That’s a snippet of a snapshot; the introductory spiel to a preview of Eastern Haze I wrote a few months back in what was most likely my last ever article for ‘Varsity’. As you might expect, the prospect of a festival sitting on my doorstep that did not necessitate a heavily laden slog to the other side of our island, was an enticing one. So did it live up to expectations? Did Eastern Haze - which, like fellow Suffolk newcomer Latitude, is only in its second year - help do for the East what Glastonbury long ago did for the West? Are the times really a changing, or will postcards from Suffolk never get more exciting than Lil’ Chris busking on Lowestoft high street?

Eastern Haze is the sister festival of Somerset’s Sunrise Celebration. Having never been to Sunrise, and having never experienced first hand the accounts of its poor organisation, I approached Eastern Haze tabula rasa. One day in, however, I’d come to realise that it was almost certainly the worst organised festival I’d ever been to. Unknown complications mixed with, I’m told, overzealous external health and safety checks meant that we were not allowed into the main arena on Thursday night after we’d pitched camp and it remained closed until noon on Friday, several hours after the bands were supposed to have started. Other little issues such as the apparent lack of the promised coach service from the train station irked those who had to travel from further afield. That said, and this initial negativity aside, I can forgive such a young festival its birth pangs and they did not detract overly from my enjoyment of the festival. Even the abysmal weather on the Friday failed to get me down. Having survived what were probably the two muddiest Glastonburys on record, I met those complaining about the inch or so of Somerleyton sludge with the kind of knowing smile that only a battle hardened old warrior might give to a green recruit fretting over a broken nail in boot camp.

The first thing that struck me about Eastern Haze, given its relatively small size, was the sheer number of stages on site and the number of acts packed onto them across three days of music. Some of it was definitely quantity not quality, especially I thought in the case of the Next Stage, which churned out nothing but the incessant unintelligible growls of one generic nu metal band after another. However there were some fantastic acts, many of whom I’d never heard of, not only on the Main Stage, but on the Acoustic Stage (where I spent most of the afternoons) the DrumNBass and Psytrance Stages (where I spent most of the nights) and the Reggae Stage. Even the Club and Hip Hop Stages managed to entice me on occasion.

Band of the festival, without a doubt, had to be the Levellers headlining the Acoustic Stage on Saturday night. I must have seen the Levellers close to two dozen times, but I never tire of singing along to all the old classics with which I grew up. And even though I prefer the energy of their electric sets, the atmosphere set by their acoustic show hit all the right notes. The band continue to play to their best and I look forward to their new album and to the next twenty years! Naturally I missed The Bootleg Beatles at this year’s Glastonbury to see The Who, but I’m glad I finally caught them headlining Eastern Haze’s Main Stage on Sunday Night. Having seen the real Paul McCartney at Glastonbury 2004, I approached the Bootlegs expecting to draw comparisons. Everything was spot on, right down to fake McCartney’s broken sentences, fake Lennon’s threats to drag Yoko on stage (cue boos from the crowd) and fake Ringo’s insistence on finding out exactly what we’d do if he sang out of tune. The Bootlegs took us on Musical History Tour through the ages of the Beatles, pausing only to change out of the suits of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ into the psychedelic uniforms of ‘Sgt Pepper’s’ and into Lennon’s ‘Abbey Road’ era all white attempt to outdo Jesus.

But move over Ozrics, budge up Bootlegs, and step forward Salman Shaheen. Yes, I had a slot over on the Hazy Green Stage. It was a short poetry performance as part of the Green area’s Friday night cabaret. I was on after Bernard ‘Burning’ Towers and an excellent American stand up comedian who had an audience of fifty or so in stitches the whole way through. The night had a great atmosphere and it felt considerably livelier than the sort of Norwich Fringe performances I was used to. With the theme being rags to riches, I tried to climb that social ladder as fast as I could whilst belting out poems, stopping to rip off my Peruvian alpaca wool poncho halfway through to reveal the dinner jacket I was wearing underneath. And despite the night’s emphasis on the crazy and the random, it was exceptionally well organised. In fact the teams running the green areas seemed to have brought some much needed organisational order to the chaos that was the rest of the festival.

The sizeable green areas, marrying campaigning and cabaret, contained everything you’d expect from today’s socially conscious festival – always a breath a fresh carbon neutral air. A little further south could be found the obligatory holistic area for the modern wishy washy Westerner hoping for a dippy dose of spiritualism. Crazier still, perhaps, was the 9/11 Truth campaign for those tin hat wearing weirdoes who have it in their heads that the twin towers were brought down by a sinister US government conspiracy and not by the Boeings flown by the adherents to an ideology produced by the complex process of tensions and forces that have bubbled and frothed under the surface of modern societies for the best part of a century. Needless to say I spent no time in their tent because I have no time for conspiracy theories - in my mind they detract from real issues of political significance that deserve the attention of activists opposed to the injustices of certain government policies. The American government was not responsible for the three thousand people who lost their lives in the World Trade Centre. It is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Conspiracy nuts aside, however, Eastern Haze is a very nice little festival with a broad appeal. You’ll find people from all walks of life, from the old punks crawling from under their rocks and the older hippies riding moss-free rolling stones to all the local chavs who’ve come for a great weekend out, and why not? With any luck the organisation will improve and the festival will continue to grow to help put Suffolk on the map for reasons somewhat more positive than murdered prostitutes and bird flu. You never know, they might even get Lil’ Chris to headline.

Salman Shaheen graduated with a degree in Social and Political Sciences from Jesus College, Cambridge in 2007 and is soon to begin the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. As a student, Salman wrote regularly for Varsity, Cambridge University’s award winning weekly newspaper. After becoming the paper’s Literature Editor in 2006, Salman interviewed Jill Paton Walsh and later brought Benjamin Zephaniah to its pages. He is currently working on a novel intertwining the lives of a disparate cast of characters, thrown together and ripped apart by the London bombings and by a dangerous game of one-upmanship between the external forces of Islamic extremism and white pride. The novel was a winning entry in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 100th Anniversary Novel Writing Competition. Salman was a co-host, alongside Jon Snow, on the Channel 4 children's news series, First Edition, interviewing key figures on a variety of topical issues. He also played an aeroplane pilot in a Channel 4 News reconstruction, has appeared as a contestant on the Weakest Link and as an extra in the 2004 Hollywood film, Vanity Fair - wearing a pink turban! A firm believer that the pen truly is mightier than the sword, Salman writes in the hope that it can make a difference. To visit Salman’s MySpace, click here or for a selection of his poetry on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.