Offset: Words and Pictures

Offset: Some people have fun. Someone people don't.

The sun is shining so why the glum faces, Offset? Despite picking some of the best new bands the UK has to offer (and some reforming cult heroes to show them how its done) the early crowd for this year's edition just wants to sit around and look sad. Perhaps their platform boots are chopping off the circulation to their mouth muscles or the crack-rise shorts (boys and girls) is disabling the "leg function" that has traditionally allowed festival-goers to perform mind blowing tasks like dancing and standing up.

Still, the bands don't let a little thing like impractical fashions get in their way. Lovvers on the Loud & Quiet stage even manage to get three rows involved in a stage diving, floor wiping display of passion with their power-pop meets punk noise. One woman is so inspired that she whips out an inflatable guitar from her handbag, wiggles down her trousers and solos along with Henry and Michael as they throw themselves from one side of the stage to the other. There's bemusement from the surrounding haircuts but at least someone was having fun. Graffiti Island ignore the blank faces too, striding around to their reverb soaked poetry. Maybe everyone is just shocked. Please, on before, were very loud.



Lovvers rile the crowd



Please don't keep the noise down

Male Bonding, who are known for getting legs in the air (not like that...), fail to create the same kind of movement as previous years but it's due to the main stage's washed out sound than any lack of effort. They show a different side to punk'd album "Nothing Hurts" as they trail off with a forlorn call of "all this won't last forever". Similarly, Wet Dog, whose "Lower Leg" is a how-to in making something catchy, doesn't get people moving theirs. The hardcore stage, that intermittently blasts out a reminder that it's one of the only stages to get a proper ruck going (Trash Talk), sometimes drowns out their picky post punk. They should be heartened by the fact it takes the world's hairiest man (National Geographic Survey 2001) in Monotonix to drag hungover bodies off the floor and into the circle pit.



That band's OTT handstand display is only challenged by one of the smallest crowds of the festival and the definately unpretentious no frills punk of Sauna Youth. Frontman Richard picks up reticent members of the audience, steals sunglasses from frowning faces and wraps even a dancing throng up in mic lead. He jokingly runs through a wedding speech, making them the natural successors to the thudding rock-meets-stand-up of London's Bitches, who manage to inspire a few chuckles with songs dedicated to wallets and vampires. After that, it's up to the comeback bands to do their best with a dwindling crowd. While not matching the efforts of Charles De Goal on Saturday who enjoy their first London show thanks to some enthusiastic new fans and a few leathery diehards, Atari Teenage Riot deliver a grand "fuck you" to finish off the festival. After all, they're wilder and better dressed than even the real teens in Hainault forest.
Photos: Laura Hernando