Back at work.. back at home.. alone..
Alright, so I couldn't bring myself to write an Epic Festival Blog. Boo hoo, big fail. There are plenty of reasons, mind you.
A) I spent most of the festival in various degrees of intoxication.
B) Taking notes while there would have REALLY REALLY subtracted from the overall fun of the thing.
C) I don't have access to The Quote Book, which has the most amusing quotes from each Reading Festival in.
D) I spent most of the festival in various degrees of intoxication.
E) It's not like more than three people would read it anyway.
F) I SPENT MOST OF READING IN VARIOUS DEGREES OF INTOXICATION.
So instead I've decided to do what I do best: ramble!
Let’s start with some basics, shall we? I’m afraid the only examples of this year’s line-up poster I’ve been able to find have had that bloody ‘BUY NEXT YEAR’S TICKETS FOR THIS YEAR’S PRICES, FAGNUB LOL!!!!11’ thing taped over the front, so I’ve brought my line-up flyer into work. Here you go:
If you didn’t know, the big hype about this year was Friday’s headliners, Rage Against the Machine. They haven’t been seen as a band for something like eight years, so this was one seriously huge selling point for Festival Republic (the sponsors who took over from Carling and fucking BOTCHED it, I’ll rant more later), along with Sunday night’s headliners, the ever-awesome Metallica! Of course, ever the difficult one, I only really wanted to see Less Than Jake (greatest party band EVAR). Everything musical was downhill from there for me.
But we don’t do serious music reviews or news here at the Book of Odsox; just weird stuff and inane observations. And bitter ranting, of course. ;D
Now I hate going anywhere populated by myself. I don't know why, I just prefer to have an extra body there with me (probably to shove in front of oncoming crazed traffic) so how about a roll-call? In alphabetical order, too. These are the magnificent bastards who attended the festival and put up with me for five whole days:
Adam – Dumb, funny, guitarist, technically a G-list celebrity. Recently grew a Stellios-the-Paedophile beard.
Andy – Metal muso, likes to drink. Has ‘Andy Parties’ if you don’t keep an eye on him. This involves his disappearing for up to two hours then returning UNBELIEVABLY drunk.
Becky – A Lady, other half of Steve and acquaintance of James.
Bex – Spent a worrying amount of time in her tent every morning and didn’t get ruined enough! Quotes Black Books like a champion though.
Gem – The Duchess of the Festival, surrounded herself with more narcotics than Tony fucking Montana and sold balloons to kids.
Holly – Supermuso, had a bit of a freak out and threatened to rape one of the weird-looking boy stewards. (also did all the drugs)
Jam – Prince of jibbing, drummer. Drunk a lot of the boozes and wore the biggest pair of sunglasses ever. Also has a nifty MP3CD player.
James – A Gentleman who I have met previously (apparently)
Justin – Little J or Dustbin! My festival wingman and he who doth roll awesome herbal cigarettes. A fellow survivor of The Queue.
Matt – The Gay. Bless him, Matt represents Essex’ finest contribution to the Wrong’un list. (shamelesspromotion) Also opening up a new shop in Ipswich named Maraschino’s.
Mo – Man of the Match. This king of dudes got more messed up than anyone and even managed to terrify the Skins rejects who had camped a bit too close for our liking. Brilliant.
Sam – Another drummer who had a disgusting amount of effort and cheerfulness in him. Proper funny, though, and takes a seriously amusing picture.
Steve – A Gentleman, other half of Becky and acquaintance of James.
Richard - Dat’s me!
Before we go any further, I must express that at any point this blog could simply break down and stop. I’m writing about an entire five-day mash-up here, so it could go horribly wrong.
WEDNESDAY – “Sex Crime Wednesday!”
We began our journey (that’s Little J or Justin or Dustbin, depending on who’s talking to him, and I) at Colchester North Station at about 06:30 Wednesday morning, hopping on the train for the ridiculous sum of £32. Yes, Wednesday. If you get to the festival on Wednesday you can get in early for an extra tenner, plus we wanted to get a good spot.
Little did we know what was waiting for us.
The actual journey to Reading was uneventful and easy; we arrived a little after nine o’clock and started doing The Trudge from Reading station to the festival site on the Rivermead Leisure Area, lugging our bags and tent along with us. We spied the end of the queue fairly quickly as we rounded the corner by The Gorges gastropub and crossed the road by the petrol station. It was the work of a moment to dive on the end, enquire as to whether it was the right queue, then to start waiting.
Now a lot of things happened after we joined that queue. As we reached the end of the long line stretching down the road and headed into the main queueing area, we were treated to a delightful image and the first indication that Festival Republic was intent on fucking it all up for us. I’ll be honest with you, it’s difficult for me to talk about The Queue without descending into extreme profanity, shouting and flailing my arms violently. It was a bit like ‘nam. If you weren’t there, you’ll never really understand.
What was gathered in front of the Entrance sign wasn’t really a queue so much as a mob. Hundreds and hundreds of people gathered in front of this metal gate, being watched by daylgo-jacketed Scottish security guards (unsure as to why Reading’s security is usually made up of angry scots - and that’s not a generalisation; the fellows and ladies who guard Reading are usually angry people who happen to be Scottish!) and herded together like beautiful, tattooed, gum-chewing cattle.
I have reduced the 13-hour (YES 13 HOURS DON'T GET ME STARTED) saga of The Queue to a few highlights and low points, so as to spare my aching soul:
Boston.
Boston was an American fellow who thought he was a stand-up comedian, and while he held his own against the occasional ‘Shut up, yank!’ heckler, he wasn’t very good. And he never gave us any of his beer, the bastard. Yum-Yum got a beer, and he was only offering sexual favours. We had witty commentary and sweary ranting!
Legendary Graham.
About fifteen metres away from the Entrance, we noticed a sudden increase in people chanting, ‘Push him! Push him!’ and rubbernecked around to investigate. On a small hill to one side of the entrance, some poor schmuck had passed out drunk on his bag and was lying at the top of the hill with one very cheeky-looking security guard standing behind him, one foot held above Graham’s back. A quick nudge sent poor Graham tumbling down a few feet before he gained his bearings. The crowd suddenly went mad for entertainment (anything to relieve the soul-crushing boredom of The Queue) and proceeded to chant Graham into doing several very silly things such as stripping, dancing and downing booze, though he seemed quite pleased with all the attention.
‘Let’s Go Murphys!’
Every half an hour or so we heard someone doing the Dropkick Murphys chant. It always got a response, either slack or enthusiastic, but it always got a response.
Angry Mob.
After queuing for approximately ten hours we saw the little box where THREE (count ‘em) people were trying to serve the now THOUSANDS of people queuing. After the crowd began to rally a bit, a chant of ‘LET US IN! LET US IN!’ was taken up, followed by railing at the security guards, flinging fences over, throwing apples at the Box Offices and generally being seriously pissed off. The excitement died down a bit though, what with everyone realising the futility of it all and succumbing to the miasma of despair.
‘Would you guys like some Haribo?’
My personal favourite, this. We’d been in The Queue for approximately twelve hours by this point. We’d been crushed, pushed, sworn at, gotten spattered with beer and water, been driven nearly insane by the rate of movement (one metre every forty-five minutes with sporadic variation) and gotten a glimpse of horror when the crowd squashed itself against the metal fencing to beg for water from the guards, so we weren’t in a spectacularly brilliant mood. There wasn’t enough room to skin up, we’d taken the easy route and decided not to bring any alcohol with us, and even if I’d brought it with me I don’t think I would have risked my Nintendo DS in that crowd.
So when the pretty young lady in the green hoodie turned around with a smile and asked if we’d like some Haribo, the break from the depression of the Queue was like a happy beam of light in a cloud of despair. That was the best damn jelly heart I’ve ever eaten. She introduced herself as Heidi, and from that point things got a bit better.
It was starting to get dark, and after sending Little J out to do a quick reccy, we discovered that there was another, MUCH FASTER line that had opened up just twenty metres behind us. Needless to say, we joined it pretty sharpish. This was an amazing relief from the misery of The Queue. There was room to swing a cat (and more importantly, skin up!) and we soon got down to friendly, chatty, smoky banter with the few people around us, including young Heidi, who exceeded all expectations by revealing a pack of shortbread biscuits OM NOM NOM NOM and being a cheerful smoker herself!
And eventually, we arrived at the Wristband Exchange. I cannot express the joy that flooded through me when the lady behind the stall clamped the metal lock down onto the ‘READING WEEKEND 08’ fabric wristband around my left arm. After that it was a case of finding the campsite, setting up and getting wasted, which we did with abandon.
THURSDAY – “RAPE YOU!”
Beer for breakfast OHYEH, that and a herbal cigarette. And pleading with the others not to do any more classy stuff before noon. Don’t know why I bother, they’re shameless and disgraceful creatures. I hope they never change. :D
About an hour after I’d joined the campsite for the morning, Holly emerged from her tent. Now Holly isn’t exactly what you’d call a morning person, much less a people person (by the standard definition, anyway), so when her arrival coincided with the appearance of two festival Greenies (which is how I shall refer to ‘them buggers that give you bags and tell you to pick up your rubbish so you can get a beer’, it was fairly obvious that she was going to Happen to them.
But not before Mo beat her to it! After explaining the idea to young Mo, the idea being that you fill up a bag with cans, take it to the stewards and get a beer OR fill up a bag with squashed cans and get three beers, Mo had them explain it again.
And again.
And again.
All the while, the male Greenie, who was a lanky, blonde, effeminate type, was trying weakly to explain the concept to Holly, who is above all else a festival veteran and definitely knew more than he did about the entire shebang. Holly’s responses were growing more and more vitriolic, culminating in a yelled response to an innocent question.
The blonde Greenie (whose companion was STILL attempting to slake Mo’s thirst for knowledge on the intricacies of beer-can collecting) asked, ‘Do you know how you can get more money?’, to which Holly’s response was swift and loud.
‘RAPE YOU!’
Holly assures me that she’d meant to shout ‘mug you’, but what with having only just woken up, she wasn’t fully in gear.
Needless to say the Greenies cleared off shortly after that.
I was also forced on an Epic Journey to Tescos this day, accompanied by a stoic (and classy) Gem and Mo, because I'd brought everything with me except booze, bog roll and t-shirts.
WE WENT ON A BOAT. IT WAS AWESOME.
The double-decker boat the festival organisers had commissioned to shuttle festival-goers between campsites and town was a raggedy old thing which had all of its furniture and accessories shuffled away and replaced by a top-deck DJ, shedloads of speakers and a dancefloor on the lower deck! It was too early to be dancing, however, so we stood at the fore watching the army of swans along the Thames and shouting at people on the riverbank. My companions weren't really in any state to be in civilised company, as I found out when I left them on guard by my shopping trolley while I nipped back and got some extra crap, only to find them wailing 'There you are! Never leave us again! It went wrong without you!' on my return.
We splurged on a taxi back to the festival, which was a fantastic idea, even if I do say so myself.
As I recall, the rest of Thursday consisted of the simple joys that come with Festivals, ie getting completely wasted before noon (oh yes, we were) and messing about at the campsite before all them other buggers turned up. It was great. And there were many.. many.. balloons.
For the unenlightened among you, balloons are what I like to think of as fun drugs. Now don’t take that the wrong way, I’m as against the use of heavy narcotics or excessive use of any narcotic like any sane person.
But balloons are fun, AS LONG AS THEY’RE TAKEN PROPERLY.
Thursday was also the day Adam and Andy arrived to fulfil our Essex quota and set up their pop-up tent, the cheeky sods. Their arrival was somewhat epic, seeing as they got drunk over the course of five hours while searching for the correct campsite.
I think six or so of us were seated around the campsite, just chilling. All of a sudden, from off in the distance, we heard a noise..
“Ooooooooiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!”
Being Essex-in-the-vein, both myself and Gemma instantly responded.
“OOOOOOOOIIIIIIIII!!!”
We were rewarded with another questing call.
“Oooooooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiii!!!”
This time the whole camp joined in.
“OOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!”
And then Adam strolled around a tent, lugging his packed up tent and an open can of Carlsberg to raucous applause and many sweary greetings. That Essex Introduction was probably one of my favourite festival moments ever (though as I found out recently, it turns out the ORIGINAL OI wasn't actually Adam. ..nevermind, he stole it pretty well!)
As I recall, the rest of that Thursday ended up devolving into another giant mash-up, although many of us got to bed early for bands the next day! EEEEE!
PART THREE: FRIDAY – “Rage who?”
Okay, now what you'll need to understand here is that a LOT of the actual festival day time (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) was devoted to watching and listening to bands, and because I don't trust myself to do music reviews properly (I just LOVE music, I don't LIVE it) the following entries might be a bit garbled or short.
Everyone was up bright and early on Friday, well, either that or they just hadn't slept, and most of the campsite was raring to go. I started my day as I usually do when at festivals, with a beer and a herbal cigarette, and was very pleased to see most of the others doing something similar.
One of the greatest things about Reading is the way everyone gathers together in the camp and just talks for ages. We'd gotten a couple of programmes and timetables between us, as well as downloaded Clash Finders from the online festival forums, so the air was full of profanity, smoke and IWANNASEE sentences. No-one seemed too bothered about Anti-Flag's first showing (they played twice on Friday!) or any bands until The Loved Ones on the Radio 1 Lock-Up Stage. Best stage EVAR by the way, the Lock-Up is the usual haunt of the punk and serious rock bands, with some metal or just weirdness mixed in for variation. TLO played amazingly well and brought a real burst of energy on stage with them, especially the lead singer. We were standing off to the side of the tent with a good view of the stage, and set up a minicamp where Gem held court, even going so far as to begin her odd habit of 'nesting'.
I trundled off to do a food (which I believe I eventually gave up on) and came back for the last part of Dizzee Rascal's set. Man but that dude knows how to work a crowd! Normally one would think that a 'ip-'op artist like Dizzee would be bottled or booed, but he got an awesome response from the main stage and got the crowd jumping. Most of us reconvened at the Main Stage to watch Serj Tankian, and he started out okay, but seeing as my memory gets a bit.. I'll be honest, completely fucking blank at that stage, I'll assume he turned out to be a bit shit and we ended up getting wasted instead.
There was a lot of mucking about in the line-up over the weekend, and I'd been told earlier that Less Than Jake (Friday's Lock-Up Stage headliners) had been dropped to second place so Pennywise were going to be on last. It was a bit of a kick in the nuts, but hey, it meant I got to see LTJ earlier, right?
Anyway, Goldfinger were the next band I saw, and they were great. Trumpets and guitars, if you've never heard any Goldfinger, I highly recommend you downlo- I mean legitimately acquire their back catalogue. They were good fun, and here's a little hint of the sense of community and eclectic taste you'll find at Reading: During their set, Goldfinger played one of their most well-recognised songs, Superman. I was stood near the back with a good view, behind a little skinhead chavvy fellow in a Nike hoodie and tracksuit bottoms (who we will call Terry) and a lanky goth fellow stood next to him looking miserable (and we'll call him Dave). About halfway through Superman, I noticed Terry bobbing his head and singing all the words with a big grin. Dave looked a bit worried, and he caught Terry's eye. Oho, I thought, this should be good. Then, with an even bigger grin, Terry says to Dave (or at least mouthed the words, it was VERY loud in that tent), 'You don't know this one? Oh mate! It's brilliant!'.
You know, that cheered me up immensely. I was already quite cheery, but that little snippet really made my day. Goldfinger closed with the all-German version of Nena's 99 Red Ballooons, which was spectacular even though I was half-mumbling along and embarassing myself.
Next up.. Pennywise!? What the..
Yes, it turned out that the rumour about LTJ dropping a place was just that. I was surprised but also very very pleased, so much so that I enjoyed all of the politico-punk band's set, even shouting out for a few requested tracks before the end (listen to Greed, it's excellent). The band themselves seemed a tad bit lacklustre, a bit too serious, although that may have been just my opinion. Anyway, they played really well and closed efficiently.
ON TO THE JAKE.
People began pouring out of the tent, off to the Main Stage to see Rage Against the Machine. More fool them (incidentally, RATM refused to allow any of their gig to be televised. That’ll show Thatcher, right kids?!). Gem, Adam and I (I can't remember who else stayed because we were all classy at the time - what a good idea!) marched forward into the scrum, ending up about five people away from the barriers. So good SOOOOO GOOD. Adam, who like myself recently purchased LTJ's new album, LTJ GNV FLA, which is an abbreviation of the band's hometown of Gainesville Florida, was as excited as Gem and I, and we were chatting and discussing what songs we thought they'd play from the new set and which old numbers they'd go for. I was desperate to hear Does the Lion City Still Roar?, Handshake Meet Pokerface and Golden Age of My Negativity from the new album, and to be honest anything they played would have been amazing.
A sudden blare of trumpets and the opening to Lion City.. heralded the band’s arrival and they leaped onto the stage, resplendent in the spotlights. Gem handed us glowsticks and we set about skanking as hard as possible.
As per usual, LTJ played a blinding set, interspersing their unbelievably catchy sound with stupid jokes and ridiculous dress-up games. I managed to make eye contact once or twice, which I’ll admit made my inner fanboy happy in the scrotal region. The Jake were on top form, their crowd of rabid fans laughing and happy in the intimacy of the Lock-Up Stage. They stormed through a couple of new numbers, and certainly surprised me by playing old tunes Dopeman and How’s My Driving, Doug Hastings?. Only semi-mainstream hit All My Best Friends Are Metalheads was devoted to Rage Against The Machine, whose crowd had stretched all the way to the back of the Lock-Up Stage! LTJ encourage crowd participation at their gigs, one of the many reasons they’re just so much fun to watch, and hauled a couple of awkward-looking teens on stage to dance.
To be honest, the gig was too good to describe without using wild gesticulation and raised voices, but the band brought their set to a thunderous close with the song that brought them millions of fans in the mid-noughties, rock-club hit Gainesville, Rock City, again named after their hometown.
After the band closed up and filtered off stage, we lingered for a while, still classy and fiddling with glowsticks, chanting along with a small crowd for an encore.
Sadly there was no encore, but that performance was the best I saw all weekend, and (musically at least) it was all downhill for me afterwards.
SATURDAY: “I can’t even take it back ‘cause it’s full of bloody spoons!”
Bloody hell but it was hot Saturday morning. I emerged from my ten at about tennish, to find Adam passed out in one of the campsite chairs wearing about four layers of clothing and a blanket. Evidently he’d gotten even classier after I went to bed Friday night. The majority of Saturday morning, long associated with the phrase, ‘Shit Indie Day’, was spent lazing around the campsite because there are never any decent bands on before about five o’clock. However, several members of the group left to go and see new fish Random Hand open up the Lock-Up Stage, as well as Hi-Fi Hand Grenades who, I’m assured, are rather good.
I for one didn’t give a toss for any of the bands on before Flogging Molly, an awesome Irish punk band who I must have seen going on eight times now. I seem to recall slumping in my chair with a can of beer and a herbal cigarette again, when young Jam emerged with his MP3 player and proceeded to alter my views on bands I’ve never listened to.
Ever heard of Frank Turner? He used to be the frontman for a band called Million Dead (cheery title, isn’t it?) but became a solo artist a little while ago. It turns out that he’s one of the best singer-songwriters EVER. Jam, Mo, Dustbin, Gem (I think), the still comatose Adam and I did some serious chillaxing that morning. Eventually the time for bands rolled around, and after a delightfully short trip to the arena (probably the best recurring thing about the entire festival… although the beer was good, TUBORG FTW) we, that is to say Gem, Dustbin and I, got to the Lock-Up Stage just in time. We set up another of our impressive minicamps and got down to listening to some Oirish Punk Rawk. Thanks to the heat, mind you, I ended up blanking out for most of the afternoon, and honestly can’t remember anything after about halfway through the Flogging Molly gig.
Which implies that it was a brilliant night, surely.
Alright, alright, I vaguely recall heading over to White Campsite at some point, which involved a lot of walking and.. oh yes! That’s what was wrong! I was having a bit of a weird night myself, I remember everyone else being classy or drunk, but there was something strange about that one for me. I wasn’t having enough fun. We picked up some of Gem’s balloons and we WENT ON A BOAT AGAIN! Man did I love going on the boat.
SUNDAY – “METALLICA SUNDAY!”
This was it. Sunday. The final day of the festival. Fuck but the time flies past at Reading. This was New Year’s Eve for a few of us, me included, so tonight was going to have to be messy as anything.
But first - !
Sunday morning started out as being a fairly dour affair, what with everyone realising that it was the final day, but the atmosphere soon picked up as most of us remembered that the selling point of Sunday was the fact that everyone gets beyond ruined after all the bands finish. We got off to a good start after that, getting through several beers and other, more dubious drinks (props to Gem’s dad for gifting us with two bottles of his homemade wine – lovely stuff if you don’t mind stripping all the enamel off of your teeth) along with several balloons. If I recall, most of the camp was pretty classy before noon. We’d decided to head in to the arena early and set up camp at the main stage, in our time-honoured Sunday tradition. We made a rather impressive set this year, with something like ten festival chairs, a couple of blankets doing the rounds, plenty of booze, herbal cigarettes and classy people.
First up on our personal bill was the Plain White T’s, who only needed to play Delilah so that Gem could have a stoner-moment, apparently. I vaguely recall them being somewhat interesting to listen to, albeit a bit boring. Still, the sound wasn’t too good and I was very distracted by my sketchbook.
The Dropkick Murphys were up next and they came out the way they always do, opening their set with Sinead O’Connor and the Chieftains’ version of Foggy Dew, which is one of my favourite songs at the moment. What with the state of affairs being incredibly classy amongst our little circle, all I can really remember about most of the gig was that it was really good and everyone was enjoying themselves.
Around about here we had something of a schism in the group, which had split up earlier. Young Jam, along with Mo, Holly, Matt and several of the others, had gorn orf to the right hand side of the stage and set up their minicamp between the big view screen toward the back of the crowd (provided for people who for various reasons can’t get to the front) and the far side of the crowd. After some debate, which mainly consisted of ‘I don’t wanna move, I’m too wasted’ and then broke down into ‘Okay, okay, but you first’, our little group sidled over to join the others.
This turned out to be a brilliant idea.
As the group gelled together again, the next few hours became a cheerful, overly happy blur. We met up with our festival companion from the past few years, a mysterious fellow only ever known as Hash Fudge Man. And that’s true, by the way. Because we set up our minicamp in virtually the same place every year for the past five years, HFM naturally gravitates toward our position because he knows what good customers we are. We’ve honestly never found out his name. This year he provided us with plentiful bounty and stayed for a quick chat before bidding us another very fond farewell and promising to meet up with us again next year. Hash Fudge Man is one of the constantly brilliant moments of the festival.
We’d formed a great, two-row semicircle by this point and as Feeder took to the stage there were plenty of herbal cigarettes making the rounds.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Feeder, or even seen them live. They’re a firm festival favourite though, seeing as they play just about every festival EVERY BLOODY YEAR.
This shouldn’t be held against them, however, rather it should be praised as one of their virtues.
Thanks to being passed a particularly herbal cigarette during the idle of the set, young Mo left the rest of the festival behind for a while as he had a Moment. Festival Moments are a very special thing, and should be savoured by anyone who manages to have one. Mo looked like he was having a fantastic time, chewing his face and spacing out, singing along.
Now, according to the line up oop thur ^^^ Slipknot were on after Feeder, which would have been pretty bad for me, following up mellowish indie rock with shouty hardcore death metal and a bunch of twats in masks, but instead we were treated to a band who’d originally been billed as first up; Mindless Self Indulgence. Fronted by a fellow who refers to himself as Jimmy Urine, I can only sum up their live performance one way.
It was complete bollocks. They were noisy rather than musical, looked as though they were trying far too hard with their make up and fancy outfits and elaborate hair, and Mr. Urine was a prize prick for the entire set. I’ve never seen such a total wanker fronting a band before and I’ve seen 50 Cent.
So that was an hour or so of getting REALLY classy because the music was too awful to stand.
(as a side note, I would like to point out that MSI’s recorded albums are really quite good; it’s just their live stuff that appears to be shite)
About midway through their set, however, I was treated to a very nice egotistic moment when my sketchbook was borrowed by two completely wasted young ladies, probably jailbait, and stared at. I was doodling in Gem’s notebook at this point (she’d been writing something in mine, see what we did there?), so I listened to the girls making oohs and ahs, interspersing their mumbling with the occasional ‘WHOAH THAT’S NUTS’ or ‘Eeeeuuuurrrgh, what’s THAT?’ and was very, very pleased when they returned the book, telling me what an amazing collection it was. I can’t say I valued their opinion too much, what with them being fucked on goodness knows what at the time, but it’s always nice to receive a compliment, innit?
After the debacle of Mindless Self Indulgence, the entire crowd had suddenly gotten an awful lot bigger, and as the banner was drawn up at the back of the Main Stage, I realised why.
Have you ever heard of Tenacious D?
That’s right, Tenacious D. And their set was a STORMER. I really can’t describe how brilliant it was, but I will give you a couple of buzzword highlights.
“God damn it, Kyle, I told you we were dressing as WIZARDS!!” – Jack Black in a cloak, on guitarist Kyle Gass’ cartoon lizard costume.
THE METAL!!!
A brilliant reprise of the Rock Off versus the Devil from the climax of the band’s infamous comedy musical, Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, complete with snappily-dressed Satan.
“Man, that’s a slow-ass train. Let’s rock that train, speed the fucker up. Ready?” – Jack Black, shortly before leading the band in an amazing impromptu rock song aimed AT the train which passed by the festival very, very slowly.
Eventually The D closed their set with arguably their most well-recognised song, Tribute, which of course EVERYONE sang along with. The lights stopped whirling and the between-set videos fired up on the gigantic screens flanking the stage. As the crowd somehow became even more tightly-packed and agitated,the subject of discussion moved on: Metallica were on next.
I’ve seen Metallica before. I saw them a couple of years ago, headlining on Sunday, just like this year. They were awesome then, and it was highly likely they were going to be awesome this evening.
But I wouldn’t really know because I buggered off about three songs in!
AHAHAHAHAHA! XD
That’s right! My feet were KILLING me from all the walking of the weekend so I decided I’d rather go back to the campsite and get really REALLY ruined for the final night’s festivities rather than hang around, watch a band who I admittedly like but don’t by any means love and then get caught in the utter crush that accompanies Sunday night’s arena evacuation.
Back at the campsite we made FIRE! Well, Justin made fire and I admired the flames and kept ‘em fuelled while toying with the edges of the firepit using my shoe.
And then we got really classy.
At about 2AM, Gem, Mo and I decided that we should go on a final wander in order to flog as many of Gem’s remaining balloons as possible. While we suffered an EPIC FAIL in that department, we did nonetheless have an awesome wander. Mo and I Happened to several unfortunates, and I had the forethought to take my “I HATE IT HERE.” Satchel with me, loaded down with spare beers.
Awesome.
We saw many amusing sights on that wander. We ran into and chatted to groups of people far, FAR more wasted than us, made snide remarks about security (because let’s face it: they might do a good job but they’ve come to expect it) and got completely terrified by some of the other campers.
Hm? Terrified, yes! Honestly got a bit sketchy at one point during the wander, as we arrived in Green Camp only to discover that the fuckers had gone tribal!
We rounded the corner into Green, having heard the massive clamour set up by a ton of people bashing metal onto metal indiscriminately, and were met by the utterly devastated Green Toilets, which sat forlornly in a cesspool of mud and less savoury substances, it’s doors and frame wrecked and warped by fire and destruction. A nearby campfire lit the scene as sixty or so people swung bits of toilet at a pile of refuse, making what had sounded like tribal drumming when a mile or so away but up close resembled nothing less than full-on noise. These people were mud-stained, wearing scraps of festival clothing, some of them wore dayglo paint or stupid hats, but all of them were hooting and shouting while slamming metal onto metal.
We made our way past fairly quickly and trotted back to the relative safety of Yellow Camp and our campsite, where Mo proceeded to Happen to just about everyone, including the camp of twelve-year old Skins rejects that, according to some of our lot, had access to far classier bitz than what would have been considered the norm for a gang of adolescent indie kids. The drinking went on until the wee hours, or so I’m told. At one stage we were treated to a satosfying BOOM in the distance, and everyone shot out of their chairs like meerkats to inspect the orange glow off to the South. The toilets were on fire. And quite impressive they were too.
I threw in my towel at the reasonable time of 4AM, with the aim of being up and packed by maybe eight the next day.
BOOO BOOOO WRONG BOOOO
The next morning was spent tidying up the tent, getting as classy as possible before having to go home (well, those of us who didn’t need to drive, anyway) and trying not to break down in tears because we were forced to go home.
So after wishing everyone a Happy New Year, I followed young Dustbin and our impromptu chauffeur, Adam, back to the White Camp car park, in order to begin the long, lazy journey home.
It was a good one, and by far the longest amount of time I’ve spent chatting to Adam for about three months, which was good fun. We listened to a shedload of music while young Justin lazed on the backseat, and only interrupted our homeward trek for the traditional stop at South Mimms services, and Burger King OM NOM NOM NOM!
And here I am.
Obviously I’ve missed out an absolute shedload of information and it’s highly likely that some of my info is messed up as it is. I’ll excuse myself from too much responsibility by mentioning once again that I was VERY VERY RUINED for most of the weekend.
Right, now I’m completely bloody knackered, so I’m going to finish my coffee and get back to work, if you’d be so kind as to let me rest my aching fingers.
Well go on, bugger off!
Love, Odsox.
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