Isle of Wight Festival celebrated it’s 50th year last month in what was yet another superb year of music and family fun entertainment. The Wombats, Hot Dub Time Machine and T.Rextasy got the festival off to a great start on the Thursday as the party well and truly kicked off.
Friday was the first day of music happening all day and it certainly got off to a cracker with Bang Bang Romeo and Rita Ora getting the proceedings on the main stage underway. The highlight of Friday was of course Kasabian as they played the likes of You’re In Love With a Psycho and Empire. The band however also played covers from Fat Boy Slim which was Praise You as well as Groove Armada’s At The River.
Feeder was also playing at The Big Top during Kasabian as the played the classic Buck Rodgers as well as others. Chase and Status quickly followed feeder which was an insane and awesome away to end the Friday.
Saturday began with covers band Juicebox playing great covers such as Van Halen’s Jump and ended on Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca at the Electric Love Tent.
We managed to then check out the Cirque De La Quirk stage as the fancy dress competition winner was being announced. Comedian Joel Dommett was in the competition but failed to make it in the top three with his gold morph suit.
Slydigs were then brilliant on the main stage as was Apollo Junction on the Hard Rock Stage. The festival also provided a spoken corner where artists were reading out poems as well as spoken word songs. The entertainment was brilliant throughout the weekend with a really good DJ throughout the World Cup games at the Field of Dreams.
James Bay was superb on the main stage as he played Tina Turner’s Simply the Best as well as his classic track Hold Back the River. Liam Gallagher was a particular highlight of Saturday as he played in total ten Oasis covers that included Supersonic, Live Forever and of course the brilliant Wonderwall to finish. The Cirque De La Quirk stage had a great drum and base night on until 2am which was a great way to end the Saturday.
Anchor land were awesome at the Hard Rock Stage and really ruled the stage. Romances also followed on the same stage later in the day and the five piece sounded great with their new single Parallels. They had a bit of everything including even a little bit of scream with the lead singer explaining it was an honour to play. Drummer Alex Marchisone flipped his sticks while playing also which is really confident of him and played with a smile throughout the set. Every single one of them had great stage presence and they have a bright future ahead.
Van Morrision and Manic Street Preachers were both really good and perfectly set up the brilliant The Killers on the main stage. They came on to pink confetti as they started with The Man and played a more well known track titled Somebody Told Me.This quickly followed by Spaceman as well as the brilliant Smile Like You Mean It later on in the set. They has some brilliant female backing singers as they played a really synth version of All These Things That I’ve Done and built it up superbly. The Killers also played the likes of Human and When You Were Young and finished on Mr Brightside with Jacques Lu Cont’s Thin White Duke dub intro. Fireworks then went off to mark the festival over however it wasn’t quite over with the brilliant Travis playing at The Big Top and played the likes of Closer, Flowers in the Window and of course Why Does It Always Rain On Me and Sing.
Overall it was a great few days and we will certainly be back next year over 13 – 16 June 2019.