Monday, June 13, 2016

Lunar Festival Review! (Club Nights + Workshops)

Of course the lunar Festival is not just about the bands playing, being a family festival  there is also a lot of workshops for all ages. This year these ranged from the strange (laughter yoga), slightly scary (Slack-lining, Skate Ramp), stuff I'd done before (Chicken Bone John's Guitar lessons, vinyl  Record crafts) to the actually pretty cool. This year The nice guys who run The Culture Cart, showed me how to create, my own screen print with a paint roller and some rubber templates,  I was really happy with the end result and I had a nice chat with them both.  The only other workshop I ended up doing was the Northern Soul dancing workshop. They had a DJ called Johnny 45 who played the original 7" northern soul records, while another guy showed us all the moves. Despite falling over it was a lot of fun, Northern Soul dancing is exhausting but it is it enjoyable. In fact a lot of the moves came pretty naturally to me, although I had difficulty with quite a few of them as well. 

After Mercury Rev had finished on Friday, the last live act on was in the Psychemajik Arabian tent, from Circle Sky.  Who put on a set of old school avid house.  they had a huge mass of strange looking live drums, wires and buttons. It was fascinating to watch as well as great to dance too.  In the Bimble Inn, This is Tmrw had a Dutch Uncles out on a DJ set.  Some guy kept on trying to coach me on my dancing but I knew my moves were on fire. As if to prove that I would do anything to impress a girl I ended up badly doing the worm, up a hill on a thatch floor. It was painful, but she was impressed. Meanwhile the DJ's span loads of classic tunes, from 80's classics by Prince to songs by The Streets.
Immediately after Bentley Rhythm Ace's set on Saturday night a hen night somehow convinced me to stand still while they wrapped me up in toilet paper, and made me a brides dress out of it. While embarrassing  photos of me were taken. They did a fantastic job, even making me a bouquet of flowers. There  was actually a few groups  of hens doing this and I had the best brides dress by far.  A Lunar Festival official timed the whole thing and they won! They even let me keep the toilet roll afterwards. I had a chat with a girl dressed as Mario, who was with a girl dressed as the princess. I did actually ask if she had kissed the princess, she said she had.  I also annoyed her a bit by giving her my true thoughts on that game. I didn't manage to find any of them again that night but I did meet a stag night of lads dressed as the cast of Father Ted, covered in glitter to make it even stranger.  A lad dressed as Mrs Doyle served me rum out of a teapot. I also shared a plastic bag full of cider with some lad in The Bimble inn.  I found some marshmallows and gave them out to people on the dancefloor. The Magic Door was the place to be however. I managed to not get covered in glitter (beards and glitter are not a good combination), and once I got into the mood actually started to enjoy the vibe and repetitive house music. It was full of incredibly gorgeous girls in costume,  yet I left after one puff on a spliff made me cough violently for 10 minutes (the woman who gave it to me me was very apologetic). Drugs aren't cool kids. I had a nice chat with a girl dressed as a chicken who told me that Owls and Bats both fly together at night. I will have to Google that at some point.
On the last night The Bimble Inn had some DJ sets from the Swinamajig lads. The C@ in the H@ put  on a great set, mixing fat house beats with 1920' swing samples. Yet it was The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show that was  the main draw. It was a bit strange seeing the man who I watched on Robot Wars as a kid in the flesh,  but he is a fantastic DJ with an obvious love for the music he plays.  he got people singling and dancing along, while doing the same himself. He mixes a lot of older tunes with modern beats and is has some great ideas, such as mashing up 'Uptown Funk'  with James Brown's 'Living in America' and in his red top hat looks pretty dapper while doing so. I nearly pulled but  that ended up with her falling on top of me and me walking away feeling depressed. So I retired to the fire where I immediately made friends. All sorts of amazing people were by the fire, me and a few lads talked about Father Ted, Fascism, Eurovision, Festivals and Hawkwind, while drinking a lethal mix of disgusting wine from a bag and Buckfast. One friend I'd made was surprised when I said that the only festival I'd been to was Lunar and that he assumed I was a festival legend. I took it as a compliment and from now on my goal in life, is to really become a festival legend.


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