The O2 Festival - Hyde Park

Posted by: Simon Matthews on 26 June 2006

A pretty well organised and laid out festival all things considered - the weather helping significantly!

Highligh for me was the Flaming Lips who played a tremendous set full of humour, surrealism, audience participation and not forgetting great music. Watching Wayne Coyne bouncing around in an inflatable ball in front of four 10 foot space men as the sun sets is never a bad thing!

I avoided Saturday as James Blunt is slightly less appealing to me than having my finger nails extracted by pliers.

Sunday was a good day as well. Although they don't have a great deal of variety to their sound, Depeche Mode offered up a very slick set with very clever visuals. The crowd went goth-tastically barmy and made sure the event ended with a bang.

Friendly, decent value and well attended. The footy result and the weather all adding to the mix nicely!
Posted on: 26 June 2006 by Tam
A shame channel 4's coverage was so poor (might have been better if it hadn't been so dominated by inane chatter) - I would like to have gone down to hear Thomas Dolby (since it's the first time he's toured in over a decade - but they showed him for a grand total of around 30 seconds - given the name and sponsors, I wonder that you can't listen/watch online, or at least, if you can, I can't find it), but my budget for trips down south is already shot.

regards, Tam