The Campaign Blog

Noel Bussey

 On my way home from seeing Jay-Z, AKA the Jigga Man, AKA J-hova, AKA hip hop’s first CEO, at the 02 Wireless Festival last night, where I’d been hanging out with the likes of Simon Amstell and Rio Ferdinand (well, I ate a huge burger near them), I couldn’t help thinking – well done 02 (and Emily Eavis for that matter).

In the past few years the ‘big outdoor music event’ has exploded in popularity. It seems that the capital hosts a one day/weekend event at least twice a month while if you had a camper van and a free summer you could easily spend at least three months travelling round the UK hitting a festival every week.

Festivals, which were once the bastion of hippies or rockers, are the cool thing to do these for anyone – no matter what their music taste, dress sense or family status.

Some festivals go so far as to having child care centres and champagne bars – which is great in a way, even middle class Londoners with kids and a people carrier should be able to see live music, but it has lead to a huge dilution of good bands actually turning up to many of these festivals – especially the very corporate ones such as V.

Naturally, as the audience becomes more middle of the road, so do the groups playing. Slowly but surely the staples of the festival scene, rock, metal and, to some extent, hip hop (its natural showiness makes it perfect for huge events – 60,000 people throwing up their diamonds last night can’t be wrong, surely) have slipped away – making way for easy listening and MOR staples, such as Keane and Snow Patrol (who, along with Razorlight seem to play every festival everywhere), mixed in with older musicians such as Neil Diamond or Sting – hardly inventive or boundary pushing.

So, I think its great to see such a corporate company like 02 really pushing the boundaries with their choice of stars (ok, so Jay-Z is still a fairly safe bet, but its much riskier than booking Keane or Snow Patrol again – which would be so easy).

It also shows that the company is really sticking to its guns of positioning itself as the service provider that does music – something I’m sure they thank VCCP for continually.

And just for the record, the Jigga is brilliant. A true showman who had the entire crowd in the palm of his hand – The rap about England was the stand out moment, closely followed by Big Pimpin.