Lounge on the Farm

July 11-13, 2008
Merton Farm

by Joanna Orland

Imagine a lush farm, lots of yummy organic food, home-brewed cider (7.5%!!!), the New York Dolls playing in a barn, and a herd of cows chillin out to some tunes. This was Lounge on the Farm.

There wasn’t much of interest music-wise… a few small bands, some known Djs, most notable acts were Los Campesinos, Mystery Jets and of course the Dolls. There wasn’t anything specifically to DO at the festival besides, as the name suggests, ‘lounge’. But what’s wrong with that? Especially when there’s sunshine and cider.

It’s a great local festival for the people of Canterbury, but having trekked from London, I might not really suggest it’s for people too far out of the vicinity. Getting there was fine with the 2 hour train ride from Victoria station… coming back however, the trains stopped running from Canterbury East at 4pm on the Saturday, not to return until the Monday or something insane like that… We decided to leave on the Saturday rather than the Sunday and it seriously took us 4 hours or more to get back. And we even witnessed a fight on the train. Kind of tainted our time at the fest.

Anyway, it was a fun day and we kind of thought we wanted to go back on the Sunday until the epic journey home. Some better bands were on the Friday and Sunday when we weren’t there.. such as HOLY FUCK, THE SHORTWAVE SET, THE BEES, THE CORAL, ART BRUT, LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION, BLACK KIDS, etc. I think next time we’ll plan our outings a bit better…