I feel compelled to write a brief entry here, as I don’t think I’ve been this excited since……. well, since Batman Begins was announced. Yes, I am as you may have guessed a truly massive Batman nerd, and have been eagerly awaiting The Dark Knight for almost two years now. Every review, trailer and snippet of info indicates that this may well be THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE, and I urge everyone to go and see it immediately. Well, tonight I get to go to an advanced screening, and I am literally soiling myself with excitement. Seriously, I’m almost freaking out here.

In addition to this, in the wee hours of the morning after, I shall be heading off to Hamburg on a four-day, 10-man stag do (my own this time), for fun, frolics and amusingly large sausages. I am told by my best men that on Saturday we will all be dressing as pimps. Make what you will of this.

Last week, while my Blackbridge colleagues’ collective liver was visibly twitching at the prospect of the annual trip abroad, I packed my bags and headed for the exit. Not as a tactic to swerve the company of my delightful co-workers you understand, but to Serbia, where for the second year running I was to attend the Exit festival.

For the past 9 years, Exit has been held in Novi Sad, Serbia’s third largest town. But unlike the bleak British festivals that seem to be multiplying faster than rats in a Viagra factory, there’s no damp fields and dung-dodging to be had here. The festival is held in the Petrovaradin fortress on the banks of the Danube, an imposing site that dates back to the 1st century and looks out over the entire town. This, along with temperatures that are almost as hot as the local ladies (around 38 degrees on one day), makes it about as far from the corporate misery-swamp than is Glastonbury as it’s possible to get. Having learned my lesson from the previous year, I’d left the tent at home (trying to sleep in a canvas oven is an experience I’d rather not repeat) and along with 4 friends booked a nice air-conditioned apartment in the town centre. Around 15,000 Brits had apparently also made the trip, and with beer not exceeding more than 100 Dinar (that’s 1 shiny English pound to you and me), the potential for carnage was pretty high.

Although, it wasn’t really. For the entire week I was out there, not once did I see any of the traffic-cone-on-head, pissing in the street, ENGGG-ERRRR-LUNNNDD cringe worthy behaviour that usually follows our countrymen abroad. Exit is different from the more traditional festivals in that the diversity of the music on offer means that everyone is there to explore new sounds and have a good time while keeping an open mind. Inside the site, walking from the top of the fort to the bottom is like a long descent from refinement to madness. Each night, thanks to a fluttered eyelash and flash of cleavage from my friend Tina, we managed to get into the VIP cocktail bar and relax with a few ‘Challenges’ (vodka, white rum, absinthe, orange juice and some other forgotten ingredients) while listening to some rather soothing jazz. Take a step outside, and you come to the dub / reggae stage, perfect for lounging in the late evening with a few beers. Which is what we did for all of the four nights. Make your way down through the tunnel that links the upper fort to the main festival site though, and the tempo starts picking up. Small stages are dotted everywhere, with full line-ups of everything from Romanian gypsy-punk to Latino salsa, to the sort of death metal you might expect to find in the Eastern bloc, to the obligatory euro house.

But it’s at the main stage where the real action happens. As you walk into the field, you’re greeted by imposing speaker stacks and huge video screens and a sea of people packed into every corner. Getting to the bar is no easy feat but despite this, the Tuborg flowed freely. Over the next four days, the main stage hosted N*E*R*D’s unique brand of hormone hip-hop porno-rock (quite entertaining if a little cheesy), followed by the Streets’ cockney moan-fest on the Thursday night. The festival doesn’t really get going until around midnight, so once the more festival friendly bands finish, the main stage is given over to Djs, playing until well after the sun is up. Night one saw Noisia’s industrial drum & bass followed by DJ Hype’s jump-up jungle. Friday night was the strongest line up, with Paul Weller kicking off proceedings, followed by Primal Scream who were pretty amazing, never letting up from the frantic pace they kicked off with for the full 90 minutes. Followed by Roni Size and Reprazent, staying still wasn’t really an option. If you’ve heard of dubstep, chances are you’ve heard of Skream and Benga. Their ribcage shaking brand of bass heavy party tunes kept everyone moving until the sun was well up, and was probably my highlight of the entire weekend. Saturday had gypsy nutters Gogol Bordello opening proceedings followed by Manu Chao and High Contrast, before Sunday night’s closing line up of the Sex Pistols (who were pretty awful to be honest), and Shy FX’s usual reggae-tinged jungle to see the sun rise for the final time over the giant main stage.

Further into the site, and you come to the Dance stages. Now I’ve been to quite a few of the dance music festivals in this country (Global, Homelands, Creamfields et al), and I can safely say I’d never seen anything like this. There’s none of the sweaty wide-eyed fake camaraderie that this sort of thing usually brings, and despite not really being a fan of the deep progressive house / techno that I heard coming from the giant speaker stacks, I defy anyone to walk past that field as the sun comes up to see 25,000 people still dancing their socks off, and not get a little shiver down the spine.

I realise I’ve rambled a bit with this post. And as it’s taken me nearly a week to get this writte, it was actually nearly 2 weeks ago that I left these shores. But no matter – it all boils down to this; go to Exit. In fact, just go to a European festival. Believe me, if you’re disillusioned with the sub-standard overkill that has become the UK festival circuit, it will give you renewed passion for all things musical. Although, I am going to Bestival in September. Bring it on. See you down the front.

Exit 08 (mostly in serbian)

I recently came back from my holidays in Skiathos and had a tremendous time. Normally I wouldn’t mention the finest beaches in Greece, the mouthwatering grilled black bream with lemon and olive oil and the smell of pine on those balmy summer nights. These are the things commonly associated with Greece and are to be expected.

Also to be expected, unfortunately, are small, pine effect, mosquito infested, plumbing affected accommodation … Not anymore, the Cape Pounta Villas are the finest on the island, with a commanding view, great pools and little touches such as the Korres products in the bathrooms, state of the art home entertainment and the most comfortable cocomat beds. The owner, Diamantis, has built these villas and furnished them beautifully and I would recommend them to anyone (which I am).

So if you are planning on going to Greece and there are upwards of four of you then it may be worth looking at these. Here is the link and an aerial view is above.

http://www.capepountavillas.com/

It’s an absolute, undeniable fact (for me anyway) that the 1980s were the golden age of cinema. The Back to the Future trilogy. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Teen Wolf. The Terminator. Monster Squad. The Karate Kid. I could go on. I’m the sort of person that will drop everything to watch Back to the Future 2 when it’s on TV (pretty much a bi-weekly occurrence it seems), even though I’ve owned the VHS box set, and in later years upgraded to DVD, and never, ever get bored. I can recite pretty much every word to Karate Kid, even down to belting out “YOU’RE THE BEST! ALL ROUUUUND! NOTHING’S GONNA EVER KEEP YOU DOWN!” straight after executing a perfectly timed crane-kick to the unsuspecting chin of my younger brother (my parents had to confiscate that video, along with Rocky 1- 3 due to the outbursts of violence that would inevitably follow). You just don’t get films that inspire that kind of brutality that anymore.

Which brings me to Indiana Jones. Arguably the greatest action hero of all time. I dread to think how many hours of my 29-year total have been spent watching everyone’s favourite archaeologist whip-cracking his way through Egypt, India and Germany. If I’d used this time more productively, I could probably be a classical pianist, sculptor, or be fluent in Mandarin. Maybe even all three, and more. Which is why, when a fourth instalment was announced, I regressed to being 8 years old again, grabbed a tie and nearly whipped my flatmate’s eye out.
George Lucas had a lot to live up to. I’ve managed to forgive what he did to the Star Wars trilogy – flexing the CGI muscle of Lucasarts was pretty inevitable with a science fiction series, and the kids that made the original films so successful by shelling out their hard earned pocket money on merchandise in the 70s and 80s now have kids of their own, so they were always going to be children’s films. But with Indy, it needed to be a different story. I’d already made my peace with the dodgy title before the trailer had even come out. And I can accept that Harrison Ford is no spring chicken, so wasn’t expecting to see him doing his own stunts. All I could do was put my trust in there being some truth behind all the clichéd interview quotes like “I’d only do it if the script was just right” and “we’ve gone to great lengths to stay true to the original films”.
Well, it turns out, that they were lying all along. I’m not going to spoil the film for anyone by revealing any of the details of the ‘plot’, but if you share any of the childhood sentiment I’ve described above, you’re not going to like what you see. It’s as if Lucas and Spielberg had commandeered Doc Brown’s Delorian, travelled back to 1980’s Wiltshire, found the young, innocent, short-trousered Rhys, poked him squarely in the eye, and mugged him of his sweets. It’s a clumsy, pointless, poorly written, abysmally acted shambles of a film. It’s not that I’m too old for this sort of thing – I watched ‘the Last Crusade’ the day before I went to the cinema, and enjoyed it ever bit as much as I had 19 years ago. It’s because it’s like an episode of the X Files, but written and filmed by baboons. If I’d know 20 years ago what I know now, I’d have spent all that time more productively and could be putting the finishing touches to my first symphony right now.

You’ve still got to go and see it though. It is Indy, after all.

Gullwing doors. Hot. Fact.

I went to a party on Friday night. The sort of party which rules out further weekend runnings of any kind, let alone cultural. Be that as it may, it is the closest I’ve ever come to knowing what it was like during prohibition: it was held in some strange sweatshop looking building in Bethnal Green; you had to wait for and then get it in a lift with slidey doors after saying a password (sadly, I didn’t hear what the password was), go up five floors and there you were. A little bar and you could smoke! I can take it or leave it nowadays but kisses to be sweet must be stolen.

By 3pm on Sunday I was feeling fine and having listened to an commemorative ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ (with the late Humphrey Lyttelton on fine form), was ready for the latest episode of the Radio Four adaptation of Anthony Powell’s ‘A Dance To The Music of Time‘. Condensing a twelve novel series into six hours of radio isn’t going to be easy - you might as well try and make it a haiku. The Channel Four adaptation from a few years back was very enjoyable - lovely choice of music - and similarly, the adapters opted to choose a few episodes from the novels and dramatise them, this time retaining the narrator’s voice to introduce the scene and then reflect on its meaning. It works really well.

Anyway, talking of difficulties of adaptation, a literary genre I literally couldn’t be further from enjoying is anything about travel or, like, the wider world. Especially if it involves a bit of personal growth or suffering or something unpleasant like that. I’m quite happy to read a Raymond Chandler novel set in Los Angeles in the twenties as Marlowe generally just cracks wise, gets a split lip, chats with some blonde starlet and solves a chess puzzle while remaining thoroughly cynical throughout. But all this Kiterunning in Japan or being a Geisha in Afghanistan and so on. Nah. (Worryingly, I realised the other day that I’ve only breeched the M25 once in 2008, and that was when I had lunch in Whitstable, even if I did get home after midnight. Right now, I don’t even have a valid passport.)

So, when my friend started telling me about this book he was reading about this Australian guy who lived in India, I was a bit sceptical. He said it wasn’t the sort of book he’d normally read. He said it was pretty dreadfully written. “Overwritten” in fact. And 1,000 pages long. Hmmm… Then he started telling me how it has basically taken over his life for a week, virtually at the cost of eating, sleeping, interacting - this was backed up wearily by his wife - so I promised to give it a go. I bought the book in Foyles and indeed, he was right. It’s pretty awful, especially at the start. Florid, too wordy. But heavens to Betsey, you just can’t stop reading the thing.

I’ll try and explain - Australian guy escapes from prison, goes to India, becomes a doctor in a slum, then a gangster, then goes and fights in Afghanistan… It’s all kind of a true story, but kind of not. I wouldn’t advise anybody to read it now, wait until you’ve got a long journey to go on (not by my standards, which would be Harrow-on-the-Hill or Streatham, but like Paraguay or something) and buy it at the airport. The flight will fly by. In fact, you’ll probably end up asking the pilot to circle around for a bit before landing. Like ‘A Dance To The Music Of Time’, an adaptation isn’t going to be straight-forward, but apparently Johnny Depp has bought the rights and is going to star in a film version; will be interested to see how that turns out.

Ho hum. More next week.