One Love Festival 4-6 September 2015
We were not expecting to go to the One Love Reggae festival but out of the blue and very last minute we were given two tickets courtesy of our friends The Defekters. Luckily it was very close to where we mostly park up at the moment. When One Love first started 8 years ago I was desperate to go but never got the chance, since then my love affair with reggae has wavered and it wasn't even a festival I thought would be nice to go to.
First let me clarify my thoughts on Reggae though as older pages of this website speak of my real love of the music. I still like reggae, I love the music and the lyrics speaking of unity and peace but I find it harder and harder these days to listen to anything mentioning Jah. It is not something I believe in and in fact I believe it is total bullshit like all religion. Thats not to say I don't respect those that want to believe but listening to songs praising Jah is no different to me than songs praising God, Jesus, Allah or Budda.
As it was so last minute we didn't arrive until the Saturday morning. It felt quite weird being at such an organised festival after being at much more traveller orientated events this year. The layout was quite nice with a central area comprising food and other stalls with the 'Dubshack' and the 'Lively Up Yourself' areas quite close on either side. The other two sides had large grassy areas, one with some healing stalls. The other side was a little strange with the smaller Madiba stage rather too close to the main stage. The campsite was nice with decent toilets, showers and a sauna.
The first band we saw were The Defekters who opened the main stage, being our friends we are biased but they are a great band and well worth checking out. They have some songs with a reggae feel but they are so much more straddling many genres. Next we took a look in the Dubshack and chilled out in there for a while before going to watch Horseman and the Upper Cut Band. They were good but we were looking forward to going over to the Madiba stage to see Easydread as we had met one of the singers a few times and they sounded like they would be good. We wern't dissapointed and we had a dance to their ska sound. We had to leave the festival as we had already organised dinner with friends before we knew we were coming but before we left we saw Little Roy who was pretty good.
We got back to the festival on Sunday just in time to catch some of The Ohmz set who are a ska band from the Isle of Wight. We really enjoyed them and we got dancing and nicely warmed up ready for our favourite act of the festival. Nucleus Roots played in the Dubshack sound system style. I have seen them as a band a few times before and they have been excellent and so they were here even without the band line up. They played a cracking set and we danced our socks off until the end!
We spent the next few hours chilling out with friends, eating, sneaking our dogs out for walks who were kept at home but as our home is our van were at the festival with us although not really allowed. Earl 16 was on the line up to play but didn't come on and nothing was said about it so not sure what happened there. The last band on the main stage was Third World, we caught some of their set before going to the Dubshack to hear the final of the Battle of the Dubplates. There was some good tunes being played except they only played the first 30 seconds of the track all the time. Is this normal? If it is count me out from another battle it's too damn annoying!
A nice chilled weekend despite being broken up by a trip out to friends. I must admit I wouldn't pay the £130 ticket price for the weekend but then I wouldn't pay that for any festival. If you really love your reggae then this is the ultimate festival and full of lovely friendly people!
Below are a selection of photographs from the weekend. For more pictures you can see my Blog photos HERE or my Facebook album HERE.