Friday at the Isle of Wight Festival 2024

By my count, the Isle of Wight Festival 2024 is the 22nd to be held at Seaclose Park. The first 'Rock Island' event - as part of a two week Isle of Wight Festival of music - was in 2002 and the only year off since then was 2020 (for obvious reasons).

For a long time there has been a well-oiled-machine feel to it, and a sense of familiarity if you've been before. You don't need to spend a few days 'getting your bearings', as mothers say. I'm sure things move about a little bit depending on how many tickets they sell but the Big Top and the Main Stage aren't going to swap locations.

And so, we settled in very quickly to the Isle of Wight Festival 2024 as we arrived on Friday. As usual, the queue to get in moved quickly and we only spent about 10 minutes waiting. I am sure there were longer waits during the busier times, but it certainly compares favourably to when I worked at Glastonbury about 20 years ago and was responsible for a queue that took several hours. I have in my head that it took eight hours, but I might have accidentally exaggerated the story over the years.

Sunshine for the Darkness

We arrived a little later than planned thanks to a slight mishap on a cycling trip earlier in the day, involving flat batteries on Shorwell Chute (I'll save that for another blog).

When we finally got there at just after 6pm, The Darkness was in full swagger, with tops removed like a northern football fan or the swimming pool in Ryde on a warm day. By my reckoning, this was The Darkness' third appearance at the festival, after 2003 and 2012. The former was when the festival was over two days and the Darkness had just emerged. The latter was the only really wet year, when mud caused chaos. Let's not talk about that too much.

We then began a tour of the site, for the benefit of a neighbour of mine who was attending his first ever festival at the age of 60. Before the festival I eased his worries that he would not stand out for a) being too old and b) wearing a wild Hawaiian shirt. 

He soon realised that a) the Isle of Wight Festival has a remarkable age range from toddlers in trollies to teenagers and older folk in camping chairs and that b) his shirt was bland compared to some people's outfits.

I should mention at this point that I have reached the stage that I carry a camping chair with me. This is a controversial move and isn't something I would have considered when we watched the Charlatans and Robert Plant at Seaclose Park in 2002. At this point, I didn't use it but it was on standby for when the legs started to go.

Next up was Crowded House, who seemed to go down very well with the crowd. They last played the festival in 2010, which is one of the few years that I didn't make it. I still regret this, as it had a remarkable headline trio of Jay - Z, The Strokes and Paul McCartney.

Wunderful

Wunderful Wonderhorse at the Isle of Wight Festival 2024

I had/have two main ambitions for the Isle of Wight Festival this year.

One is to see Green Day, who I've never seen play before. 

The second was to see Wunderhorse, who were playing in the Big Top at 9.10pm on Friday night.

On three occasions I had come close to seeing Wunderhorse, but had just missed them due to some incident or other getting in the way.

As we tucked into fish and chips at about 8.30pm I began taking extra care to avoid disasters that might stop it happening. I stayed away from people who were already looking worse for wear (pacing yourself is vital at a festival) and steered well clear of any food that I would consider too adventurous. 

The moment arrived and Wunderhorse walked onto the Big Top stage, with the front man - Jacob Slater - wearing sunglasses indoors. Presumably he had spent the day in Shanklin and had forgotten to take them off.

They opened with their most famous song - Leader of the Pack, and also played a few of my other favourites - Teal, Purple and Butterflies. There were also two new songs that have been released called Midas and July (both great if you like that kind of thing) and a few new ones, presumably from the album that is due to come out in a couple of months.

My fellow festival goer enjoyed it, but succumbed to the camping chair half way through the set and moved to the edge of the Big Top. I stayed near the front, whilst also enjoying a nearby drama of a group finding a mobile phone and doing their best to reunite it with its owner. When they finally figured out who it belonged to, the owner hugged the person who had found it as if they were a soldier hugging their spouse after being held captive in Basra for six years. I don't think I've ever seen anyone look quite so relieved and pleased.

Lights and Lasers

The Prodigy at the Isle of Wight Festival 2024

And so, we reached the headliner of Friday night at the Isle of Wight Festival. It was the Prodigy's fourth appearance at the Festival (2006, 2009 and 2015 for anyone holding a notepad) and was an excellent choice in my opinion. The legs were flagging by this point, so it was finally time to make the most of the camping chairs that we had been carrying all evening. We found a good place to watch the Prodigy from a distance and made a great big "aaaahhhhh" noise as we sat down in unison. I should point out that I'm still relatively young, I had just cycled a very long way on Friday...

The Isle of Wight Festival has had dance acts on the Friday night on a few occasions (Faithless in 2005 and 2016, Calvin Harris in 2014 etc).

I personally think this works well, as it matches the mood of the crowd on Friday night. Everyone is full of beans and bursting with excitement. It would work less well on Sunday night when everyone is putting on a brave face. With the light fading, the laser show lit up the sky. It also meant that the big wheel had to close, presumably as they didn't want people to get lasered whilst onboard.

The Prodigy is also a good choice as they have a large enough back catalogue that they can full a 90 minute set without padding out songs or filling it up with B-Sides. We didn't quite make it to the end (due to the aforementioned bike ride incident taking its toll) but the section of the set that we saw was jammed with hits. Firestarter even got a play, with some creative stage work paying a tribute to Keith Flint, who died in 2019.

We got to our beds just after midnight after a terrific first full night at the festival (there is also a warm-up night on Thursday to encourage people to spread their arrival over a few days). 

Remember kids, pace yourselves - you want to have a bit of energy left for the time of your life on Sunday.