Friday 12th March
Susan and I wake up early and head to Paddington to get a selection of trains and buses to Minehead, we’re off to Butlins! No, we haven’t gone mental, we are heading to BLOC Weekend, an electronica and dubstep festival featuring the likes of Grandmaster Flash, Mixmaster Mike, Adam Beyer, Skream, Benga, Luke Vibert, MJ Cole, Kode 9, Roots Manuva, Autechre, Ms Dynamite and Wiley. We are expecting all the madness of a festival, but within the tackiness of a Butlins; chalets, a wave pool, ten-pin bowling, amusement arcades and dubstep. Brilliant.
The bus pulls into Butlins, we have travelled along the coast from Taunton station, it’s beautiful in the sunshine. Tack-a-rama alert as we see all the rides and flumes, massive white apartment blocks and holiday homes fill our horizon. There’s something quite sinister and American about a holiday where you don’t ever need to leave to confines of the site.
We get our wrist bands, find our (exceptionally small) chalet, then go out for a wander. Groups of boys are starting to arrive carrying cases of beer. We check out where the different stages are, then go through the line up deciding who we want to see. Sat in Bar Rosso, a weatherspoons-esque pub within the massive ‘shopping centre’ style dome, a boy starts doing forward rolls on the carpet infront of us, he started early.
The Red stage has a brilliant line up tonight, so we fuel ourselves with carbs and booze from Pizza Hut (old skool) then get ourselves to Red in time for Roska, who ends up playing a two hour set. Wiley is running late and only gets to do two tunes at the beginning of Geeneeus’. Wiley looks pissed off, and doesn’t hide this from the crowd, the vibes all a bit wrong. Geeneeus pulls it back, with Katy B on vocals the crowd get dancing, hands in the air as she sings ‘Tell me what it is’ then offers the mic out to the crowd. It’s nice to see a lady doing her thing in this scene.
I look around and realise it’s about a 10:1 radio men to women in here. Dubstep. If you’re looking ladies, get yourself down to a dubstep night innit.
Then, the highlight of my night comes on stage, Ms Dynamite, she smashes it. People are hype, it’s the first night of the festival and the vibe is all good. Naomi is an inspiring, strong performer who truly knows how to work a crowd. Boo gets everyone jumping, then she asks if we want to Wile Out? Yes, yes we do. It goes nuts in there, the bass is strong and DJ3 is hot on the decks. A triumph so far BLOC!
I get a chance to talk to Ms Dynamite afterwards, there’s a great energy about her, she’s proud of her roots and really is a major part of the touring black music scene again. Evidently from tonight, people are chuffed to have her back too. We drink vodka together until I bump into Skepta, who is topless and tattooed. Boy Better Know have travelled down from London and, unlike Wiley, arrived on time and given the crowd a wicked set. Skepta speaks articulately about the state of the UK grime scene and with positivity about playing a festival like BLOC and the genres all evolving. I am won over, having not had the highest expectations of him.
I go to sleep, in a weird cold small child’s bed feeling happy and vibed about the state of UK music, and the summer ahead.
Saturday 13th March
It’s Salt n Pepa day, if we only do one thing today, it will be have our picture taken with them. That is our mission. We lie in, for hours, looking out the window, watching the sea gulls and the occasional person walk past. There is a good energy at the site, people walk along and chat to groups sat outside their chalets in the sun. One guy says ‘Happy BLOC everyone’ randomly as he walks past our window. We smile at him, he smiles back, its all good.
Walking past the Splash water world, the smell of chlorine gets us a bit high, we bounce towards the Centre stage where Salt n Pepa are due to perform in an hour. We have been promised an interview, and stand and wait for a bit with school-girl-on-christmas-eve excitement that we are about to meet our heroes. “Be cool” I tell Susan (but more myself) as we walk into the dressing room, and there they are….
We shake their hands, they are both smiling hard and their outfits are tight, in every sense of the word. Salt looks a touch drag queen (she does a lot of reality TV shows in America), has a tattoo in her ample cleavage and if she bent over in that skirt we would see everything. Pepa is in tight trousers and a waistcoat with a slick back ponytail. She’s a proud mother and was the one that became quite religious after the group fizzled out in the late 90s and officially split in 2002.
We chat about where they have been (both mothers now) and about the new album, Salts got into rock n roll apparently, so it’s going to have a heavier edge. They laugh and joke and clearly the tension that was there in the late 90s has been replaced with a calm contentment and new (perhaps maternal) maturity which sees them touring their classic crowd pleasing set, plus setting out to introduce some new music. We ask them if they were a cake what they would be. Pepa says that Salt would be a Devils cake because she’s evil, they crack up laughing. Salt says that Pepa would be a fruit cake or a nut cake, they fall about like the 80s teenagers we know and want them to be. Their smiles are perfect and I feel warm in their company. We have our picture taken with them then squeeze each others hands as we walk out to watch the gig. The relief I feel at meeting two of my heroes is immense. If they’d been bitches I think I might have cried. It’s dangerous business meeting an idol, this is a success story though. I get a JD and coke to celebrate.
Spinderella stands behind the decks, everyone in the crowd of the massive Butlins Centre Stage has been waiting for this moment. There has been a problem with the fire alarm, it goes off randomly and no one quite knows if we’re all about to burn to death, somehow this adds to the excitment. All hands are in the air as Spinderella says ‘Put your hands together for my girls, Salt and Pepa!’ The crowd roar…
Two young athletic black girls strut onto the stage and bust out some locks and pops. “Wow, they look great” someone next to me says. The lights go down, the smoke machines steam and two drag queens sashay to the front of the stage. It’s the real Salt n Pepa! My Mic Sound Nice gets everyone in the audience screaming and filming on their phones. Anyone who had been politely nodding to dubstep next door suddenly becomes a seven year old at a pop concert. Due to this I can even forgive their old skool pop medley, where Spinderella “mixes” Celebrate Good Times into Hey Mickey into I Will Survive. We sing the words back to them, then as a reward, we get Whatta Man. My God, this is such a tune, timeless.
I am losing my voice from screaming. Any cool I might have once had has disappeared and I find myself dancing exitedly as the beat of Black Eyed Peas I Gotta Feeling starts playing. Have I suddenly no shame? Well, no one around me does either, so I’m all about it. “I Gotta Feeling, that tonights gonna be a good night” I scream. Pepa smiles at me, dam right it is lady! Then bam, the Push It sample kicks in, I turn around and see a room full of people raise their hands and jump, smiling, in the air whilst screaming towards the stage. This is ridiculous. I love it.
Push It is everything I wanted and more. They have an 80s tastic dance routine with the two hot black male dancers grinding them up and down. It’s over polished, American and predictable, and everything I want to see from them.
I wonder if this venue has ever seen such excitement. We leave the venue feeling electric. I feel like a teenager, sore throat from screaming and red faced from dancing. We laugh hard as a group of boys on a stag weekend approach us in obscene fancy dress. One has floral leggings and a crop top on, they are all holding a cardboard cut out of the bride-to-be on a stick. In the picture she looks like a small boy, they all find this really funny, it is quite funny. I discuss the merits of having a festival in a holiday camp with the one in the leggings, they are loving it in comparison to an indie festival like Reading staying in tents. He admits to knowing of only three people on the line-up but is still having the time of his life.
This is one side of the festival, the other side is more specialist. The niche movement of dubstep that once was almost purely contained in a monthly night in Brixton, is now crossing over to the mainstream. Whole tents, even whole festivals are devoted to it, club nights, remixes of top ten records; dubstep is becoming a household name. But how does it sit at a festival like BLOC, and do the original heads and Rinse FM crew want to share their genre with sweaty Salt n Pepa fans and see their niche cross over towards Rhianna?
I stand in the dancefloor area of the Tec stage. Appleblim and Peverelist play records back to back. Dubstep boys in Carhartt hoodies stand and nod slowly swaying forwards and backwards to the beat with their heads hanging low. They all face the DJ, transfixed by the visuals. Its like a cult, a church, it is feeding them with something, but I wonder what?
I drink a pear cider and stand with them. Will it have a similar effect on me? An MC joins them, he sounds like an MC I remember from my Garage girl days. I like it, it feels like there’s more of a point to the music now. I go to dance, but feel massively out of place even raising my arm, so I reel it in, hold my cider and nod. A few songs in and the bass is resonating through my heart and lungs and the only movement I can make is a slow sway backwards and forwards with my head hanging low. Oh my god, I have gone from jumping about next door to Salt N Pepa to losing myself in dubstep in under ten minutes, a record surely?
As we walk back to the chalet I am aware of how many white boys with dreadlocks from the West Country are here, I try not to judge them, but fail. The occasional fancy dress crew warm my heart though, and we stop and watch as a boy with a heavy fro in a lycra onesie break dances impressively, ending in upside down splits.
Groups of boys sit on the grass monging out. This is the electronic chemical generation becoming children again. Butlins feels a safe and perfectly kitch setting for this festival. As the sun comes up on the vast amount of space, groups walk towards the beach with cases of wine and blankets, and the fun continues into Sunday.
Published in Clink Music Magazine
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