An alternative to the Jubilee festivities that swamped London on Sunday, the second Apple Cart festival was a good-natured affair, although heavy downpours made it a damp day of loitering within tents rather than a joyous open-air picnic. Launched last year, Apple Cart is an offshoot of Field Day, staged on the same site by the same promoters on the previous day. With magic shows, fairground rides and a nostalgia-heavy musical menu, it was clearly aimed more at middle-aged parents with toddlers than the East London hipsters of its sister festival.
Among the handful of younger acts on the bill, the 22-year-old Beth Jeans Houghton stood out with her close-harmony folk-pop and cheeky Geordie humour. But the festival’s core target audience was clear from its bias towards over-50s rockers rooted in the 1980s. The ever reliable Billy Bragg drew a huge mid-afternoon crowd, winning them over with rousing memories of the life-changing Rock Against Racism concert in this very park in 1978, then drawing a chorus of pantomime boos with a punky version of West Ham’s anthem, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. “Stay warm, stay dry, stay free!” Bragg grinned as he left.
Recently rebooted after a dormant decade, Kid Creole and the Coconuts also impressed with note-perfect re-creations of their early 1980s tropical-funk party sound. Zoot-suited and freakishly ageless, their flamboyant frontman August Darnell appeared remarkable lithe and energetic at 61. Likewise the 57-year-old Adam Ant, bouncing around the stage dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow’s slightly portly uncle as he delivered an agreeably rowdy blast of Punk Britannia panto-rock. Clearly drinking from the same fountain of youth is Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, resplendent in a chic yellow raincoat and sounding more like a young Michael Jackson than any 56-year-old Welshman should.
After a day of watching men on the cusp of 60 acting 30 it was almost a relief to see the tables turned by Josh T. Pearson, a thirtysomething Texan with a voice like prehistoric parchment and the funereal manner of an Old Testament prophet. This extravagantly bearded son of a preacherman couched his long, rambling, storytelling lyrics in dense, florid ripples of finger-picking guitar. In between he told tasteless jokes and scoffed at the atrocious British weather.
Deadpan and understated, Pearson brought a welcome breeze of warm Texas charm to a damp, cold, emphatically English summer day.