Kitty Cat’s Electric Picnic

Oh Electric Picnic. A guaranteed weekend of mischief and fun like no other. Now that I’m suitably recovered enough to string some manner of coherent sentence together - and mostly because the Bear had the clever idea (and presence of mind) to make a list in his phone of everything we’d seen as the weekend progressed - I can begin to recount the musical adventures that were had. Hoorah!

Having missed Janelle Monae’s Main Stage show, we made sure to catch her performance in Body & Soul later on Friday night to see what all the fuss was about. Highly well deserved fuss it is too, it seems. Kicking off with three hooded figures walking onstage and swaying in unison, one of them eventually threw off their cloak to reveal that it was Janelle herself with a frankly gravity defying hairstyle and pointy-shouldered top, before bopping around the stage, seemingly powered by concentrated, undiluted funk. WOW. Believe the hype.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble were one of my favourite Picnic acts this year and last year too, after we’d stumbled upon them completely by accident at EP 09. Take a brass band and smash it together with an 9-strong rap group from Chicago, add a truckload of amazing, and that’s Hypnotic Brass right there. I flippin’ DARE you to try not dancing to them. And if you don’t, there’s quite clearly something very seriously wrong with your deadlyometer. Because that’s a real thing, you know.

Túcan, the guitar playing duo from Sligo, now with added backing band were so good that we went to see them in both Body & Soul AND the Salty Dog later on that night. Allow me to say that I was sober for one gig and rather…er…well on by the other, and yet enjoyed both performances equally. That’s how great they were. A highlight of their set is their inspired Daft Punk mashup of Around The World and Harder Better Faster Stronger. Seriously brilliant and also on YouTube for your listening pleasure. Hark! (It’s even more fantastic live.)

As we were making our way to Hot Chip in the Electric Arena, Imelda May was (musically and metaphorically, of course) setting absolute fire to the Main Stage in her super-sexy rockabilly manner. In the battle of Hot Chip vs. Imelda, the Liberties bird came out swinging and it was straight back to her and foxy fringed gúna we went, to dance our socks off to her sassy tunes.

Sunday morning was hangover central in Stradbally, and the best way to relax and regroup was to sit in the sunshine and listen to the Electric Proms by the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra (in wellies!). The crowd was much pleased with classics like the Indiana Jones and James Bond themes.

And finally, to round off this post, my hands-down highlight and Pick of the Picnic was the glorious, riotous, demented and sheer brilliance that was Fight Like Apes.

Belting out infectious songs like Lend Me Your Face, Jake Summers, and a tremendous cover of Salt ‘n Peppa’s Push It, May Kay was like a woman possessed. Tearing around the stage with bandmate Pockets, it made me wonder just how much of their bloodstream was made up of pure Haribo Starmix at that point, because their energy seemed just about limitless. When they weren’t duelling with giant iron pipes, they were spraying the crowd and each other with water and leaping into the audience, which must have resulted an almighty tangle of limbs, hair and awesomeness. Fight Like Apes put on a show like nothing I’d ever seen. At the end of their set, with the crowd baying for more, they put the twisted cherry on their delicious cake of crazy and trashed both the stage and their instruments with manic abandon. Pure unadulterated rockstars and my favourite part of what was Electric Picnic 2010.

(For further Picnic adventures, I’ve also blogged about it over on Red Lemonade, so I have.)