Give Praise:Lambeth Country Show 2025.

Give praise! I've been going to the Lambeth Country Show for well over twenty years now. I've been with lots of different people but one person I can pretty much guarantee to join me every year is Pam. I've lost count of the number of times we've been together but she certainly makes for a good gig/festival/country show buddy.

 

We both like reggae, we both live fairly local (I walked there and back), we both like drinking beer (though I stayed on the soft drinks, quite remarkably, all day this year), and neither us objects to looking at the odd owl or ram. It's been nine years since I wrote a blog about the show although I've/we've continued to attend almost every year (it wasn't on during the covid year and I think we maybe missed one more). With my sunny and sober disposition it seemed time for another LCS blog.

Not a bad day for it either. Not a scorcher - like some years - but not raining (or even a torrential downpour) like other years. For Pam it was Goldilocks weather. For me it wasn't bad either. I'd woken early, written a blog about Saturday's TADS walk, and then headed down to Brockwell Park via Dulwich Village and Herne Hill.

Pam was already there. Up front, by the barrier, for the very jolly South London All Skas. A brass heavy (two trombones, two saxophones, and one trumpet) ska ensemble that mixed uptempo knee lifters with what sounded like bits of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire, Leiber and Stoller's On Broadway, and even the nursery rhyme Pop Goes The Weasel.

Also some clippety-clippety clop horseshoe percussion, a bit of toasting, a little bit of Wings of a Dove (not the Madness one), and, er, Give Me Oil In My Lamp, Keep It Burning. Honestly, it was a lot better than it probably sounds. It set us up nicely for the day

We stopped to look at some rather lovely vintage cars (lots of Jensen Interceptors in various colours) and visit the loos (the gents had the urinals but the ladies weren't missing out with their 'peequals') and near Darcus Howe Street it was time for me to sit down and have some food. Something I'd probably have neglected either totally or until much later in the day if Mr Booze had been in attendance.

Most of the 'roads' in the show are named after local luminaries. Alongside Darcus Howe Street, you can find David Bowie Street, Nelson Mandela Way, Van Gogh Street, Olive Morris Road, Charlie Chaplin Walk, Violet Szabo Street, Henry Doulton Lane, and Mary Seacole Street. There's a Lambeth Walk too. Of course there is.

It didn't take me long to make my choice food wise. On a holiday in Colombia back in 2015, I'd very much enjoyed arepas so when I saw a Venezuelan food truck selling them I thought I'd compare and contrast the two different South American arepas. They were different but they were both good. Needless to say I had extra sour cream and jalapenos (not many things better than a jalapeno drenched in sour cream) and washed it down with a can of Pepsi.

It wasn't cheap. Sadly, festivals and the like no longer are. But on the plus side the amount of choice these days is phenomenal. When I first started going to festivals in the late eighties/early nineties it was pretty much all burger'n'chips (although WoMaD made for an honourable exception even back then).

Pam grabbed a beer, I took a photo of a man dressed up as a slice of watermelon, and we both stopped to look at (and smell) some cheese before it was back to the main stage for the Akabu Queens. You could hear the deep rumbling bass from a distance and it sounded good as a group of ladies of a certain age (they formed back in 1981) got the crowd going with a Ken Boothe cover, a track called Signal (about men knowing when to and when not to touch women), a backdrop that read Murderation, and a 'Bez' figure in the band waving a fucking massive flag around for the entire set. Give praise indeed.

Between bands, Mafia & Fluxy were knocking out some decent tunes (54-46 Was My Number, My Boy Lollipop, and even a tribute to Jah Shaka) as a very Lambeth Country Show specific crowd slowly grew in number. It's not many gigs where right at the front you find pushchairs, mobility scooters, and people sat in chairs eating rice'n'peas while taking the bands in. Reggae, as ever, makes its own rules.

In as much as it has them. Another exploration of the site had us puzzling over why the fuck Serco would have a tent at such an event. Serco caused me and many of my colleagues untold levels of stress about a decade back when they 'partnered' with the company I was working for and threatened to outsource our jobs to, variously, India, Poland, and Azerbaijan. None of which came to pass and, in the end, everything about the partnership was a disaster. I learnt two things though (1) try not to stress about things you have no control over and might not happen and (2) Serco are a bunch of cunts.

Pam grabbed a hot momma burger and we sat on the grass and talked nonsense as the music wafted around us. As well as the main stage there's a small Latin music stage and a tent for local bands to play in but we were like Bisto kids forever sniffing out the reggae. There was some talk of going on the sky swing. Pam loves it but I was less bothered about not going on it. It wasn't just the price that made it a little scary.

Instead, we headed down to look at the vegetables but the queues stretched on for a very long way so we quickly pivoted to a selection of owls, kestrels, hawks, and falcons and the ever popular sheep show. Check out Nobby, the absolute don of the ovine universe.

The queues for the ice cream vans were long too but as one didn't have any fresh ice cream it was much shorter and quicker so I made do with a severely melted, very messy, yet still tasty Magnum before we headed down the front again to see Johnny Osbourne who I, for the shame, had mixed up with Johnny Clarke whose None Shall Escape The Judgement is an all time classic.

Not to worry, Osbourne's great too. Truth and Rights, Ice Cream Love, and The Sunday Song had the crowd skanking, swaying, and bopping (and whatever my random jerky movements count as) and, in keeping with what seemed to be the theme of the day, threw in a couple of childlike curveballs in the form of Frere Jacques and So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music.

Again, it was better than it sounds on paper. You just have to go with the flow. Aswad are not a band that have ever been high up on my 'must see' list although my parents saw them supporting Cliff Richard about thirty-five years ago. I remember my dad's assessment of them being somewhat, shall we say, of its time.

They got off to a very slow start with a muddy sound but as the sound improved so did Tony 'Gad' Robinson (wearing a lovely red hat) and the boys. A backdrop showed them playing live at the Hastings Reggae Festival (an event I didn't even know existed) and tracks like African Children proved they've got a bit more in their locker than one might assume. They had been around for about twelve years by the time they reached number one with Don't Turn Around.

Originally, a b-side to Tina Turner's 1986 single Typical Male (and later covered by Ace of Base) it's hardly the last word in reggae cool but they played it anyway and it was .... alright. It went down pretty well. Their other big hit, Shine, was much better. Perhaps because Sweetie Irie came on to do some ragga style toasting over the top of it. Their cover of 54-46 was decent too and Aswad proved themselves to be versatile and enjoyable enough if not earth shattering.

It was good to tick them off the list but it was even better to spend such a fun day in Brockwell Park with Pam. As we left the sun was going down behind the urinals (the same urinals I'd earlier seen a man lose an entire can of lager to) which seemed like a sign to wrap it all up. I'm sure if I'd been drinking I'd have tried to drag Pam into The Half Moon or one of Herne Hill's many other boozers.

But my sober head had other ideas. We said goodbye and I walked back home. Getting in just before 10pm. Watched the news, had a cup of tea, and went to bed. It turns out the Lambeth Country Show is just as much fun, well nearly as much fun, sober as it is pissed up. I'll be back there next year. Give praise.