Lovebox – Backstage With Hercules & Love Affair, Chromeo, Peaches

London festivals get a bad rep with the hardcore field-dwelling massive for not being dirty enough or smelly enough, but considering Lovebox could well be a euphemism for a lady’s bit, those are two things that in this context it’s probably for the benefit of everyone’s health that we’re steering well clear of.

Lovebox 2010 – photo gallery

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Sadly for the dogmatic crusties who love rolling in cow-shit, this year the festival scrubbed up pretty good: the weather was clear, the crowd was carefree, and if it weren’t for the top of the The Gherkin building popping out over the trees of Victoria park you could almost – almost – forget you were still in central London.

This year headliners Dizzee Rascal, Grace Jones and a recently reformed Roxy Music all did their bit, but really none of them single-handedly outshone the collective spirit of happiness that flickered though the weekend when taken as a whole.

Having done a good job of isolating the essences of Glastonbury’s Lost Vagueness fields and fitting into them efficient compartments on Lovebox’s far smaller site, often as much fun was to be had dancing in one of the small disco tents to the likes of Joy Orbison, as it was watching the main stage names play the hits.

In particular, Chromeo, Hercules and Love Affair and Grandmaster Flash all provided me with highs to write home about, but it’s perhaps Mystery Jets who deserve the tallest salute for simply proving once and for all they are one of the best indie bands the UK has right now and a constantly thrilling mid-afternoon festival prospect.

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But rather than tell you all about that now (you can read about it in the mag next week), I thought I’d embrace the powers of modern cross-plaform technology and take you on a quick tour of what I got up to over the weekend.

Here’s me having a chat with Hercules & Love Affair. They stopped off in the UK for a one off show to test out some new material on the forthcoming second record – oh, and a new line up, one that’s now free of their ertwhistle transexual singer Nomi. Kele joined them on stage for a new track they’ve recorded together. It were proper good.

Video by In House Media

If anyone was missing the lack of transgender antics from the Herc’, Peaches provided a graphic display of co-mingled man and lady bits as a very naked transexual joined her on stage to distract from the fact Peaches herself had broken her leg. I had a chat with her afterwards, with her tranny friend in tow.

Video by In House Media

Chromeo headlined the Gaymers stage on Sunday night, and did a fine job of bringing the sun down crowd to a sexually-vocoded climax of dance oblivion. They’re manly guys, so I had a chat with them on a digger we found backstage.

Video by In House Media

The 2 Bears are a new dance side-project of Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard and superstar Raff Daddy. As Hot Chip were busying performing on the main stage, I caught up with Raff in a sandpit, to share a banana and some hugs and exclusive news of the all-new project.

Video by In House Media

And that was Lovebox. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

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