The anticipation for the evening acts was easily felt. The thousand plus strong crowd were in good spirits, some far too wobbly to attempt standing let alone dancing! Kelly and I wondered the grounds looking for interesting people doing interesting things. There were plenty of people to take photographs of but I quickly got bored of that. We wondered towards the lake where a group of swans were just cleaning themselves as the sun set perfectly on them we we took a few shots of them; Kelly was braver than I was in getting closer to them.

8PM was upon us so we headed to see to the main stage where the penultimate act Flutatious were preparing on stage, but they were experience alot of technical problems which meant they were running late. The festival was under strict instructions to end the even at 10.30PM so while Flutatious were trying to resolve the problems they were also eating into the band’s WIRED time who were the headliners of the entire day.

I will give it to Flutatious, the were facing an impatient audience but once they got going (30 minutes later) they really wowwed the crowd! I can’t describe their sound so the best thing to do is grab a beer, find some open space, grab your friend and dance, skip and jump around to their music and you’ll get a feeling of it (you really do need to dance, skip and jump to get the full effect).

Credit is due to the entertainment manager who had to cut their act short in order for WIRED to get on stage. It was supposed to be a 20 minute change over which is QUICK! . In 20 minutes they had to wait for Flutatious to come off (who were respectful and packed up off the stage quickly), assemble the gear, link up the mics, do a quick sound check and were all within minutes of blasting out their first song when (oooooohhhmmmmmmmmm………..) Everything went black! Initially I thought this was part of the dramatic intro where the band play in darkness then do a full light and explosive reveal, but nah. Alot of confusion, a huge number of walkie-talkie chatter and mild panic. All the power had gone!

Everyone hoped the organizers could resolve it very quickly, rumours and speculation were rife, After 15 agonizing minutes the band were told the festivals one and ONLY power generator went Chernobyl and they didn’t have a backup! As Scotty from the Enterprise would say, “Ah doont ‘ave da Powur Kapten!!!”

We saw WIRED were packing up so we decided to leave to.  It was a real shame as I have seen WIRED play before and they literally stormed the Goat Pub (see here for photos).

A good day out, but it would have been so much better if a few crucial decisions were made before hand by the organizers. It is easy to criticize retrospectively but I were never go to any Photographic assignment with one camera. I have backups for everything; 2 cameras, several lens, several batteries, memory cards etc. I hope Rickmansworth Festival have learnt a valuable lesson. On the way home Kelly pointed out that their name could be tarnished in years to come…

The crowd at Rickmansworth Festival 2009

This shot was taken minutes before WIRED were about to start