Dear reader, I make my confession now. I am a serial singer.
Despite being a person of few (spoken) words on the subject of emotions, feelings, hopes and dreams, I am a persistent noise maker. Choosing from a Paul Gambacciniesque knowledge of pre-Gulf-War Music (I think that's when I entered middle-age) I will render an appropriate (and occasionally socially appropriate) song for any occasion.
One of the few chances for @potoft to get some respite is by playing music, though our shared enjoyment of listening to vinyl is paralleled only by our shared enjoyment of sitting down. As novice collectors of 45s, this means that the music goes on for five minutes before we argue who is closer to the turntable to flip to the B-side.
My partner in crime has discovered that taking me to the theatre, cinema or opera renders me silent for three hours at a time (occasionally accompanied by the murmurs only made by a man who has fallen asleep in an opera because the overhang of the circle above obscures his view of the surtitles). So, when Hard Rock Calling (apologies for the extended intro - that was the blog equivalent of a prog-rock instrumental album track) announced that it would be moving from Hyde Park to the Olympic Park @potoft knew this could mean only one thing: 10 hours of silence, or more accurately, 10 hours of not being able to hear me sing.
We thought it would be nice to take advantage of our local music festival by walking there, grabbing some breakfast en route, possibly from the Pavilion Café at Victoria Park (route: up to Limehouse Basin, down Regents canal, through Victoria Park). However, to our surprise, it was (un?)seasonably warm and by the time we reached Mile End Road we decided that the 25 bus was more tantalising than the Pavilion. Nipping a few stops down Mile End Road/Bow Road and onto Stratford High Street we jumped off at Marshgate Street to head to Moka East at the ViewTube.
My thinking being that we would be able to get from the Greenway that runs atop the Northern Outfall Sewer down to the Olympic Park. After all, during the Olympics I had used this route from both West Ham and Victoria Park.
Unfortunately, whilst I am knowledgeable about roads as they appear on the map, I am less familiar with their present state of accessibility and approachability.
Walking from Statford High Street towards ViewTube via Pudding Mill Lane is pretty much the perfect setting for a zombiepocalypse movie. There are check points, metal fences, desolation, urban decay and pretty much not a single human in sight, yet this is only a couple of hundred metres from the Olympic stadium. I over play the sense of danger and suspense perhaps, but as you snake your way under the DLR viaduct, it requires a certain degree of certainty, confidence and self-belief to trust that your journey won't be fruitless and end in a derelict warehouse, surrounded by legions of the undead. Instead of our impending demise we found ourselves walking up a ramp and onto the Greenway, stretching off to the north-west towards Victoria Park and Hackney Wick, but ending somewhat abruptly in the East with a stack of lime green shipping containers.
However, what is in those containers is well worth the walk, and rewards those who have adventured off the beaten track and I should emphasise that there's no sense of your personal safety being at threat - there are security staff at various points controlling access to the gates to the Crossrail/DLR work site.
On the ground floor is Moka East, a coffee shop/cafe. I had a veggie cooked breakfast: garlic mushrooms, spinach, haloumi, butter beans in a delicately spiced tomato sauce, scrambled eggs and a soft, toasted ciabbata. @Potoft had the carnivorous equivalent which swaps bacon and sausage for the spinach and haloumi. Both were excellent, and served with a friendly welcome. Somewhat extravagantly I ate mine sat in a leather wingback arm chair and we were able to enjoy a view over the Olympic park.
The coffee was also very good, and had it not been for the fact we'd spent £70 each on a ticket I think we would have stayed and enjoyed the second proper day of summer.
Upstairs, above the café is a large classroom (accessible by stairs or lift) with an open air balcony that gives an even better view of the park - better even than the view from John Lewis (so middle class) and round the back of the café are several raised beds with various herbs and other plants growing.
Discovering that at present the Olympic Park is pretty much shut down except for a route running down the side of Westfield our revised route was somewhat thwarted. Rather than walking back the way we came and down Stratford High Street, we decided to hop on a DLR train to Stratford and then ignoring TfL's ploy to get attendees of the festival to get off there and walk, we dropped down onto the other DLR platform and got a ride to Stratford International, reducing the walk by about half a mile. However, there was still a reasonable walk, and those who are less mobile should be aware that on some event days there is a shuttle bus.
I would tell you how long the walk is, but I can't because Google maps got very confused over how to walk from just outside Westfield to the northern bit of the park that is hosting events. However, given I know what my walking pace is on pavements, I would estimate it at just over a kilometre, and perhaps 400m from Stratford International including the walk out of the DLR.
Entry to the park was swift and painless and we headed for the loos - there were more than plenty, but throughout the day people seemed to congregate on the small outposts of 5 or 6 portaloos and failed to notice the hundred or so in portakabins a couple of hundred metres away. It was interesting to see the park in transition - some of the areas where I assume the temporary stadia once were left covered with rough gravel and I saw some wheelchair users struggling. Similarly, some of the bridges that went between where the hockey arena was and the velodrome are looking worse for wear and are badly in need of resurfacing.
I paid £5 for a lanyard with a list of the acts and the times they were playing, though unfortunately it managed to miss the smallest, bandstand, stage. Fortunately however, I had made a spreadsheet showing the overlap between sets. Some people like to go with the flow. I however, like to plan and had already conducted some research on the bands (pretty much all but 4 of which I'd never heard of before).
That said, two of the stages were very close to each other, allowing us to nip between the two. First up was 'Crowns' a folk-punk band from Cornwall. I don't think they're quite ready to break through to the big time in terms of composition and song writing, but they had energy and the addition of a mandolin lifted them above the usual.
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| Crown |
Next up was Stewart Mac. Worryingly we thought that the roadies were still tuning up when they started their set, as we'd sat through them doing their sound check - clearly the acts up first work for their money. The band was ok, but didn't really hold our attention.
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| Stewart Mac |
The Temperance Movement were a good bluesy band - their USP seems to be having a slightly eccentric front man with some quirky dance moves.
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| The Temperance Movement |
Bruno Major - really nothing to write home about. Kept going on about his ex-girlfriend.
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| Bruno Major |
Mayer Hawthorne: Most memorable aspect of the performance was stealing Michael Jackson's wardrobe and dressing his band up as chefs from Pizza Express.
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| Mayer Hawthorne and the Pizza boys |
Next up, was one of the better bands we saw, the Flamin' Groovies, an American band from the 60s/70s and this was one of their first gigs with the semi-original line-up since the 1980s. Unfortunately, despite having roadies to do their sound check, the lead singer's microphone was very low in the mix, and when they complained to the guy on the mixing desk, the solution was to put up the volume across all channels which at least allowed the crowd to hear him speak between songs, but was still drowned out the moment a guitar played.
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| Flamin' Groovies |
We headed over to the main stage, way on the other side of the park and watched a few numbers by the Alabama Shakes (pretty much exactly the same set as at Glastonbury) before heading back to the smaller stages to get some food.
We sat in the grounds of the park in the shade, listening to the alternating and overlapping sounds from the three stages as each dropped in and out of the mix as songs and sets began and ended.
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| Lissie |
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| Syd Arthur |
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| Passenger |
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| Passenger |
We were treated to a stunning sunset that distracted a lot of the crowd's attention from the Boss, which I imagine is quite unusual. Oddly, after all the hype about having the plug pulled at Hyde Park, he actually ended his set about 30 or 40 minutes before the scheduled finish time. However, he had been playing for three hours by that point, so I'll let him off.
The walk out of the park was long, with passengers for different tube lines segregated into different routes. Our route to the Jubilee line went through the southern part of the park, immediately past the Stadium and aquatics centre, round Westfield and under the train tracks. Central line, DLR and national rail passengers had a more direct route, but were directed over the tracks and back into the station from the East.
All in all, a good day. My biggest gripe though was the lack of beer choice, with Tuborg, a bland, disgusting eurofizz lager the only beer on offer.
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| Bruce Springsteen |
