Underage Festival: Blog 1

On our way to Underage this year, me and my friends managed to get lost a couple of times, but we knew we were on the right track when we finally got off the DLR and saw a group of girls about our age at the bus stop. They had to be going to Underage. Why else would they be up so early on a Sunday?

As we got closer to Victoria Park it was surreal to see so many teenagers all heading in the same direction. Although in theory the festival is for 14-18 year olds the reality is that most people there were, like us, in the younger age range. Unlike other festivals I’ve been to (The Big Chill, Reading) the first thing that struck me as we walked through the gates was that Underage is a lot more commercial.  The stages are all named after brands and Tango ads are shown on the big screens. The moment we arrived we were handed all sorts of free things from badges to balloons – all of them promoting some sort of product or company, and although I have no problem being given free stuff, it can get annoying having people shove leaflets at you all the time.
 
The first person to play on the main stage was English singer/songwriter Ellie Goulding but I have to admit we were too busy looking around the site to see much of her set. Next on were New York Darwin Deez; I wasn’t expecting them to be very good live, but they had a way of making you sing along to songs you had never heard and even people who didn’t enjoy their music could just watch their odd but entertaining dances in between songs.
 
One thing I really like about festivals is that for me it is like flicking channels on TV; you can walk around the different stages and listen to bands for as long or a little as you like before moving on to something else. While wandering around we saw Chapel Club (interesting but a bit noisy), Daisy Dares You (good for a sing-along), Chiddy Bang (good for a dance) and we all went to see Shiva because the drummer is a friend from school.
 
When new rave band Hadouken! came onto the main stage loads of people including some of my friends went into the crowd but I didn’t join them. Last year they dragged me to the front during Prodigy at Reading to cure me of my fear of massive crowds but not surprisingly it had the opposite effect. At the end of Hadouken!’s set my friends came out covered in bruises and dust but they seemed to enjoy it.
 
South London rapper Tinie Tempah’s set was really short although on the plus side it meant that it ended in time for us to hear the beginning of Professor Green on the Topman stage, which was the last act we saw. We didn’t actually get to stay for headlining act M.I.A. because my friends live a long way away and didn’t want to be travelling home in the dark, which is something you have to think about when you are only 14. Maybe next year we will get to stay later…
 
Flora Spencer Grant