Rockaway Beach

@ Butlin’s, Bognor Regis - Day Three

We must admit that Public Image Ltd had such an impact on us that sleep was hard to find last night. We were pumped for hours after they finished and morning came as a harsh surprise. The breakfast buffet from Butlin’s definitely helps though and we’re off to explore Bognor Regis before the music starts. The sparkling sun on the sea off the pier at Bognor is hypnotic and, returning to yesterday’s debate about the nature of Rockaway Beach, it’s difficult to argue about it’s festival status when you’re luxuriating in a steaming hot bath on a Sunday morning. We leave Captain Stavros to go to Baggio and fortify our spirits with a pint in a local pub.

We make it back to Centre Stage just as ‘70s punks, The Members, are warming up. Their laid back reggae infused tunes are the ideal Sunday afternoon fare, and are accompanied by tales of music industry shenanigans and other reminiscences. They’ve been playing together, on and off, for fifty years and are as shambolic as when they started. The Members come across less as punk rock legends and more like local legends; the school teachers group who nearly made it and still play at the town fete.

It’s been a disappointing Sunday on the music front but we’re hopeful that Inspiral Carpets and English Teacher will change that perspective and finish us off on a high note. Inspiral Carpets are probably better known now for their early association with Noel Gallagher than their involvement with the Manchester baggy scene. They rock harder than we recall, although that may merely be because the Doors style organ is lower in the mix than it was on their breakthrough records. That isn’t enough to carry the crowd along with the music though. There are sufficient Inspiral Carpets t-shirts on show to suggest they have a following but, for the most part, it’s uninspiring carpets. By the time we hear their signature tune, ‘This Is How It Feels’, the crowd has thinned significantly and their undercooked delivery fails to capture the hearts of the remaining audience.

It’s up to English Teacher to rescue a musically underwhelming day. We’ve somehow managed to avoid hearing them even though they’ve won the Mercury prize and are now closing out this festival. You can only imagine the horrified look on our faces when we realise they’re a fucking prog act! It’s all there; the self-indulgent tripe, the backs to the audience, the lack of hooks or acknowledgement that an audience is trying to enjoy their music, the inability to maintain a beat and or groove for four or more bars, it’s anathema to us. It’s a shame that the weekender has to end with this dross because up to now, it’s been enjoyable.

Overall impressions of Rockaway Beach

It would be disingenuous to end this on a sour note as it’s an enjoyable and unusual weekender. The crowd are laid back and generally considerate of each other. Many of them have already booked in for next year. There are plenty of eating and drinking options and the accommodation is above what you’d usually expect for a festival. Even though the quality of the music lineup was front loaded and peaked on the Saturday, we can think of worse ways to spend the first weekend of January. The timing is unique and makes for a great way to start the new year. There’s no roughing it here. The accommodation is plush, the venues are indoors and well laid out and  supplied. The staff are helpful and friendly. No queueing for toilets or food. It’s all paved and accessible. It’s not far, not hard to reach, you can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach.

In a bid to bring you the experience of the first time you listen to a new album (whether you love or hate it) David J. Lownds shares his thoughts after just one play of a disc that's new to him.

In a way it is true that my mind feels hazy in the early morning, like a mist has yet to rise from it; indeed, the metaphors from Hendrix ‘s ‘Purple Haze’, a song basically about “confusion” after a “spell” has been cast, come to mind. Yet I am also buzzing, despite my tiredness and the physical sensation of ‘muzziness’, buzzing with more than just caffeine, and I’m not talking about narcotics (which I never take). Instead I’m referring to the slightly illness-inducing emotional ride (similar to a rollercoaster with fewer gleeful highpoints) that is the experience of listening to something as cathartic and both real and surreal as this album.

Life, released in 1990 by the Inspiral Carpets, had somehow apparently never crossed my radar until today, when the band raised their head like a monster emerging from a murky river with a violent current to hunt for the the people who just don’t understand, who perhaps don’t care about “how it feels to be lonely”, the primary theme of the album’s third track. That was the first Inspiral Carpets track I listened to today, thinking as I did so,”I’ve finally found something as depressing as Radiohead.”

That statement, that epiphany of sorts, the likes of which I never thought I would say, was not a compliment to the band. Well, it did not seem at first to be one. But actually, this is a later era dominated, in the charts at least, by less subtle but shallower music that does not at the end of the day have as much to convey in general, even in terms of emotions given to, or even inflicted upon, its audience. Therefore, isn’t the fact some music can make us feel something really significant– even if it is pretty horrible—a grand achievement, though not a great guarantor of repeated plays, for the conduit for such feeling? Surely it is better than the relative numbness of generic, processed foods, one which lacks substance.

Even with the above statement about the sad, almost happiness-crushing profundity of ‘This Is How It Feels’ in mind, it should be said that Inspiral Carpets, on Life at least, did not make simply deep music for melancholy philosopher kings to dwell on in their dreams as they are filled with visions of Nietzche conversing with Solomon about the lack of purpose in life. Indeed, much of the music has a punk-like energy to it, as well as giving off a scent of nightmarish-but-beautiful explosions of multiple layers of colour that is more in-step with Pink Floyd or later weird-but-wonderful creators like DJ Shadow, the talisman behind Endtroducing’s collage of samples that was rocking and mellow, blissful and frightening.

Just as there are two ways of dividing up Life’s dispensing of energy amid patches of more forlorn soundscapes, the manner in which the guitar comes to the foreground into the spotlight and then disappears back into the sonic night, full of eerie synths and so forth, is also appealing in enhancing the multifaceted – one may even say darkly kaleidoscopic – nature of the album. Often the guitar does little but by doing so improves the album, since this allows the brilliant basslines to shine. Melodies on guitar are shown to often excel here too, however. Moreover,although sameness is often seen as a bad thing in terms of evaluating a group of songs, I thought the sameness of guitar and bass, not in terms of monotonous repetition but consistency in quality, strengthens this album for a chance.

The things that I really think could have been better are the singing and the lyrics. The singing, while passionate and sometimes angry, is not as multi-textured, with screams, whispers and so forth, as, say, the voice of the star of that great Nineties tonic for the depressed: Kurt Cobain of the grunge movement. Instead of being that appealing, the vocals often become overly dreary – and are not helped by often overly repetitive lyrics -- despite their great backing. Due to their sometimes quite dirge-like quality they recall the vocal track for ‘No Surprises’ by those funeral-invokers-in-chief, Radiohead. That said, there is a great deal to be said about the dream-like states that whispered and obscured words and vocal sounds create sometimes—see also, Kid A by a certain group founded in Oxford -- but such effects do not add up to proper attempts at singing (or screaming musically) .

However, it is clear from the first full listen that Life is a tour-de-force, ironically more about death than vitality. Yet, despite its quite hard going and unforgiving outlook, it still proved that independent music had soul as the industry entered a new decade of challenges, backing its calamitous message of its aching words with musical promise and bristling attitude. This album demonstrates there is far more depth than the surface-level swagger of many elements of Madchester and Britpop that do not deliver as much pain for the listener and, probably as a consequence, end up being less aesthetically satisfying, not because pain is the ideal – it isn’t – but because strong feelings are usually what causes us to return to, think on or be otherwise affected greatly by music. Although it is not an album I would listen to that often, I know it is worth much, but not to the extent of, say, a song cycle deserving a five-star review. Regardless, I hold Life in quite high esteem despite, or perhaps as a result of, that lack of whatever it is that draws one to the repeat button like a moth to a lamp, compelling though the album was, song by song, on first listen overall.