Friday 22/07/05 Wakestock Festival @ Pwlhelli, Gwynedd

 

After a few hours of dance heads doing their thing (whatever their thing is in this instance is beyond description) to thumping sets by Layo and Bushwacka and Medicine8, the baying crowd, comprising of chav-chic endorsees, mentalists, and teenybop idolisers, gather in the quaint West Wales setting of Abersoch to witness the top ten whores, Bodyrockers. Any suggestions of this British/Australian duo being one hit wonders would have been met with gnawing of leg, so all cynicism was left in the campsite (adjacent to the Burberry baseball cap). The duo, accompanied by a suitably high-street fashioned band, enter the stage and the thoughts of the festival’s flock almost reverberate around the main stage arena – “when are they gonna play THE song!?”

 

If you were to measure the reaction of the crowd for the second number you may be forgiven in thinking they were playing THE song, heck, it even sounded like THE song, and the Bodyrockers know it. The first rule in a one hit wonder’s proceeding release: create a similitude to cheaply exploit the success of the first single. What follows is a pattern of basic, crude couplets backing up basic, crude dance pop guitar hooks that have been snatched with such obvious intent that the subtlety of a forklift truck would have done a better job. Primal Scream’s ‘Rocks’ is one track that has been more or less cut and pasted, and Tina Turner (if she were dead) would have been turning in her grave at the Bodyrockers' use of palpable influence of ‘Nutbush City Limits’ in ‘New York City Girls’. Finally, following a little bit of riff teasing, and acoustic joshing the crowd get THE song. ‘I Like The Way You Move’ culminates a cynical, yet somewhat perversely, enjoyable set that proved they may well be more than one hit wonders…yes, that’s right, they may even reach the summit of two hit wonders.

 

On to the Saturday and whimsical piano led cogitators, Thirteen Senses, pave the way for sensitivity at Wakestock’s sixth year of water sport and music coagulation. So sensitive are Thirteen Senses in fact, that they dare not rouse the audience for the duration of the first song – it barely started, it barely finished, it merely occurred. After presumably being told they were playing in a festival tent rather than in a wedding marquee things belatedly get going with ‘Into The Fire’. For all their Coldplay balladry, minus the moroseness, front man Will South seems the only one actually relishing the performance whilst the other three members, dressed in black, merge with the shadows, such is their lifelessness. The crowd show a passionate will for Thirteen Senses to succeed with ill advised clap-a-longs, but the blandness that could soundtrack a BBC Sunday night (i.e. ‘Do No Wrong’ and ‘Lead Us’) lets them down.

 

Fortunately respite from the repetitive strains of the ivory tinkling is provided when South joins his not-so motley crew on their feet when he picks up his guitar for a couple of numbers and thrashes out a Pantera cover…one of those statements is a lie (…that’s the Pantera playing incidentally). Surprisingly, with the exception of the keyboard dominant ‘Into The Fire’ and the Keane meets Grandaddy ‘Automatic’, Thirteen Senses look and sound more comfortable when South is axe-wielding, and the curtain closer, ‘Thru The Glass’ is evident to this. The Muse-like (version: BBC Radio 2) sing-a-long ended a set by a band that undoubtedly has potential but in general lack a cutting edge that a minority of their songs do possess.

 

Oi, oi! Happy go lucky southern indie punk two-tone pop fusiliers The Ordinary Boys enter the stage like a John Wayne character bursting through Wild West saloon doors with a cocksure swagger that signals they know they are the weekends centre of attention (with Carl Barat’s lamentable dj-ing attempts put aside). “Alright extreme wakeboarding dudes” says The Boys’ gaffer Preston (oblivious to the pasty skins of the crowd that suggest that water sport is not quite every audience members’ forte) before exploding into their Specials-esque rigmarole. The Brighton posse strut around with the Jam sounds of their debut album 'Over The Counter Culture' before blasting into the pizzazz of number one skank-a-thon ‘Boys Will Be Boys’. Oddly enough the brass featured on the ‘Brassbound’ album doesn’t feature live, so the Augustus Pablo style dub indulges are merely touched on rather than feasted upon, a factor which keeps the crowd interested – Dead 60s please note. New single, ‘Life Will Be The Death Of Me’, is given a welcome run out, sounding redolent to a Mick Jones fronted Clash song and once again infusing dub breaks, akin to The Ruts, to optimum effect. The Ordinary Boys then get their “festival moment” – replace Robbie Williams with a cheeky Brighton ragamuffin, substitute off-key teenyboppers with a bellowing hotchpotch of post-pubic vagabonds, and supplant ‘Angels’ with 'Talk Talk' and what is witnessed is an admirably fervent performance from an ever increasingly confident band. The Ordinary Boys show comes to a stomping conclusion with the germane ‘Seaside’ that waves a jovial goodbye to the coastline festival from a band that certainly loves to be beside the seaside.

 

Bodyrockers photo by Turtle 
Crowd shots by Simon Perlaki

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