Post by Nik on Sept 6, 2006 18:27:32 GMT -5
Reading festival 2006
23/8/06 – 28/8/06
Wednesday 23rd September
Due to the lack of Glastonbury as well as the ever-increasing demand for tickets it was a minor miracle that I was able to get myself a weekend ticket and a Wednesday pass. Unfortunately none of my camp had as much luck; they instead had to settle for coach package tickets, which meant they could only get their tickets when they stepped on a coach Thursday morning. All of which explains why I set off with 5 tents. I’m travelling down with an army of people who went to the same school as me and thankfully one of them spots me struggling down the road and gave me a lift to the place we’re getting the minibus from. It’s an uneventful, if quick, journey strait to the site entrance and its not long before I’m once more within the festival. Only it doesn’t quite feel that fun yet. Perhaps because the ‘kin effort of carrying all ‘my’ shit is rather taxing and it takes me absolutely ages to get to the usual field of brown1. Then I have to set up 5 tents. Then it rains. Then I have to go off site to get some booze. Then I get round to finishing putting up the tents. Then I start drinking. Heavily. It starts to feel very much like reading now.
Cue easily the most randomly bizarre night I’ve ever had at reading. It started off sanely enough in the people I travelled down withs’ campsite, drinking and singing along to a CD of TV theme tunes. Then Dove and myself decide that it’s a clever idea to join a massive group of people charging around the site screaming ‘angry mob’. Soon after this we’re all running towards a burger van. Thankfully we run past it, nobody seems to know why the mob is angry and it seems it’s only called such because peaceful mob just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Dove decides to head back whereas I stay with the mob for a lil while before breaking away on my own. And about here it gets a little muddled up as I got quite absurdly fucked up. I know that I spent considerable amounts of time in two camps in brown…. but can’t actually recall exactly what the fuck I was talking about. I do remember that everybody else also seemed rather twisted and so at least I wasn’t making a twat of myself to sober people, I was doing so to drunken people. There was also a trampoline involved at one point…I was unable to refind this no matter how hard I tried. And a whole lot of other shit that it’s probably best I can’t recall. At some point I evidently found my tent and fell asleep because that’s where I woke up.
Thursday 24th September
Somebody is shouting my name. I quite reasonably assume it’s a different Nik that they’re looking for. But they keep going and curiosity gets the better of me and so I poke my head out of the tent, only to be enthusiastically greeted by Simon and a few others that we have shared the mutual honour of camping side by side to for the past 2 years. And now for a third. After a few minutes I notice it isn’t exactly sunny and there aren’t many people about. I look at my watch. It’s 7 AM. I consider briefly how stupidly early they must have set off, before buggering off back to bed.
Waking at a much more reasonable hour I feel very much like I’ve died, which for all I know I may well have done the previous night. It’s still a good few hours until the rest of my camp is set to finally make an appearance so I rejoin the other camp. Some of them are heading up into town to get various stuff and I reason that there’s a chance the walk might be somewhat beneficial to me being able to drink again at some point in the foreseeable future. Shockingly enough it does exactly that and by the time we reach Iceland I feel pretty much alive once more. In a lovely ‘what were the bleeding chance of that’ moment I run into Sash standing outside Iceland. I didn’t know that he was even coming to reading but it quickly becomes apparent that, not only is he indeed coming to reading, but that he is camping with me…and that he had just avoided the mission of tracking me down! Only he very nearly didn’t end up camping with me because when we get to the gate he discovers that he’s only gone and lost his ticket. This was not a joke as I first assumed. A while later Sash once again has a ticket but is also £110 pounds worse off. And in quite clinical need of a drink, or 20.
Not long afterwards the rest of my camp finally arrive and, after another alcohol gathering trip off site, much drinking does begin. Around 7 it suddenly twigs that its time for the fatreg.com meet up and so we stumble in the direction of the bar. A bit of searching later and it looks like we’re the only idiots to have actually turned up! I attempt to give Reg a call but in a somewhat drunken state and to the backdrop of a few hundred other drunken people this makes very little sense. After returning to our camp I receive a text message letting me know that the meet up was actually decided to happen at 8 and that people are there now. Most of my camp now can’t be bothered but myself and Kirk manage to once again make the journey and, in a somewhat shocking move, actually find Reg, Dan, Qualey, Ali P and Davey C, the later two have had fatreg.com hoodies printed which was rather impressive! Much alcohol is drunk from the overpriced bar and much utter bollocks is spoken. Kirk and me wander with Reg back to their campsite and plan to stay there a while after going to get some booze from our own camp. However all does not go exactly to plan, it takes us ages to find our way back to out site and once there we get talking to some random people for quite a time before suddenly remembering the plan and heading back…only to get hopelessly lost. Eventually we give up and at some point evidently stumble into our tents.
Friday 25th September
Skulking my way towards the main stage a few hours after crawling out of my tent I remember that they’ve added a barrier in the middle of the field when I practically walk into the thing. Thankfully its not as much a pain in the arse as I expected, as it proves easy enough to simply walk around, just adds a few minutes to the walk. It certainly didn’t stop me from getting down the front to catch Towers of London opening proceedings. Now they looked like they were playing a blinder but unfortunately the sound was so over the place that this didn’t quite translate to the crowd, a few numbers were amazing but all too often they just sounded like noise, a shame as they can be absolutely blinding. Closing the set by releasing loads of pigeons whilst covering ‘freebird’ was utterly inspired though.
I decide to check out what’s happening over on the lockup stage and witness a great set by Send more paramedics, a very tongue in cheek thrash metal sounding band obsesses with zombies, both singing songs and dressing like them. Excluding the odd ten-minute technical hitch it was well worth being there. Municipal waste follow with some really brutal, if not particularly groundbreaking, thrash metal. The crowd greeted they extremely warmly, perhaps owing to the festival being somewhat lacking in the heavy metal department this year
Much to my displeasure I next headed over to the NME/radio 1 tent and witnessed the entire set of the Guillemots. They were absolutely awful, it seemed like they were trying to come across as unusual and innovative but in truth they were so predictable it was quite sickening. The crowd, of their fans judging by the mass exodus after they finished, only really woke up for a few of their numbers and seemed to spend the rest of the set on their phones. Still the crowd was good in one way, seeing as how they were mainly made up of small teenage emo types it was extremely easy to make my way to the very front. Once they finally finished I managed to claw my way even closer and was a single row back. It became apparent that wasting the last hour of my life had been more than worth it as soon as Gogol Bordello exploded onto stage. I had high hopes for them and they didn’t only not disappoint, they made an absolute joke out of my expectations. They were amazing, I didn’t stop dancing like a twat for the whole time they played their self-dubbed gypsy punk style set, thankfully neither did anybody else around me. Crowd reception was best to ‘not a crime’ and, especially, ‘start wearing purple’ which got one the loudest singalong I heard all weekend. The band themselves were just a tad energetic onstage, and there’s a lot of the buggers too, as well as the usual crew there’s a violinist, accordion player and two very similar looking women who play a variety of instruments including cymbals and a giant drum, at one point the later is played whilst being crowd surfed. The centre of the show is, of course, frontman Eugene Hutz, charging around the stage like an absolute nutter and, in a typically bizarre moment, drumming on a fire bucket placed over his microphone. My only complaint would be that it looked like the power might have been pulled on them as they announced that they were gonna play one more song and then reluctantly left stage. To be fair I suppose one more song might have been a bit dangerous for my health.
Following a brief trip back to the campsite to not have to fork out 2 quid for water I took in a few comics in the comedy tent before heading back over to the lockup tent to see the Bouncing souls play an enjoyable, if utterly generic, set. Afterwards its strait back to the comedy tent to continue the tradition of seeing Steve Gribbin, this was the fourth time I’ve seen him perform in as many years. Its as funny as ever and more than a little eventful this year as his amp pretty much explodes mid set, thankfully the comedy tent crowd are, as ever, fantastically supportive and clap and singalong as he performs his tunes without guitar. Still as good as the first time, I’ll most defiantly be in the crowd again next year!
I arrive in the carling tent as the band there are just finishing, in the rush of people leaving and arriving I manage to miraculously get myself to the front centre. Which is where I’m pretty much stuck for the next hour as the tent becomes stupidly rammed. This fact is not lost on Eagles of death metal who seem genuinely gob smacked by both the size and movement of the crowd, there can barely be a moments silence on stage without ear piecing chants of ‘eagles, eagles, eagles’ and people stamping their feet or drumming away on the tents support poles. They certainly repay this support and put in an astoundingly good set, much better than the previous time I saw them. I’m not exactly familiar with their material but end up singing along with the crowd to almost every song. Its perhaps a bit too mental down the front, I ended up on the floor a few times every song and for their final song I don’t think I managed to actually stand up at all. This took somewhat of a toll on my leg, which I screwed up. Thankfully as people bugger off into the rain outside the tent I stay put and am able to get myself a leaning position on the bar.
After the eagles Twilight singers were going to have to do some serious work to not come across as a comedown, unfortunately that’s exactly what happens. Its not that their solid rocking tunes aren’t good, it’s just that they simply are not great. A guest appearance by Mark Langean of Queens of the Stone Age fame seems to be the reason why most of the crowd are here but he was fucking awful, why he’s got a reputation as a great singer I’ll never know. Things get back on track with headliners Beoudin soundclash who close the tent with their relaxed reggae tunes that get the majority of people dancing along. A soulful ‘jet rand’ was a highlight, as was the closing number of ‘when the night feels my song’ which saw the crowd drowning out the band for most of the song. As I leave the tent I realise that I have truly fuckered up my leg, it’s actually a struggle to get back to the campsite! Deciding that I really can’t be bothered dealing with the pain I decide to go to sleep and hope I’ll feel better in the morning, so that’s exactly what I do. Things don’t look so good in the middle of the night when I venture to the toilet and end up being helped back to the campsite by an extremely nice and extremely drunk man! However…
Saturday 26th August
Well there’s still a bit of pain but I can most defiantly walk again! And walk I do as we head off into town to purchase some booze, it’s a very punk/ska heavy day and so drink is very much a requirement. Unfortunately things don’t get off to the best start as I’m distracted by a cheese sandwich and so lose track of time, meaning that we only manage to catch the end of Flogging molly opening the main stage. Was a shame, as the crowd seems rather lively, much in the way of jigging! However it’s not too great a loss as, for reasons I never could work out, flogging molly are playing a second set later in the day on the lock up stage.
Now though its time for Wolfmother. There’s a lot of hype around this band but I’m pleasantly surprised that they turn out to sound like early Sabbath with a decent vocalist and much more imaginative tangents. It’s encouraging to realise that a prog band such as these are receiving such praise across much of the music press, maybe there’s hope yet! Still the neo prog revolution is still a few years away judging by the rest of the day’s main stage line-up so myself and Kirk make a hasty retreat, I had planed to catch a fair few band over the afternoon…but that went completely out the window as we embarked on the longest journey to a cash point ever.
For a start it took us 45 minutes to actually get off site, we were distracted by the stalls, first because of the idea of getting cash back and then simply because we got obsessed with hats. To my credit I only brought one, and that only cost by 3 quid from the Oxfam tent. Finally off site we were next distracted by a fella selling pancakes from a table set up by the side of the road. We stayed there for some time, waiting for our pancakes and talking to a very drunk woman who had drunk two bottles of, surprisingly nice, wine walking back from Sainsbury’s. The pancakes were awesome once they’d cooled down and we set back to the campsite to have a brief drink. Halfway through the campsites we came across a guy being tapped to a pole, it would have been rude to leave without taking a few photos. We surpassed even this level of courtesy and ended up staying put until the SS came to get him down. Weirdly they were friendly about it, one of them even laughed.
Several hours after we set off we finally made it back to the campsite, sure we missed some decent bands but we’d had a laugh and now we had a few hours to get mightily drunk in preparation for flogging molly’s lock up stage set. And that’s exactly what happened, for the only time all weekend a fair number of us; me, Kirk, Sash, Tom and Terrie, got utterly twated and then went to see the same band. And what a fucking amazing band Flogging Molly turned out to be! They sounded amazing and were clearly enjoying performing but what really made the show was the crowd, never have I seen a more happy, energetic, drunk, jigging bunch of nutters! The whole tent barely stopped dancing for the whole time, and that included a decent amount of swinging dancing and people randomly hugging each other between numbers too. ‘Drunken lullabies’ was probably the best song they played but the set was totally absent of dull moments. As they leave stage Kirk turns around and screams ‘flogging fucking molly’ at the top of his lungs, a phrase that then preceded to travel bollocks style around the tent. Despite a serious need for water it took us ages to leave the tent as ever few steps we all stopped to talk to people!
After a drink to the bar and then another few drinks back at the campsite Sash, Tom and myself ventured back to the lock up stage, the rest of us having left to see the unfortunately clashing Coheed and Cambria. Anti-flag are probably my favourite punk band and whilst their performance today didn’t come close to the times I’ve seen them at the Astoria it was still a bloody amazing set, reasonably predictable choices of songs focusing more on their later albums but with such a short set this was as expected really. Their crowd is mental as fuck, it’s a wonder that it took as many as 3 songs for the circle pit to open up around the centre support tower. It’s not long before people are clambering up this tower and then jumping back crowdwards, myself included. The SS eventually break up this fun towards the end of the set, cue a rain of bottles at the tower…this is only a brief distraction however as people quickly get back to jumping around like idiots. It’s all over far too soon with a ferocious run through of ‘die for your government.’
A life saving trip to the nearest seller of water later and its not too much of a long wait until headliners Reel big fish close the lock up stage. I’ve seen these guys twice before and frankly they didn’t really impress me on either occasion. It’s a pleasant surprise then when tonight they were a revelation, sounding almost painfully tight but still coming across as a bunch of piss heads playing their local its yet another very enjoyable set of dancing like a tit. The not unexpected cover of ‘enter sandman’ is still as funny as ever, in fact that sums up the band well; utterly predicable, unoriginal, just a band that you have a soding great time watching. I know I certainly did! The many introductions and run through’s in different style of ‘a song called SR from our upcoming live album’ shouldn’t have been as funny as it got and the inevitable run through of ‘beer’ caused chaos. Their set over but the chanting refusing to cease the band clearly want to come back on stage, doing so several times infact but alas the power has been turned off and the organisers ain’t budging so its back to the campsite to rectify the amount I’ve sobered up in the last few hours. Oh yeah, and it turns out that dancing like a twat for over 3 hours is actually very good for a fuckered leg as I felt utterly fine, I was limping badly but there was no pain. Actually maybe the booze…
Seeing as the previous night was ludicrously tame it seems only right that this night should be stupidly heavy. It helps that I’m already drunk when I get back to the campsite, it also helps that we head over to our neighbours camp where they are playing a game involving everybody’s drink going round a circle and everybody taking a swig as it passes them. Gotta love mixing those drinks. Wandering off briefly to ease my bladder I run into my only authority problem of the weekend, shockingly enough it wasn’t actually the SS that gave me a problem but rather the actual police. Apparently I looked a bit suspect staggering around a festival campsite and this was apparently grounds to do a quite intensive search on me, checking inside shoes and all that crap. Now this could have pissed me off shit loads but ultimately became a brilliantly funny story. You see, for all the painstaking searching they did they never did bother to simply look in my pockets…
Sunday 27th August
It another early start as I head off to the main stage to witness Mastodon open the most metal day of the weekend. Now this band are genuinely amazing, one of the most innovative metal acts around and most probably destined to be remembered as the metal band of this decade. So of course the fucking sound crew had to go and totally fuck it all up didn’t they?! Apparently there were guitars on stage but it took a flaming effort to realise this. They were most defiantly drums, that I’m bloody well sure off. Despite being royally fuckered no matter what they did Mastodon still managed to pull off a credible set, just pisses me off to imagine what it could have been!
The sound quality improves slightly for Killswitch engage, an enjoyable enough band but whose strength of some impressive shredding is offset for the tendency to almost grind to a halt during choruses, especially during the songs towards the set’s end. Still, the comedy styling of the rather profane guitarist help to keep things interesting. After a lil sit down in the comedy tent (where I witness the quite brilliant Reverend Obadiah Steppehnwold III amongst others) it’s over to the radio 1 tent for today’s highlight, the utterly unique Dresden Dolls. Sounding unlike any other band, with only drums and piano to utilise, they were always gonna be interesting, I even expected them to be rather good. They were quality, the vocalists voice live far surpasses their recordings and the passion they put into their performance has to be seen to be believed. Set highs have to include a doom laddened cover of Sabbath’s ‘War pigs’ and inevitable set close of ‘Girl anachronism.’
It’s then back over to the comedy stage where, due to the unfortunate (yeah right) last minute cancellation of Russell Brand, Mark Steel is in full swing. Now he is one bloody funny fella, his preaching about the all-conquering shitness of virgin trains especially found a place in my heart. Wandering aimlessly around the site I run into Sodge and decide to go catch Goldie lookin’ chain for the third year running. Its true that the joke is beginning to get a bit old, and that I think I’ll never see them play a better show that at my unis’ summer ball, but its still funny for the most part and gets people moving about.
Which makes it about time for the last band of the day, finishing at around 7PM. Christ the upper end of this days line-up really were that bad, must be said it was the only hole in an otherwise band packed weekend I guesse. After missing them an absurd number of times over the past few years I finally manage to see the legend that is Slayer. It’s a bitter disappointment then to find them to be a rather boring live band. Average is probably the most appropriate word. The song’s sounded alreet, if quiet, whilst the band member’s feet may very well have been glued to the floor. Apart from the circle centre front the crowd were mostly tame and non-plussed, I had no problems walking to the front barrier. The set drags along until the obvious closer of ‘Raining blood’, it was somewhat cool to see such a classic song played live…but honestly it was the only really enjoyable part of what for me was a reputation shattering set. RIP Slayer, your time has well and truly passed.
My post-slayer down doesn’t last long thankfully as everybody is back at the campsite, apparently even with our quite wide range of tastes nobody wants to see anything tonight. Actually that’s a lie, I would have enjoyed catching 2manyDJs, infact I fully planned to…but it just didn’t end up happening! We head off on another ‘planed to be quick’ trip into town so that people could use cashpoints and buy booze, only the cashpoint we’ve been using all weekend has finally given up the ghost and the nearest one is in town centre. So that’s exactly where we go. While we’re there we take the historic move of venturing away from the festival and into a pub, with a roof and everything. This allows us to have the luxury of decent cider in an actual glass; it was actually make of glass! The real, clean, toilets were also a bit of a godsend. A look at the food menu, especially the breakfast menu, leads to regrets we hadn’t made such a move sooner as well as plans for getting a lot less ripped off by on site catering next year. It was in this pub that I came to the realisation that I really was gonna be back next year, before I’d come I’d pretty much decides that as the line-up was so wank and the price so high this would be last reading but alas this was not to be! The line-up magically morphed over the weekend into the second best ever (never gonna top the Pixies, Anti-flag, Maiden year I’m afraid) and such quality time was had with mates in the campsite that the price is well worth it. I think I’ll reconsider at the 10-year anniversary…
Further delaying our return to the campsite is the discovery of a food place selling decent enough food for far below festival prices…all in all was a rather productive walk! Upon our return to the campsite serious drinking began and by that I mean fucking beyond belief serious drinking. By the time the night was actually kicking off, remember we’d begun boozing whilst bands were still on, I was quite royally hammered. At some point I once again donned the final night dress, at some point I magically travelled to the other campsite. I do remember meeting a very nice woman. I don’t remember how the fuck I came to wake up in my tent…or quite why I had Clarks coat with me. Life’s full of mysteries I guesse.
Monday 28th August
Christ almighty I felt like shit when I woke up. Packing my tent away proved too much and so I decided that, at 4 years old, it was old enough to no longer need my care and so I set it free, via the salvation army tent, to make its own way in the world. My people are leaving earlier than me so I spend a few hours with the people I travelled down with, they somehow still had energy and used it to destroy practically their whole campsite, before sleeping most of the way home. Shower, decent food and unconscious by 8PM, how it should be.
23/8/06 – 28/8/06
Wednesday 23rd September
Due to the lack of Glastonbury as well as the ever-increasing demand for tickets it was a minor miracle that I was able to get myself a weekend ticket and a Wednesday pass. Unfortunately none of my camp had as much luck; they instead had to settle for coach package tickets, which meant they could only get their tickets when they stepped on a coach Thursday morning. All of which explains why I set off with 5 tents. I’m travelling down with an army of people who went to the same school as me and thankfully one of them spots me struggling down the road and gave me a lift to the place we’re getting the minibus from. It’s an uneventful, if quick, journey strait to the site entrance and its not long before I’m once more within the festival. Only it doesn’t quite feel that fun yet. Perhaps because the ‘kin effort of carrying all ‘my’ shit is rather taxing and it takes me absolutely ages to get to the usual field of brown1. Then I have to set up 5 tents. Then it rains. Then I have to go off site to get some booze. Then I get round to finishing putting up the tents. Then I start drinking. Heavily. It starts to feel very much like reading now.
Cue easily the most randomly bizarre night I’ve ever had at reading. It started off sanely enough in the people I travelled down withs’ campsite, drinking and singing along to a CD of TV theme tunes. Then Dove and myself decide that it’s a clever idea to join a massive group of people charging around the site screaming ‘angry mob’. Soon after this we’re all running towards a burger van. Thankfully we run past it, nobody seems to know why the mob is angry and it seems it’s only called such because peaceful mob just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Dove decides to head back whereas I stay with the mob for a lil while before breaking away on my own. And about here it gets a little muddled up as I got quite absurdly fucked up. I know that I spent considerable amounts of time in two camps in brown…. but can’t actually recall exactly what the fuck I was talking about. I do remember that everybody else also seemed rather twisted and so at least I wasn’t making a twat of myself to sober people, I was doing so to drunken people. There was also a trampoline involved at one point…I was unable to refind this no matter how hard I tried. And a whole lot of other shit that it’s probably best I can’t recall. At some point I evidently found my tent and fell asleep because that’s where I woke up.
Thursday 24th September
Somebody is shouting my name. I quite reasonably assume it’s a different Nik that they’re looking for. But they keep going and curiosity gets the better of me and so I poke my head out of the tent, only to be enthusiastically greeted by Simon and a few others that we have shared the mutual honour of camping side by side to for the past 2 years. And now for a third. After a few minutes I notice it isn’t exactly sunny and there aren’t many people about. I look at my watch. It’s 7 AM. I consider briefly how stupidly early they must have set off, before buggering off back to bed.
Waking at a much more reasonable hour I feel very much like I’ve died, which for all I know I may well have done the previous night. It’s still a good few hours until the rest of my camp is set to finally make an appearance so I rejoin the other camp. Some of them are heading up into town to get various stuff and I reason that there’s a chance the walk might be somewhat beneficial to me being able to drink again at some point in the foreseeable future. Shockingly enough it does exactly that and by the time we reach Iceland I feel pretty much alive once more. In a lovely ‘what were the bleeding chance of that’ moment I run into Sash standing outside Iceland. I didn’t know that he was even coming to reading but it quickly becomes apparent that, not only is he indeed coming to reading, but that he is camping with me…and that he had just avoided the mission of tracking me down! Only he very nearly didn’t end up camping with me because when we get to the gate he discovers that he’s only gone and lost his ticket. This was not a joke as I first assumed. A while later Sash once again has a ticket but is also £110 pounds worse off. And in quite clinical need of a drink, or 20.
Not long afterwards the rest of my camp finally arrive and, after another alcohol gathering trip off site, much drinking does begin. Around 7 it suddenly twigs that its time for the fatreg.com meet up and so we stumble in the direction of the bar. A bit of searching later and it looks like we’re the only idiots to have actually turned up! I attempt to give Reg a call but in a somewhat drunken state and to the backdrop of a few hundred other drunken people this makes very little sense. After returning to our camp I receive a text message letting me know that the meet up was actually decided to happen at 8 and that people are there now. Most of my camp now can’t be bothered but myself and Kirk manage to once again make the journey and, in a somewhat shocking move, actually find Reg, Dan, Qualey, Ali P and Davey C, the later two have had fatreg.com hoodies printed which was rather impressive! Much alcohol is drunk from the overpriced bar and much utter bollocks is spoken. Kirk and me wander with Reg back to their campsite and plan to stay there a while after going to get some booze from our own camp. However all does not go exactly to plan, it takes us ages to find our way back to out site and once there we get talking to some random people for quite a time before suddenly remembering the plan and heading back…only to get hopelessly lost. Eventually we give up and at some point evidently stumble into our tents.
Friday 25th September
Skulking my way towards the main stage a few hours after crawling out of my tent I remember that they’ve added a barrier in the middle of the field when I practically walk into the thing. Thankfully its not as much a pain in the arse as I expected, as it proves easy enough to simply walk around, just adds a few minutes to the walk. It certainly didn’t stop me from getting down the front to catch Towers of London opening proceedings. Now they looked like they were playing a blinder but unfortunately the sound was so over the place that this didn’t quite translate to the crowd, a few numbers were amazing but all too often they just sounded like noise, a shame as they can be absolutely blinding. Closing the set by releasing loads of pigeons whilst covering ‘freebird’ was utterly inspired though.
I decide to check out what’s happening over on the lockup stage and witness a great set by Send more paramedics, a very tongue in cheek thrash metal sounding band obsesses with zombies, both singing songs and dressing like them. Excluding the odd ten-minute technical hitch it was well worth being there. Municipal waste follow with some really brutal, if not particularly groundbreaking, thrash metal. The crowd greeted they extremely warmly, perhaps owing to the festival being somewhat lacking in the heavy metal department this year
Much to my displeasure I next headed over to the NME/radio 1 tent and witnessed the entire set of the Guillemots. They were absolutely awful, it seemed like they were trying to come across as unusual and innovative but in truth they were so predictable it was quite sickening. The crowd, of their fans judging by the mass exodus after they finished, only really woke up for a few of their numbers and seemed to spend the rest of the set on their phones. Still the crowd was good in one way, seeing as how they were mainly made up of small teenage emo types it was extremely easy to make my way to the very front. Once they finally finished I managed to claw my way even closer and was a single row back. It became apparent that wasting the last hour of my life had been more than worth it as soon as Gogol Bordello exploded onto stage. I had high hopes for them and they didn’t only not disappoint, they made an absolute joke out of my expectations. They were amazing, I didn’t stop dancing like a twat for the whole time they played their self-dubbed gypsy punk style set, thankfully neither did anybody else around me. Crowd reception was best to ‘not a crime’ and, especially, ‘start wearing purple’ which got one the loudest singalong I heard all weekend. The band themselves were just a tad energetic onstage, and there’s a lot of the buggers too, as well as the usual crew there’s a violinist, accordion player and two very similar looking women who play a variety of instruments including cymbals and a giant drum, at one point the later is played whilst being crowd surfed. The centre of the show is, of course, frontman Eugene Hutz, charging around the stage like an absolute nutter and, in a typically bizarre moment, drumming on a fire bucket placed over his microphone. My only complaint would be that it looked like the power might have been pulled on them as they announced that they were gonna play one more song and then reluctantly left stage. To be fair I suppose one more song might have been a bit dangerous for my health.
Following a brief trip back to the campsite to not have to fork out 2 quid for water I took in a few comics in the comedy tent before heading back over to the lockup tent to see the Bouncing souls play an enjoyable, if utterly generic, set. Afterwards its strait back to the comedy tent to continue the tradition of seeing Steve Gribbin, this was the fourth time I’ve seen him perform in as many years. Its as funny as ever and more than a little eventful this year as his amp pretty much explodes mid set, thankfully the comedy tent crowd are, as ever, fantastically supportive and clap and singalong as he performs his tunes without guitar. Still as good as the first time, I’ll most defiantly be in the crowd again next year!
I arrive in the carling tent as the band there are just finishing, in the rush of people leaving and arriving I manage to miraculously get myself to the front centre. Which is where I’m pretty much stuck for the next hour as the tent becomes stupidly rammed. This fact is not lost on Eagles of death metal who seem genuinely gob smacked by both the size and movement of the crowd, there can barely be a moments silence on stage without ear piecing chants of ‘eagles, eagles, eagles’ and people stamping their feet or drumming away on the tents support poles. They certainly repay this support and put in an astoundingly good set, much better than the previous time I saw them. I’m not exactly familiar with their material but end up singing along with the crowd to almost every song. Its perhaps a bit too mental down the front, I ended up on the floor a few times every song and for their final song I don’t think I managed to actually stand up at all. This took somewhat of a toll on my leg, which I screwed up. Thankfully as people bugger off into the rain outside the tent I stay put and am able to get myself a leaning position on the bar.
After the eagles Twilight singers were going to have to do some serious work to not come across as a comedown, unfortunately that’s exactly what happens. Its not that their solid rocking tunes aren’t good, it’s just that they simply are not great. A guest appearance by Mark Langean of Queens of the Stone Age fame seems to be the reason why most of the crowd are here but he was fucking awful, why he’s got a reputation as a great singer I’ll never know. Things get back on track with headliners Beoudin soundclash who close the tent with their relaxed reggae tunes that get the majority of people dancing along. A soulful ‘jet rand’ was a highlight, as was the closing number of ‘when the night feels my song’ which saw the crowd drowning out the band for most of the song. As I leave the tent I realise that I have truly fuckered up my leg, it’s actually a struggle to get back to the campsite! Deciding that I really can’t be bothered dealing with the pain I decide to go to sleep and hope I’ll feel better in the morning, so that’s exactly what I do. Things don’t look so good in the middle of the night when I venture to the toilet and end up being helped back to the campsite by an extremely nice and extremely drunk man! However…
Saturday 26th August
Well there’s still a bit of pain but I can most defiantly walk again! And walk I do as we head off into town to purchase some booze, it’s a very punk/ska heavy day and so drink is very much a requirement. Unfortunately things don’t get off to the best start as I’m distracted by a cheese sandwich and so lose track of time, meaning that we only manage to catch the end of Flogging molly opening the main stage. Was a shame, as the crowd seems rather lively, much in the way of jigging! However it’s not too great a loss as, for reasons I never could work out, flogging molly are playing a second set later in the day on the lock up stage.
Now though its time for Wolfmother. There’s a lot of hype around this band but I’m pleasantly surprised that they turn out to sound like early Sabbath with a decent vocalist and much more imaginative tangents. It’s encouraging to realise that a prog band such as these are receiving such praise across much of the music press, maybe there’s hope yet! Still the neo prog revolution is still a few years away judging by the rest of the day’s main stage line-up so myself and Kirk make a hasty retreat, I had planed to catch a fair few band over the afternoon…but that went completely out the window as we embarked on the longest journey to a cash point ever.
For a start it took us 45 minutes to actually get off site, we were distracted by the stalls, first because of the idea of getting cash back and then simply because we got obsessed with hats. To my credit I only brought one, and that only cost by 3 quid from the Oxfam tent. Finally off site we were next distracted by a fella selling pancakes from a table set up by the side of the road. We stayed there for some time, waiting for our pancakes and talking to a very drunk woman who had drunk two bottles of, surprisingly nice, wine walking back from Sainsbury’s. The pancakes were awesome once they’d cooled down and we set back to the campsite to have a brief drink. Halfway through the campsites we came across a guy being tapped to a pole, it would have been rude to leave without taking a few photos. We surpassed even this level of courtesy and ended up staying put until the SS came to get him down. Weirdly they were friendly about it, one of them even laughed.
Several hours after we set off we finally made it back to the campsite, sure we missed some decent bands but we’d had a laugh and now we had a few hours to get mightily drunk in preparation for flogging molly’s lock up stage set. And that’s exactly what happened, for the only time all weekend a fair number of us; me, Kirk, Sash, Tom and Terrie, got utterly twated and then went to see the same band. And what a fucking amazing band Flogging Molly turned out to be! They sounded amazing and were clearly enjoying performing but what really made the show was the crowd, never have I seen a more happy, energetic, drunk, jigging bunch of nutters! The whole tent barely stopped dancing for the whole time, and that included a decent amount of swinging dancing and people randomly hugging each other between numbers too. ‘Drunken lullabies’ was probably the best song they played but the set was totally absent of dull moments. As they leave stage Kirk turns around and screams ‘flogging fucking molly’ at the top of his lungs, a phrase that then preceded to travel bollocks style around the tent. Despite a serious need for water it took us ages to leave the tent as ever few steps we all stopped to talk to people!
After a drink to the bar and then another few drinks back at the campsite Sash, Tom and myself ventured back to the lock up stage, the rest of us having left to see the unfortunately clashing Coheed and Cambria. Anti-flag are probably my favourite punk band and whilst their performance today didn’t come close to the times I’ve seen them at the Astoria it was still a bloody amazing set, reasonably predictable choices of songs focusing more on their later albums but with such a short set this was as expected really. Their crowd is mental as fuck, it’s a wonder that it took as many as 3 songs for the circle pit to open up around the centre support tower. It’s not long before people are clambering up this tower and then jumping back crowdwards, myself included. The SS eventually break up this fun towards the end of the set, cue a rain of bottles at the tower…this is only a brief distraction however as people quickly get back to jumping around like idiots. It’s all over far too soon with a ferocious run through of ‘die for your government.’
A life saving trip to the nearest seller of water later and its not too much of a long wait until headliners Reel big fish close the lock up stage. I’ve seen these guys twice before and frankly they didn’t really impress me on either occasion. It’s a pleasant surprise then when tonight they were a revelation, sounding almost painfully tight but still coming across as a bunch of piss heads playing their local its yet another very enjoyable set of dancing like a tit. The not unexpected cover of ‘enter sandman’ is still as funny as ever, in fact that sums up the band well; utterly predicable, unoriginal, just a band that you have a soding great time watching. I know I certainly did! The many introductions and run through’s in different style of ‘a song called SR from our upcoming live album’ shouldn’t have been as funny as it got and the inevitable run through of ‘beer’ caused chaos. Their set over but the chanting refusing to cease the band clearly want to come back on stage, doing so several times infact but alas the power has been turned off and the organisers ain’t budging so its back to the campsite to rectify the amount I’ve sobered up in the last few hours. Oh yeah, and it turns out that dancing like a twat for over 3 hours is actually very good for a fuckered leg as I felt utterly fine, I was limping badly but there was no pain. Actually maybe the booze…
Seeing as the previous night was ludicrously tame it seems only right that this night should be stupidly heavy. It helps that I’m already drunk when I get back to the campsite, it also helps that we head over to our neighbours camp where they are playing a game involving everybody’s drink going round a circle and everybody taking a swig as it passes them. Gotta love mixing those drinks. Wandering off briefly to ease my bladder I run into my only authority problem of the weekend, shockingly enough it wasn’t actually the SS that gave me a problem but rather the actual police. Apparently I looked a bit suspect staggering around a festival campsite and this was apparently grounds to do a quite intensive search on me, checking inside shoes and all that crap. Now this could have pissed me off shit loads but ultimately became a brilliantly funny story. You see, for all the painstaking searching they did they never did bother to simply look in my pockets…
Sunday 27th August
It another early start as I head off to the main stage to witness Mastodon open the most metal day of the weekend. Now this band are genuinely amazing, one of the most innovative metal acts around and most probably destined to be remembered as the metal band of this decade. So of course the fucking sound crew had to go and totally fuck it all up didn’t they?! Apparently there were guitars on stage but it took a flaming effort to realise this. They were most defiantly drums, that I’m bloody well sure off. Despite being royally fuckered no matter what they did Mastodon still managed to pull off a credible set, just pisses me off to imagine what it could have been!
The sound quality improves slightly for Killswitch engage, an enjoyable enough band but whose strength of some impressive shredding is offset for the tendency to almost grind to a halt during choruses, especially during the songs towards the set’s end. Still, the comedy styling of the rather profane guitarist help to keep things interesting. After a lil sit down in the comedy tent (where I witness the quite brilliant Reverend Obadiah Steppehnwold III amongst others) it’s over to the radio 1 tent for today’s highlight, the utterly unique Dresden Dolls. Sounding unlike any other band, with only drums and piano to utilise, they were always gonna be interesting, I even expected them to be rather good. They were quality, the vocalists voice live far surpasses their recordings and the passion they put into their performance has to be seen to be believed. Set highs have to include a doom laddened cover of Sabbath’s ‘War pigs’ and inevitable set close of ‘Girl anachronism.’
It’s then back over to the comedy stage where, due to the unfortunate (yeah right) last minute cancellation of Russell Brand, Mark Steel is in full swing. Now he is one bloody funny fella, his preaching about the all-conquering shitness of virgin trains especially found a place in my heart. Wandering aimlessly around the site I run into Sodge and decide to go catch Goldie lookin’ chain for the third year running. Its true that the joke is beginning to get a bit old, and that I think I’ll never see them play a better show that at my unis’ summer ball, but its still funny for the most part and gets people moving about.
Which makes it about time for the last band of the day, finishing at around 7PM. Christ the upper end of this days line-up really were that bad, must be said it was the only hole in an otherwise band packed weekend I guesse. After missing them an absurd number of times over the past few years I finally manage to see the legend that is Slayer. It’s a bitter disappointment then to find them to be a rather boring live band. Average is probably the most appropriate word. The song’s sounded alreet, if quiet, whilst the band member’s feet may very well have been glued to the floor. Apart from the circle centre front the crowd were mostly tame and non-plussed, I had no problems walking to the front barrier. The set drags along until the obvious closer of ‘Raining blood’, it was somewhat cool to see such a classic song played live…but honestly it was the only really enjoyable part of what for me was a reputation shattering set. RIP Slayer, your time has well and truly passed.
My post-slayer down doesn’t last long thankfully as everybody is back at the campsite, apparently even with our quite wide range of tastes nobody wants to see anything tonight. Actually that’s a lie, I would have enjoyed catching 2manyDJs, infact I fully planned to…but it just didn’t end up happening! We head off on another ‘planed to be quick’ trip into town so that people could use cashpoints and buy booze, only the cashpoint we’ve been using all weekend has finally given up the ghost and the nearest one is in town centre. So that’s exactly where we go. While we’re there we take the historic move of venturing away from the festival and into a pub, with a roof and everything. This allows us to have the luxury of decent cider in an actual glass; it was actually make of glass! The real, clean, toilets were also a bit of a godsend. A look at the food menu, especially the breakfast menu, leads to regrets we hadn’t made such a move sooner as well as plans for getting a lot less ripped off by on site catering next year. It was in this pub that I came to the realisation that I really was gonna be back next year, before I’d come I’d pretty much decides that as the line-up was so wank and the price so high this would be last reading but alas this was not to be! The line-up magically morphed over the weekend into the second best ever (never gonna top the Pixies, Anti-flag, Maiden year I’m afraid) and such quality time was had with mates in the campsite that the price is well worth it. I think I’ll reconsider at the 10-year anniversary…
Further delaying our return to the campsite is the discovery of a food place selling decent enough food for far below festival prices…all in all was a rather productive walk! Upon our return to the campsite serious drinking began and by that I mean fucking beyond belief serious drinking. By the time the night was actually kicking off, remember we’d begun boozing whilst bands were still on, I was quite royally hammered. At some point I once again donned the final night dress, at some point I magically travelled to the other campsite. I do remember meeting a very nice woman. I don’t remember how the fuck I came to wake up in my tent…or quite why I had Clarks coat with me. Life’s full of mysteries I guesse.
Monday 28th August
Christ almighty I felt like shit when I woke up. Packing my tent away proved too much and so I decided that, at 4 years old, it was old enough to no longer need my care and so I set it free, via the salvation army tent, to make its own way in the world. My people are leaving earlier than me so I spend a few hours with the people I travelled down with, they somehow still had energy and used it to destroy practically their whole campsite, before sleeping most of the way home. Shower, decent food and unconscious by 8PM, how it should be.