand we walked for about 10 minutes to the main stage area and took residence about three quaters of the way back in an uncrowded and relaxed setting.
There were plenty of facilities, food stalls selling all variety of products, and you could take your own food in with certain restrictions such as no glass and no alcohol. (There were bag searches)
The Hop Farm festival has being running for 4 years and it was expected that around 30-40,000 persons would attend on each of the 3 days.
The line up is shown below, though we only attended on the Friday and Sunday. Also note that there were 3 main performance areas so it is not possible to see evert artist perform as the 3 areas host the performances simultaneously throughout the day. We chose to stick to the main stage.
We arrived just before Jimmy Barnes took the stage, and enjoyed a fairly short but enthusiastic performance which was OK, nothing spectacular, but seemed to go down fairly well with the first day crowd.
I was looking forward to 10cc and was not dissapointed, though a few glitches occured with the generator at the beginning and during their last number. The power totally failed and the band had to leave the stage. We witnessed much dark smoke from the standby generator adjacent the stage and after about 20 minutes power was restored and the band returned to loud cheers to finish their set. A pity as they were very good indeed having gone though most of their well known tunes.
The next Band - Death Cab for Cutie - I did not enjoy so much, having never heard them before I expected something quite hard hitting considering the band name. They were a little bland and unrememorable for me, very indie but not really much different to hundreds of other bands of the same genre.
Brandon Flowers of "The Killers" fame hit the stage late afternoon, and whilst never really a Killers fan myself, he was very popular with the crowd. He did finish with "Mr. Brightside" a well known Killlers favourite and this went down a storm with the crowd. Also invited to the stage was a member of that band.
So early evening arrived and Bryan Ferry. The quality of the band, the vocals from Mr. Ferry, the set list and peformance with video backdrops and dancing girls was very impressive. The best act of the day so far.. by far!! The popular hits were covered and the hour long set was over too soon, perhaps Mr.Ferry should have being headlining this festival?
They launched into "Hotel California" possibly their best known song with little or no introduction, and to be honest, I thought the version tonight fell a bit flat, perhaps the sound was a bit off initially. The sound, atmosphere and set did improve, but to me and for a festival crowd there appeared to be much newer material aired than the good old stuff much of the crowd possibly wanted. Lets not forget, this is not an Eagles concert, but a 3-day festival with possibly much of the crowd ateending for the 3 days, and possibly not Eagles " die-hard fans " as such.
They were good, but could have being so much better (for this crowd). I thought the set picked up especially after half-way through. It was their last show of a European Tour, but they should have gone out with a bang rather than a fizzle. Enjoyable, but then so were other bands that were not headlining, it should have been more than just enjoyable. A bit like the simple minds gig last week.. close, but no big fat cigar!!
After finally finding the car in the dark we left with little delay, and did actually hear most of the 2 or 3 numbers remaining whislt walking back to the car.
Our Gig Scores:
Jimmy Barnes: 5/10
10cc: 7/10
Death Cab For Cutie: 5/10
Brandon Flowers: 6/10
Bryan Ferry: 8/10
The Eagles: 7/10
Hop Farm Friday Experience: 8/10
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