Real rock

Last weekend, in a pleasant park outside Maidstone, a most unusual rock festival took place. For one thing, it was a rock festival. Despite ‘rock festival’ being a common term for any live music event featuring multiple artists taking place outdoors, there are very few actual rock festivals any more. There are festivals for specific forms of rock — the metal events Download and Bloodstock — and there are festivals that have a few rock bands amid everything else. But not festivals that feature a broad range of bands, all of whom can be called ‘rock’ — hard rock, prog rock, country rock, blues rock.

For another, there was the crowd. There were no gangs of shirtless teenaged boys, overly exuberant at being out in a place where the normal rules of social engagement don’t apply. There were no groups of young women, faces painted with glitter. There were some small kids, some twenty- and thirty-somethings, but they were outnumbered by the swarms of the middle aged, buzzing idly — and in an orderly fashion — around the site, most of them, by far, being men.