www.myspace.com/underagefestival
I've had the time of my life

INDIA MYCOCK and friends journey to East London for the first-ever festival aimed at teenagers.

Just like thousands of other teenagers, a few friends and I set off to evaluate and enjoy the first UnderAge festival, held in Victoria Park on Friday 10 August.

The day dawned bright and sunny, perfect weather for a festival, and as we scrambled onto the 9.30am train and saw the sunbathers on the beaches of Southend blur away, we took out our rockstar sunglasses and applied the sun cream.

  After a fair few mistakes we finally arrived in Mile End.

Once we had left the station, it wasn’t too hard to decide on the best route and direction to head in to get to Victoria Park.

Hundreds of teenagers followed one other, like a parade marching towards the music.

After roaming the roads and circling the park numerous times, we found the entrance and intertwined with the thriving and towering trees surrounding the gates, were more teenagers all excited about the day’s musical events.

But this was definitely the let-down of the festival.

Due to separating the girls from the guys and then leading to individual searching, we didn’t enter the festival until a good hour than predicted.

However, as there weren’t as many people as expected, the band schedule was edited and we managed to catch our favourite bands.

And the organisers got it spot on, showering the queuing crowd with freebies of Converse bags, music LP’s and Frisbees as we entered the gates, so that the boredom of queuing soon dissipated.

There was music on four stages, each spaced well apart within the festival park and clearly marked out.

With the band stands, plentiful shading, regular police patrolling, loads of food stalls and decent toilets, the newbie festival was strides ahead of the big-names like the V Festival.

The major downfall of the festival had to be the music itself.

With a large amount of bands only averaging to just okay, the festival buzz just didn’t seem to be appearing.

However, a handful of bandsperformed brilliantly and sent the crowds wild, I Was A Cub Scout to name one, the music scene of the festival gradually improved as the day went on.

As we munched on the wide variety but over-priced nosh, we checked out lots of performances and soon, as the eight o’clock curfew of the end of the festival seemed to dawn, the choice was excellent.

With groups of people splitting up to check out the amazing headliners, Patrick Wolf, The Young Knives and Boy Kill Boy the evening lit up.

During the end of the festival, the crowds seemed to be overflowing with enthusiasm and energy with constant crowd-surfing and jumping.

The best thing of all is that we knew that this thrill sensation was really because of the performers, as not a drop of alcohol was in sight.

So as we returned home, with more sunburn than we anticipated, it was great to know that we teenagers had been the focus of such an awesome music event, and that the negative behaviour of teenagers, that is thought widely in today’s society, wasn’t spotted once during the duration of the day.

We all had a brilliant time and will absolutely be on the mailing list for tickets at next year’s UnderAge festival.