Book now: Vintage at Southbank

As I have no trouble admitting, I don’t do festivals. Omnipresent mud, stinky toilets, itchy hair, overpriced veggie burgers, endless queues – all for the price of a week in Ibiza? No thanks. One person I know returned from Glastonbury with piles and a faceful of cold sores. How delightful. But Wayne Hemingway’s Vintage Festival promises to be a different sort of festival altogether; it’s in London for a start and on concrete. And there’s no camping. As part of the Festival of Britain 60th anniversary celebrations, Hemingway will be pitching up at the South Bank Centre where next weekend his Vintage festival will entertain those with a hankering for bygone style and music for a second year. I didn’t make it to last year’s Vintage at Goodwood but I heard nothing but good reports on the music front. This year’s line-up is similarly outstanding: Adam Ant, Percy Sledge, The Flirtations(???), Andrew Wetherall, Horsemeat Disco, Norman Jay and dozens of other acts that have been ‘curated’ by experts in their niche. In the daytime you can play dress-up to your heart’s delight thanks to a vast schedule of vintage shopping and related activities. In the evening you can wallow in nostalgia or make some new-old music discoveries.

I would say that it’s worth planning your day beforehand. The schedule is so jam-packed, it’s quite mind boggling but ticket prices aren’t cheap (when are they ever) so it’s worth a bit of prep to squeeze out every ounce of penny-pinching value.

Vintage at Southbank from JAM Flicks on Vimeo.