Elderly Woman Behind A Computer Screen in a Small Bedroom
I am officially old.
I had a fantastic time, don’t get me wrong. It was an excellent weekend. The binbag-train-platform memories have been well and truly banished. It ROCKED.
However, I am now suffering.
It has taken me all week to recover, and I’m not there yet. In addition to exhaustion, a hangover, digestive issues caused by excessively bad festival food and a nasty virus of some kind, I can barely freaking walk. A random drunken-dancing-related-injury (DDRI) acquired in Spain has flared up again and now I’m hobbling around the house moaning like an English person. It’s a bit sad when a weekend of ROCK requires a follow-up physiotherapist appointment.
It would, perhaps, be easier to justify if I’d gone particularly hard. You know, OH MAN, IT WAS SO FULL ON I WAS DRUNK AND TRIPPING FOR THREE DAYS AND MOSHED LIKE A MOFO AND RAN ABOUT NAKED BUT FOR MY NEON PINK DREADLOCKS AND WAS CROWNED SUPREME CHAMPION OF THE SHOPPING TROLLEY CHICKEN WARS AND SET MY SHOELACES ON FIRE and so on.
But no! I was mostly very well-behaved. Lots of standing and nodding, some clapping, a not-excessive amount of dancing about in glee. You know, your usual. It just takes more of a toll these days than it did before.
It was a very good time. I joined two of my good mates from Exeter days, DJDJK and Keith and a posse of their excellent friends and we had ourselves a blast.
The Conditions
As many of you know, I am not the world’s greatest camper. Nor do I even particularly enjoy the outdoors, especially when sharing said outdoors with many tens of thousands of drunken teenagers (OLD!). I therefore owe a great debt for my overall enjoyment of the weekend to the friends of DJDJK, seasoned veterans of the camping festival circuit who have their setup refined to a degree of luxury that made me weep with joy. Camp Blah, named thusly for reasons never actually explained, consisted of three tents (two of which were so big we each had our own wing to sleep in), a gazebo, an eyecatching flag (very useful when trying to navigate amongst acres and acres of brightly-coloured canvas) and – this was the best part – outstandingly comfortable camping chairs for everyone. It didn’t rain much, but when it did we dragged our armchairs inside the most giant of the tents and sat in comfort, listening contentedly to the plaintive cries of soggy anguish outside.
Alan, Chief Camp Stuff Dude, had even thought to organise for a set of walkie-talkies so that we could all stay in touch when meandering around the site and organise rendesvouses throughout each day. We had callsigns and everything, which was the awesome. They didn’t work brilliantly inside the arena, but did provide hours of fun late each evening, shouting random comments into the ether on various channels to see whom we could bewilder.
Safe and comfortable in our cosy little world, I only had to venture out into the rest of the campsite each evening to laugh at the antics of the kiddies (OLD!) playing chicken in shopping trolleys, wandering in drunken, chanting mobs and setting things alight…
… and to use the facilities, the thought of which make me shudder even now, days later. Imagine thousands of revellers, drinking themselves into stuporous sickness and eating truckloads of processed takeaway food all day, camping in the one place for a long weekend. Imagine a set of long-drop pit toilets. Oh god, the horror. As one of my Camp Blah fellows put it, “the smell just peels the skin right off your face.” The sooner I can block that particular memory, the better.
The Crowd
For all my moaning about the youngsters (OLD!), in fact they didn’t bug me too much throughout the weekend. Each day we would venture into the main arena from camp and wander from paddock to tent watching bands. In between, I would indulge in the endlessly pleasurable freakwatching that is one of my favourite aspects of mass public gatherings. Boys in tutus, girls in head-to-toe PVC despite the heat, makeup and hairdos and slogans and so much EFFORT - the uniforms of each social group clearly defining identity and creed.
I struck up conversations with a few of them. My favourite was the boy who couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, waiting patiently at the bar with a tenner in his hand. He gave his order, then turned to me and said, “Wow. Beers are expensive.”
I nodded my agreement.
“These are the first ones we’ve paid for all day, though,” he continued proudly.
“That’s some nice work,” I replied. There was a friendly pause.
“We’re honest people, though, really!” he insisted.
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” I replied. Another friendly pause, during which I looked down at his bare arm and smiled. “Where’s your wristband?”
Without missing a beat, he shot back: “Oh, SHIT! It must have fallen off when I was climbing the fence!”
In spite of such amusing encounters, crowd behaviour at concerts inevitably provides plenty of irritation. The pushing and shoving, the smug sense of entitlement of the girl sitting on her boyfriend’s shoulders, blocking everyone else’s view. The fact that everyone is so freaking TALL and they insist on standing right in front of me.
English people apparently also seem to think it is particularly hilarious to hoik their plastic cups still full of perfectly good beer as far as they can into the crowd in front of them. I sat for a while in the main paddock and watched the drinks fly from one side of the crowd to the other. No wonder they don’t serve decent beer at festivals, if no-one is actually bothering to drink it.
Most bewildering of all: the first set on the first day began at 12:05pm. The first clap-along? 12:11pm. Every single set, the whole weekend, there was the clap-along – at least once, more often five or six times. No matter how thrashy or hardcore the band, or how seriously the fans seem to take themselves, they love the fucking clap-along. It never fails to make me feel like I’ve stumbled into a cult.
The Music
Thankfully, the music made it all worthwhile. I saw many, many bands, most of whom I’d never heard of before (OLD!). I always swore I’d never lose touch – but it appears that has already happened when I wasn’t watching (you’ve changed, man). It’s a wee bit depressing.
However, I had great fun wandering from set to set, soaking up the new and exciting, revelling in that raw, tingling buzz you only get from live music loud.
I have noted that when it comes to band names, exclamation marks are in fashion: Panic! at the Disco, You Say Party! We Say Die!, ¡Forward Russia!, Captain Everything!, Against Me!. Conversations about which band to see next were unusually! animated!
Rather than review each set, I present the following non-exhaustive list:
- Bands my friend DJDJK recommended who I quite enjoyed: Giant Drag, The Metric.
- Bands who were absolutely crazy and cracked my shit up: Spank Rock, ¡Forward Russia!
- Bands who gave me a warm patriotic glow, especially while watching a sea of fists punch high into the air (ROCK!): Wolfmother
- Bands who were so much fun I couldn’t quite believe my ears: Kaiser Chiefs, The Automatic.
- Bands I had been eagerly anticipating who did not fail to impress: Primal Scream, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Broken Social Scene
- Bands I went to see because I thought I should and who were okay but not particularly memorable: Arctic Monkeys
- Bands I saw by accident and who confirmed my lack of interest in them: The Streets
- Bands I saw by accident and whose album I shall purchase this week: The Spinto Band
- Bands I saw years ago in our tiny university bar in Exeter who have become an astonishingly colossal live act: Muse
- Long-beloved bands who rocked my world anew and confirmed that the world is All About jLo by including my all-time favourite of their songs in their setlist: Belle and Sebastian (Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie), Pearl Jam (Yellow Ledbetter).
Aside from the (mighty) Pearl Jams, I think Muse will probably be my most lasting memory of the festival. It was, quite simply, a thrilling and overpowering show. I had intended to watch a song or two for old times’ sake and head off to watch Nouvelle Vague, but I couldn’t tear myself away. They were remarkable.
The End
On the last afternoon, I hit my festival wall and just couldn’t face another band. I skipped Placebo (which I know will horrify Adam Z even more than my admission in the last post that I missed Pulp last time, sorry dude!) and retired to Camp Blah to revive for a while and renew my acquaintance with Comrade Vodka. My new friend Julia and I managed to beat Comrade Vodka thoroughly about the head while solving the many problems of the world, with the result that by the time we retired back to the arena for the Pearl Jams we (well, I) was nicely toasted.
I then proceeded to cavort with abandon, shouting with delight and singing very loudly, much to the amusement of the teenaged onlookers around me.
After the spontaneous combustion of a climax recorded elsewhere, I celebrated my successful texting of the word ‘spontaneous’ while drunken by behaving very poorly back at Camp Blah, irritating (possibly even offending) as many people as possible for several hours before being kindly pointed in the direction of the South Wing and my waiting sleeping bag. Covering myself in glory, yet again.
And thus, I learned that despite appearances to the contrary, apparently when it comes to certain behaviour patterns, I’m not yet old enough.
I had a fantastic time, don’t get me wrong. It was an excellent weekend. The binbag-train-platform memories have been well and truly banished. It ROCKED.
However, I am now suffering.
It has taken me all week to recover, and I’m not there yet. In addition to exhaustion, a hangover, digestive issues caused by excessively bad festival food and a nasty virus of some kind, I can barely freaking walk. A random drunken-dancing-related-injury (DDRI) acquired in Spain has flared up again and now I’m hobbling around the house moaning like an English person. It’s a bit sad when a weekend of ROCK requires a follow-up physiotherapist appointment.
It would, perhaps, be easier to justify if I’d gone particularly hard. You know, OH MAN, IT WAS SO FULL ON I WAS DRUNK AND TRIPPING FOR THREE DAYS AND MOSHED LIKE A MOFO AND RAN ABOUT NAKED BUT FOR MY NEON PINK DREADLOCKS AND WAS CROWNED SUPREME CHAMPION OF THE SHOPPING TROLLEY CHICKEN WARS AND SET MY SHOELACES ON FIRE and so on.
But no! I was mostly very well-behaved. Lots of standing and nodding, some clapping, a not-excessive amount of dancing about in glee. You know, your usual. It just takes more of a toll these days than it did before.
It was a very good time. I joined two of my good mates from Exeter days, DJDJK and Keith and a posse of their excellent friends and we had ourselves a blast.
The Conditions
As many of you know, I am not the world’s greatest camper. Nor do I even particularly enjoy the outdoors, especially when sharing said outdoors with many tens of thousands of drunken teenagers (OLD!). I therefore owe a great debt for my overall enjoyment of the weekend to the friends of DJDJK, seasoned veterans of the camping festival circuit who have their setup refined to a degree of luxury that made me weep with joy. Camp Blah, named thusly for reasons never actually explained, consisted of three tents (two of which were so big we each had our own wing to sleep in), a gazebo, an eyecatching flag (very useful when trying to navigate amongst acres and acres of brightly-coloured canvas) and – this was the best part – outstandingly comfortable camping chairs for everyone. It didn’t rain much, but when it did we dragged our armchairs inside the most giant of the tents and sat in comfort, listening contentedly to the plaintive cries of soggy anguish outside.
Alan, Chief Camp Stuff Dude, had even thought to organise for a set of walkie-talkies so that we could all stay in touch when meandering around the site and organise rendesvouses throughout each day. We had callsigns and everything, which was the awesome. They didn’t work brilliantly inside the arena, but did provide hours of fun late each evening, shouting random comments into the ether on various channels to see whom we could bewilder.
Safe and comfortable in our cosy little world, I only had to venture out into the rest of the campsite each evening to laugh at the antics of the kiddies (OLD!) playing chicken in shopping trolleys, wandering in drunken, chanting mobs and setting things alight…
… and to use the facilities, the thought of which make me shudder even now, days later. Imagine thousands of revellers, drinking themselves into stuporous sickness and eating truckloads of processed takeaway food all day, camping in the one place for a long weekend. Imagine a set of long-drop pit toilets. Oh god, the horror. As one of my Camp Blah fellows put it, “the smell just peels the skin right off your face.” The sooner I can block that particular memory, the better.
The Crowd
For all my moaning about the youngsters (OLD!), in fact they didn’t bug me too much throughout the weekend. Each day we would venture into the main arena from camp and wander from paddock to tent watching bands. In between, I would indulge in the endlessly pleasurable freakwatching that is one of my favourite aspects of mass public gatherings. Boys in tutus, girls in head-to-toe PVC despite the heat, makeup and hairdos and slogans and so much EFFORT - the uniforms of each social group clearly defining identity and creed.
I struck up conversations with a few of them. My favourite was the boy who couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, waiting patiently at the bar with a tenner in his hand. He gave his order, then turned to me and said, “Wow. Beers are expensive.”
I nodded my agreement.
“These are the first ones we’ve paid for all day, though,” he continued proudly.
“That’s some nice work,” I replied. There was a friendly pause.
“We’re honest people, though, really!” he insisted.
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” I replied. Another friendly pause, during which I looked down at his bare arm and smiled. “Where’s your wristband?”
Without missing a beat, he shot back: “Oh, SHIT! It must have fallen off when I was climbing the fence!”
In spite of such amusing encounters, crowd behaviour at concerts inevitably provides plenty of irritation. The pushing and shoving, the smug sense of entitlement of the girl sitting on her boyfriend’s shoulders, blocking everyone else’s view. The fact that everyone is so freaking TALL and they insist on standing right in front of me.
English people apparently also seem to think it is particularly hilarious to hoik their plastic cups still full of perfectly good beer as far as they can into the crowd in front of them. I sat for a while in the main paddock and watched the drinks fly from one side of the crowd to the other. No wonder they don’t serve decent beer at festivals, if no-one is actually bothering to drink it.
Most bewildering of all: the first set on the first day began at 12:05pm. The first clap-along? 12:11pm. Every single set, the whole weekend, there was the clap-along – at least once, more often five or six times. No matter how thrashy or hardcore the band, or how seriously the fans seem to take themselves, they love the fucking clap-along. It never fails to make me feel like I’ve stumbled into a cult.
The Music
Thankfully, the music made it all worthwhile. I saw many, many bands, most of whom I’d never heard of before (OLD!). I always swore I’d never lose touch – but it appears that has already happened when I wasn’t watching (you’ve changed, man). It’s a wee bit depressing.
However, I had great fun wandering from set to set, soaking up the new and exciting, revelling in that raw, tingling buzz you only get from live music loud.
I have noted that when it comes to band names, exclamation marks are in fashion: Panic! at the Disco, You Say Party! We Say Die!, ¡Forward Russia!, Captain Everything!, Against Me!. Conversations about which band to see next were unusually! animated!
Rather than review each set, I present the following non-exhaustive list:
- Bands my friend DJDJK recommended who I quite enjoyed: Giant Drag, The Metric.
- Bands who were absolutely crazy and cracked my shit up: Spank Rock, ¡Forward Russia!
- Bands who gave me a warm patriotic glow, especially while watching a sea of fists punch high into the air (ROCK!): Wolfmother
- Bands who were so much fun I couldn’t quite believe my ears: Kaiser Chiefs, The Automatic.
- Bands I had been eagerly anticipating who did not fail to impress: Primal Scream, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Broken Social Scene
- Bands I went to see because I thought I should and who were okay but not particularly memorable: Arctic Monkeys
- Bands I saw by accident and who confirmed my lack of interest in them: The Streets
- Bands I saw by accident and whose album I shall purchase this week: The Spinto Band
- Bands I saw years ago in our tiny university bar in Exeter who have become an astonishingly colossal live act: Muse
- Long-beloved bands who rocked my world anew and confirmed that the world is All About jLo by including my all-time favourite of their songs in their setlist: Belle and Sebastian (Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie), Pearl Jam (Yellow Ledbetter).
Aside from the (mighty) Pearl Jams, I think Muse will probably be my most lasting memory of the festival. It was, quite simply, a thrilling and overpowering show. I had intended to watch a song or two for old times’ sake and head off to watch Nouvelle Vague, but I couldn’t tear myself away. They were remarkable.
The End
On the last afternoon, I hit my festival wall and just couldn’t face another band. I skipped Placebo (which I know will horrify Adam Z even more than my admission in the last post that I missed Pulp last time, sorry dude!) and retired to Camp Blah to revive for a while and renew my acquaintance with Comrade Vodka. My new friend Julia and I managed to beat Comrade Vodka thoroughly about the head while solving the many problems of the world, with the result that by the time we retired back to the arena for the Pearl Jams we (well, I) was nicely toasted.
I then proceeded to cavort with abandon, shouting with delight and singing very loudly, much to the amusement of the teenaged onlookers around me.
After the spontaneous combustion of a climax recorded elsewhere, I celebrated my successful texting of the word ‘spontaneous’ while drunken by behaving very poorly back at Camp Blah, irritating (possibly even offending) as many people as possible for several hours before being kindly pointed in the direction of the South Wing and my waiting sleeping bag. Covering myself in glory, yet again.
And thus, I learned that despite appearances to the contrary, apparently when it comes to certain behaviour patterns, I’m not yet old enough.
posted by jLo at 2:09 AM
6 Comments:
Brilliant post dude. What a festival you had. I have not heard of almost any of the bands you mention, incuding the ones you knew about and intentionally went to see. But I know just what you mean about that tingling buzz that live music creates - thanks for bringing it all back from the dark corners of my aged mind....
And what's this about walkie talkies? You had walkie talkies? Forget about the music. That's my idea of a fun weekend.
Extra cash! Having fun! Thanks, anonymous. I'll have a piece of that.
Damn you, spam! Looks like it might be time to switch on that authenticator thingy. Grrr.
Geez i'm so glad that I am not alone in my failure to recognise many of the bands you saw (bless you J,the - I'm with you on the Walkie-Talkie thing too). And clearly JLo, if you are elderly and out of touch, I am the equivalent of your comparatively un-hip great grandmother. However, I have heard of! and LOVE Muse and am green with envy that I wasn't there to see them too.
Congrats on the new job too. Most excellent news.
I'm out of touch with the music.
Nice list of classifications for the bands though.
> Bands I saw years ago in our tiny university bar in Exeter who have become an astonishingly colossal live act: Muse
Very true. They seemed to be at URE all the time because Strange Martin Loved them. I think he even recorded a live session. I could have interviewed them but they seemed too dull.
The walkie-talkies were way cool.
You guys aren't the unhip, seriously, I had NO IDEA who I was seeing half the time. I'll make you a CD of my discoveries.
And Mark: DJ DJK loved them too, if I remember rightly. And I thought they were good then, but also that I had grown out of that type of music. They were really freaking good, it surprised the hell out of me.
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