Hop Farm Festival - Part One

FRIDAY

So, another summer, another season of music festivals, this year more than ever. Unlike some festivals though Vince Power’s Hop Farm Festival in sunny Kent features no corporate sponsorships, no branding and most important of all, no fucking flags!

Instead, the Hop Farm Festival is all about the music, albeit mainly music for, and by, an older generation – the average age of the headliners must be around 50, and the crowd not far behind.

Due to work commitments we arrived at the Hop Farm on Friday evening to an arena that while busy, wasn’t exactly rammed. On the main stage Brandon Flowers was just starting his set, and though I wasn’t a huge fan of his, being a big fan of The Killers I was hugely disappointed by Flower’s lightweight solo effort ‘Flamingo’, and sadly his performance tonight didn’t do much to change that.

There had been rumours that the rest of the Killers might turn up and do a set, but though that didn’t happen, Flowers was joined by Mike Stoermer for a storming ‘Read My Mind’. The set closed with a triumphant rendition of ‘Mr Brightside’ and you have to wonder whether, when seeing an ecstatic crowd singing along to every note, Flowers questioned the point of his solo career.

Next up was Bryan Ferry. The Geordie crooner has had a wide and varied career, which always poses a risk when it comes to a live show. He could do a set of early solo stuff and Roxy Music classics, or he could do a set built around his later years when he turned into something between a high class covers act and a lounge singer.

Today it’s a mixed bag; we get the covers in the form of ‘I Put A Spell On You’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’ but we also get ‘Avalon’ and ‘Slave To Love’ and ‘Love Is The Drug’. Some good song choices but sadly I found the whole thing a little plodding and lacklustre.

Tonight’s headliners are The Eagles but I don’t like them enough to warrant fighting my way through a sea of deckchairs to get to the main stage, and besides the Human League are on in the Big Tent!

As the band take to stage, Phil Oakley’s face hidden by a hoodie, the set kicks off with new single ‘Never Let Me Go’ and the looks on the faces around me all say the same thing ‘shit, please don’t have a new album to play!’

Fortunately for the rest of the set the band give the audience what they want as they rip through a selection of their back catalogue including ‘Mirror Man’, ‘Fascination’, ‘Sound of the Crowd’ and, surprisingly ‘Empire State Human’.

The packed tent loved every minute, dancing and jumping around as they sang practically every word to every song, the volume increasing as they reached a crescendo with ‘Don’t You Want Me’. Finishing off with ‘Electric Dreams’ and ‘Being Boiled’, the League delivered the best performance of the day.