Flow 08: Saturday and Sunday

On Saturday, it was raining cats and dogs. We were appropriately equipped and sniggered at the people in trainers etc trying to dodge the puddles. However, didn't see too many acts — saw a bit of Sébastien Tellier, but decided the crowds were too much and went to find some food (which was excellent and at 25 € for a three course vegetarian menu pretty good value.)

Next up on our schedule was CSS, which was pretty good. For some reason, it has never quite clicked for me, but still, they were busy as hell and obviously having fun.

And finally, The Roots. What a great show. No bling, no diva manners, just excellent hip hop with a surprising amount of jazz thrown in, just like on their early albums. And an incredibly diverse band, with Captain Kirk shredding his guitar and Tuba Gooding Jr on sousaphone.

Saturday was the only day it really felt like there were too many people stuffed into too small a space. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the fact that it was sold out, even though I don't think the other two days were that far behind.

On Sunday we were definitely starting to feel old and tired. It's surprising how tiring three days of festival gets, even without excessive drinking. Maybe I'm just too old. While eating on Saturday, I had the idea that they really should offer a show and dinner version of the festival; they already have an excellent restaurant on board, now just stretch out the dinner experience a bit and place the restaurant in a suitable location, and hey, the middle aged among us could be nice and comfy while checking out the gigs. And I really think they should have put the restaurant on the roof of the newer (if it is newer, the black one) gasometer.

We caught a glimpse of Astro Can Caravan, who had the weirdo jazz thing pretty well covered. Next up was The Five Corners Quintet, whose retro jazz was excellent as always. After that, we first checked out Plutonium 74, and had enough after one and a half songs. We listened to the first two or three songs from Señor Coconut and while their version of Daft Punk's Around the World wasn't horrible it wasn't nowhere near as good as Christian Prommer's on Friday, and by the time they hit Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams, we decided we had had enough of that too.

The next act we saw was José James who was one of the high points of the festival. He did a surprisingly jazzy gig and the crowd appreciated. After his gig, we listened for a couple of songs by Cut Copy, who really revealed themselves to be very summery party pop. Loud summery party pop. Their album In Ghost Colors was decent but I didn't get into it all that much, but they were better live. However, we were just too tired at that point and after a while headed home.