Underage Festival 2009
Tuesday 4 August 2009
In its third year, Underage Festival once again brought together some of the best acts to perform in front of thousands of fans.
Welcome back, Underage
After last year’s crazy event, Underage, the only festival that’s just for under 18s, returned for another run. On the schedule was a list of both established and upcoming acts, spread out on five different stages across Victoria Park.
Live acts
First up was Lykes, an 18 year old performer from Finsbury Park, on the Bedroom Jam stage. She was on one of the smallest stages at the festie, but that didn't stop tens of people crowding around to skank.
We managed to catch Kid British on the Youth Music stage where Adio and Sean were already hyping up the crowd by running and jumping around and throwing their hands in the air, encouraging the crowd to do the same.
Before Underage we wouldn’t really have called ourselves Hadouken! fans, but after seeing their performance on the main stage, we’ve converted. Sweat was literally dripping from their faces as they chucked their guitars around and banged their heads in the air.
The strangest performance of the day went to Santigold. Her backup singers and dancers wore gold cardigans and white wayfarer sunglasses and shook, twirled and spun around their microphones as Santigold sang hits like ‘Say Aha’ and ‘Anne’. Tunes.
We quickly dashed off to the Ctrl stage where the star of Underage was set to perform. After a few minutes of fans screaming “Tinchy, Tinchy,” he eventually came out of hiding and burst on to the stage.
During his performance the crowd was so loud it felt like everyone in the entire festival had come down just to see him. The song that made everyone go crazy was a remix of ‘That’s Not My Name,’ which was almost as good as The Ting Tings version.
Backstage news
It was kind of overwhelming walking around backstage, knowing that there was a good chance we could bump into Tinchy, Hadouken! or even Santigold.
The atmosphere was nowhere near as crazy as the stage area, but there was still a lot going on. We spotted Esser being interviewed on a hay stack beside a paddling pool - the moment we realised just how funky his hair was.
Not long after we noticed Nick Grimshaw interviewing Kaya Scodelario of Skins for BBC Switch. Afterwards they both jumped into massive plastic bags and posed for pictures – don’t ask us what that was about.
The extras
Even though Underage is all about the music, there were also other things going on that made it so much more live. The MySpace Bus was as busy as ever and inside was like a mini rave. A DJ blasted out some music from his decks and festie goers were allowed to jam and look at the hundreds of polaroids and signatures on the walls and ceilings.
Across the other side of the park the Silent DJ area was going crazy. People were screaming and jumping around to get a pair headphones so that they could dance around to music that other festie goers couldn’t hear.
All in all, Underage was a heavy day. Bring on next year’s event!
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