Battlefield
5 (first published in Faze 2001)
The best thing I saw all
weekend? Well, actually it was a band called Mr Bridger playing at the Rocket
pub, just round the corner from Coventry station. Funky Hendrix-like with a
touch of Nirvana, they made US style rock seem like it could be interesting
though for all the attention the Friday night punters were paying, it might as well have been Mr Bridger's Dixieland Showband. It wasn't that they were
bad; it was just that they were the wrong group for this crowd. Two days and
many panels later, I've come to a similar conclusion about Battlefield 5. The
temptation to go on and on with anything creative is always strong but
sometimes you need to sit back and remember the sparks that brought the subject
to life in the first place.
Battlefield began as a feisty alternative to the established convention lore, which stated that huge gaps would elapse between panels, there would be as much behind the scenes stuff as front of camera celebs and that evenings would consist of funny videos and large scale parlour games. The convention scene needed this boost and it worked well at first. Never had the two-day event seemed so jam packed with stuff nor had it ever passed so quickly. Now ambition has inspired the team to extend the latest event to a three day stretch, the glitzy celebs are still, for the most part, the same people who've been to all the others and the cabaret has mutated from the slightly old school music hall mentality to amateur hour at a nightclub.
Battlefield began as a feisty alternative to the established convention lore, which stated that huge gaps would elapse between panels, there would be as much behind the scenes stuff as front of camera celebs and that evenings would consist of funny videos and large scale parlour games. The convention scene needed this boost and it worked well at first. Never had the two-day event seemed so jam packed with stuff nor had it ever passed so quickly. Now ambition has inspired the team to extend the latest event to a three day stretch, the glitzy celebs are still, for the most part, the same people who've been to all the others and the cabaret has mutated from the slightly old school music hall mentality to amateur hour at a nightclub.
