Norman Jay MBE kicked off midday on the Deer Park Stage suitably chilled and only turned it up to maybe a 6 or 7 to start. It could just me being Reggead out this summer but he was playing many of the standards, going for the KFC advert soundtrack feel to start the day but can be forgiven in the circumstances. Norman Jay MBE made reference to 30 years of Good Times and I know that with the average age dropping drastically this year, after the Glade Festival was hunted out of existence by the authorities, this will be an education for many in ‘the largest crowd I play all year’ and is probably why he felt it appropriate to play many of the building blocks.
He attempted to be thematic too, playing records with the word sunshine in the title and/or or lyrics but that still didn’t encourage the clouds to break. It is a rare event for one of his annual sets to be overcast I must say. On the hour we went up to 11 and Mr Hyde came out with some more muscular breaks and melodic D&B. The bass from the main system certainly put the call out to the happy campers. Despite his best efforts it almost wasn’t until the last strains of Jay Zee and Alicia’s New York had faded away at the finish, that the clouds began to part and the sun shone but Norman Jay MBE certainly gave the people what they wanted.
Morcheeba’s Skye Edwards should really have thanked Norman Jay MBE for bringing out the sun as it showed her vivid red dress quite magnificently. This was a muted level of performance in antithesis to the whole video journalism visual vomit assault of MIA. the previous night. This sophisticated approach to a truncated set, in broad sunshine, was openly declared from the stage as a warm up for their upcoming Roundhouse gig. An aspect which was further accentuated by the ‘set’ including three of them from those adverts and a couple of album promotion tracks grafted on for good measure. Nonetheless they are a suitable act for that time, that stage, that day. Even after the emcee bought us back down to earth by confirming that the issue of showbiz bad boy Keith Allen would indeed be headlining that very stage rather than be away throwing some ungrateful fit or other as the announcement implied.
I’m guessing the presence of Keith Allen’s daughter is the reason I saw types such as Nikki Grahame from Big Brother there this year. Heavy handed security, licensed advert music left, right and centre and zed list slebs, you need to think a bit more carefully next year Big Chill, but maybe you want to shed yourself of loyal Chillers in a smart business repositioning strategy. As the intro in the official, £8 programme pointed out, out this is a new chapter for the Big Chill. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a horror story.
