With Brit Award winners and Hot Young Things alike gracing this year’s Trinity Ball line-up, it’s a very enviable bill for any mid-sized music festival. Only this isn’t a music event, it’s a colossal hooplah to celebrate end of term and 7,500 partygoers are less focused on sprinting across campus to catch the tail end of Digitalism and more on celebrating the close of the academic year with as little decorum as possible (this is particularly evidenced by the scores of revellers happy to bop around to a Dizzee remix in one of the dance tents while the real deal is giving it loads on the Main Stage, not 100ft away.)
As a Trinity Ball virgin, previous attendees have been so kind as to offer words of advice; Rule one: do not wear heels – the cobbles are a killer. Rule two: do not wear flats – the tents get absolutely sludged with beer.
Rule three: do not…well, you see the difficulty. Furthermore, this year’s Ball (the fastest-selling in its 51-year history) is rife with rumours of artists having to cancel their performances due to flight disruptions in the UK caused by the bizarre volcanic eruption in Iceland earlier in the week. Luckily, no such catastrophe occurs. Just as the sun goes down, Kildare rockers Planet Parade kick things off with vintage-sounding guitar-led rock of the highest order.
Later, on the Main Stage we meet Darwin Deez, possibly the trendiest man in the galaxy.
He’s got hopelessly catchy hooks, extra-terrestrial loops and supremely witty lyrics on his side, but playing to a hoard of very untrendy and rather uninterested early-comers, I would have forgiven the New Yorker if the set had been a total disaster. On the contrary, punters pile happily in when their ear catches the wonderfully winding funk-pop rhythms of ‘Constellations’ and ‘Radar Detector’ and the inter-song dance breaks (including mash-ups of ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ and ‘Do The Bartman’) are simultaneously some of the worst dancing and best showmanship I’ve seen in a long time.
Next, a weirdly indie-minded performance from Kanye protegee Mr. Hudson fails to impress anyone less than seven pints on, while local boys Delorentos deliver a predictably frisky set on The Other Stage.
Back in the heaving Main Stage tent, beat-heavy tunes like ‘Stand Up Tall’ and ‘Fix Up, Look Sharp’ remind us why, four albums later, Dizzee Rascal is still one of the most adored live performers around. Bottom line: I’ve never seen a Dizzee show that wasn’t pretty banging and the lovable Rascal is the king of crowd control - whether flowing through massive smash ‘Bonkers‘ or spitting out more obscure tracks like ‘Pussyole (Old Skool)‘, if the grime mega star’s going through the motions, he certainly doesn’t show it.
Mystery Jets arrive on stage accompanied by a suitably ominous spoken word intro, with front man Blaine Harrison’s crutches causing more than a few cocked heads (the singer and keyboardist suffers from spina bifida). Some delightful introductory howling is lost on the crowd. However, the angsty ‘Two Doors Down‘ soon pulls them back into place. Boasting spot-on harmonies and chiming guitars, the London post-punkers have earned themselves the title of surprise hit of the night.
Feet and heads in all corners of the campus are well and truly sore by the time Jape takes to the Main Stage (early-to-bedders look away: the Dublin outfit occupied a 4 to 4.45am slot) and, as we’ve come to expect from young Egan, it’s a gloriously edgy and supremely high-energy affair.
Soon, the boozy debauchery is over and the Icelandic ash cloud has brought about a spectacular fiery sunrise. It’s been swell, Trinity - just get me to bed a little earlier next year.