Tom Lennon • Freelance Writer: comedy and pop culture

Freelance writer specializing in comedy and the geekier end of the pop culture spectrum.

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Latitude Festival 2009: The Pretenders

Showing my Age part 1: The Pretenders, Obelisk Stage, 17th July 2009 Veteran rock queen Chrissie Hynde - and, let's face it, considering the number of line-up changes they've had over the years, The Pretenders are Chrissie Hynde just like Mark E. Smith is The Fall - played an energetic early-evening set at Latitude's main Obelisk Arena on Friday. As is the norm with bands with a certain number of miles on the clock, it was a crowd-pleasing, greatest hits package featuring classic tracks like Back on the Chain Gang, Talk of the Town and Kinks' cover Stop Your Sobbing. Then again, when you've got [...]

Latitude Festival 2009: Datarock

Immaculately turned out in matching red tracksuits - with sonic and stylistic influences that include Devo, Talking Heads, Kraftwerk and Ben Stiller's family in The Royal Tenenbaums- Danish elctro-combo Datarock electrified the mid-Saturday afternoon audience at the Latitude Festival's Obelisk Arena. This came as something of a surprise as mid-Saturday afternoon audiences at festivals are normally sedate, hungover and not used to that sort of treatment so early in the day. I speak from personal experience, of course. Highlights of their set included The Pretender and Fa-Fa-Fa. The latter track might be familiar to connoisseurs of console games, as it featured on FIFA 08 and Sims [...]

Latitude Festival 2009: Family Camping

This is my third consecutive Latitude Festival, my second spent in the company of my partner, Clare, and the first where we've brought the kids along. As the Bard once said: "The times they are a'changing." Right now, I'm scribbling notes in the porch of our canvas chateau with my five year-old stepdaughter, Lily, perched next to me. She's watching the world go by, and I can't say I blame her. There's always plenty to see at Latitude, and its not necessarily limited to the official acts. The sun is out and in the distance we can hear Ladyhawke performing on the [...]

Latitude Festival: Splatitude

It took us five long hours to drive to the Latitude Festival in Suffolk. The journey was interspersed with several pit-stops, emergency nappy changes and a seemingly random attack by a swarm of vicious midges. I'm no expert on theology or eschatology, but I'm guessing that - as the bug-attack was localised within the boundaries of Cambridgeshire - it wasn't, strictly speaking, of Biblical proportions. The weather was glorious. If you wanted to compile a meteorological mixtape to capture the climate it would probably include tracks like Walking on Sunshine, Blister in the Sun and Feeling Hot (Hot Hot). We didn't listen to any of [...]

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