Zoo Thousand – What Matt Thinks
Posted on 09. Jul, 2008 by Matt in Festivals, Live Reviews: All, Zoo Thousand
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Zoo Thousand: The Good Points
I feel that it is my duty to give you the reader, the real picture behind zoo8, as it has not been too good so far. What people are forgetting is that it was not about facilities or queuing, it was about good live music. Thats it. Ask yourself this question. Why did you go to zoo8? You did not go for nice toilets, or for short queues. You went for music. Granted a lot of people cancelled (most of my favourite bands cancelled, but it didnt stop me enjoying myself), but the music you heard was mostly of a good quality. Here are some of my highlights and I hope you find them helpful for reminiscing on a great festival for music.
1) The Rumble Strips
Ok, not one of my favourite bands before zoo, but they were great. Their set was amazing and they all looked like they were enjoying themselves which was brilliant too.
Best moment: Motorcycle was outstanding so YouTube it!
2) Operahouse
Very good band, but stuck on a tiny stage with about 15 people watching. Played some brilliant songs and were suffocated by a rogue smoke machine which was pretty funny.
Best moment: Born a boy played to perfection.
3) Hadouken!
Played brilliantly and despite the hour or so delay before their set managed to keep a crowd of about 5000 people. Not bad.
Best moment: the rant about how shit the festival was being run. Their not going to be back for zoo9 with that!
4) Joe Shepherd
No one in their right mind would take opened drinks from a stranger but Joe managed it, and created the funniest hour of the weekend with his aggressiveness and reluctance to pick up his feet when walking.
Best moment: running away from The Ladies into the wilderness. Brilliant.
5) Nick Harrison
This guy is a legend. Playing his little acoustic guitar through the barrage of bottles and egging people on to keep trying.
Best moment: all his songs were brilliant and his personality made the bottles feel like a game.
6) The Teenagers
Very fun to watch and the accents were brilliant. Good music too which is always a bonus.
Best moment: when they walked on stage and said we are the teen ay gers. Very funny and sparked a flurry of mimicking back at our tent.
7) The BBC introducing tent
Probably the best bit of the weekend was seeing all of these local bands playing great music and promoting themselves. Mostly the bands were great, but the honourable mentions here go to Paisley Grammar, Eben, Motion Picture Soundtrack, Freshman, Floors and Walls, Tom Williams and the Boat and Seven Story Down.
Best moment: meeting Seven Story Down who have been one of my favourite bands since I heard of them in January.
Other honourable mentions of the weekend:
Flogging Molly, Slaves to Gravity, The Young Knives, Underground Heroes, The Holloways, The Hives, Marner Brown, Little Man Tate, Clacket Lane and Delays.
See, thats a lot of reasons for why the festival was a success. If you need fancy toilets to have a good time then party away to Buckingham Palace, but me, Im staying right here for Zoo9 woo!
Yes it was a shit festival. Matt felt the festival for him was about the music and to an extent he was right.
But, as an organiser, what you also have to think about is the safety and well being of people that are buying into your idea.
I doubt Zoo Thousand Ltd will be brave enough to run any thing else on this scale.
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Jesus, feel free to correct my spelling errors – I didn’t realise just how awful they were -_-
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I don’t really think I can believe how any comments made in this blog are remotely justified, and how anyone can deny that ZOO9 was indeed, a complete disaster.
Maybe I should just remind you of just WHY the festival should be remembered as one of the most ill organised amatuer festivals to ever be publicised.
Transport – Zero shuttle busses funning from the train stations as promised.
Intense queueing – Absolutely noone should be queuing for nerly 7 hours to get it, it’s just obsurd.
Toilt facilities – Glastonbury and reading may be bad. But at least they flush, and don’t have mounds of shit that are practically towering ABOVE the systen, and pouring out of the bowl.
Water – NO drinking water as promised. If you don’t have any, don’t tell people you will get any.
Public VIP access – Those who spent nearly £100 extra on VIP tickets needen’t have bothered. All VIP access areas and benefits were made available to any ticket holder.
Lack of security – Many thefts and fights which you simply do not hear of going unnoticed at any other festival. At least have staff to cope with the volume.
Lack of space – AS promised, camping facilities would be provied. Oh, maybe not. Come half way through the first day, there were no spaces left. People were being directed to fields much further away, that they were probably not even licensed to allow camping in anyway.
Poor infastructure – Yes, one of the arenas nearly collapsed. Forgoodness sake, not only is this an embarrasment, but a serious health risk. Did they run the infastructure company as well?
Cancelled acts – Yea, pretty much the cream of the whole thing. Main headliners just didn’t turn up. Why? Because Zoo Thousand didn’t have the cash to pay them. Surely this is one of the primary things festival promoters would be in control over? Cleary not.
Thanks to Port Lympne Zoo bailing them out, the festival managed to run the whole weekend.
So Matt, I’m sorry, please don’t say that this festival was a success. Because that’s just complete balls.
Maybe if this was free, sure, I certainly wouldn’t be complaining. But for the money I paid, I’d rather invest in some luxury quilted toilet roll, it would have been money much better spent.
Oh well, each to their own.
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good, thats what its all about
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nice to see there is a balance on the whole ’shit festival’ theory. i didn’t go to have a wizz in a posh toilet, i went to get ratted and enjoy some good music.
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[...] Matt on Zoo Thousand- Matt comes up with reasons why the Zoo8 festival wasn’t a complete failure. [Read that here...] [...]
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