Eels: The Mighty Boosh Festival

Hop Farm, Kent
Saturday July 5, 2008

by Joanna Orland

I think this festival can be summed up with:

“Eels up inside ya – finding an entrance where they can!”

It can be, but it won’t be because there were just too many awesome things that happened at the inaugural Mighty Boosh festival! And also, if you didn’t go or have never seen the Mighty Boosh, then that will make absolutely no sense to you whatsoever.

Obviously the Boosh band were headlining the day’s events, but there was much more to be entertained by throughout the day. The one and only complaint I have about the festival is the size of the comedy tent. For a comedy / music festival, the emphasis was certainly on the music as it was reserved for the main stage, while the comedy tent was small, enclosed and overflowing. There was such a massive winding queue for Arj Barker and Frankie Boyle that most people didn’t even bother going into the Comedy tent at all for the duration of the festival.

Poor planning aside, the main stage had an array of wicked acts such as live sets from Robots in Disguise, Polar Bear, White Denim (who were stellar even only in the 5 minutes I caught of them), The Kills, Gary Numan (legend), The Charlatans, Har Mar Superstar (another legend) and DJ sets by Robots in Disguise, Jarvis Cocker, Peaches and more! As it was a Boosh fest, the rest of this article will be all about the Boosh boys and their awesome Boosh band!

I’ll be honest – I was quite weary about the Boosh festival when I first heard about it in its planning stages. I thought it was all a bit of pretentious wank on Noel and Julian’s parts (mostly Noel)… But fuck that thought – it really worked!

I’m hoping that somebody filmed the entire thing and that they will release it on DVD for mass consumption cuz it deserves a repeat viewing just to make sure we weren’t all mass hallucinating! Also, do they have an album out? Cuz I totally want to buy it now!

The Moon kicked off the show with a few words of wisdom. Their set then continued with Noel aka Vince Noir arriving on stage in a large ship to the tune of Future Sailors (Julian aka Howard Moon followed in a dingy). Electro boy was up soon after, then the characters came out. While Noel was backstage Old Greggin himself up, Julian and Leroy had the most hilarious be-bop-off live on stage. Let’s call it Post-Bop, shall we?

Then Old Greg came out to disturb the audience with his mangina. Stuff of nightmares. By the end of it, most of the classic characters came out on stage for a song or two. Bob Fossil vs. Har Mar Superstar DANCE OFF, Naboo turning his back on an audience member, The Hitcher (or the Hoxton Rapist as he was refered to) stole the show with EELS accompanied by an inflatable eel. And Nanageddon to close the show. Oh, and then a few more words of wisdom from The Moon… most notably that trains had stopped running at 11pm (it was now about 5 past) which meant that some disorganized suckers in the audience who didn’t book a coach ticket were left more or less stranded. Oh well.. totally worth it!

Anyway, I think you get the idea of the total awesomeness of this festival. Let’s hope it’s an annual event!

BTW, we interviewed Gary Numan and Robots in Disguise – All available to read in our INTERVIEWS section!

oh… and one more thing… EELS