The saying goes that you can never have too much of a good thing. And I’m a sucker for sayings. So in my over-enthusiasm for music and writing, my diary at work often looked something like this over the summer; three gigs and two festivals in fourteen days, enjoying the company of 240,000 people in the process; nearly a quarter of a million people who loved music and beer as much as me. Not bad for someone who claimed they didn’t like crowds…
Here are some cheeky bits that didn’t make it to print…
Lounge on the Farm Festival- Kent
Armed with a pop up tent and a crate of cider, I was prepared to loose my camping virginity. Yes, I am twenty-three years old and had never been camping before. I don’t know how I feel about a serious lack of showering facilities but I do know how I feel about portaloos, and more importantly, suffering a hangover without the comfort of carbohydrates and a box set of House. But hay ho duty calls.
My and my friend affectionately named ‘Foogasey’ headed off to Kent Saturday morning, the name Foogasey originating from a holiday together aged 16 where we met a group of shaved-headed scousers in the villa up the road to us, who apart from spending their entire holiday stoned (and flying home early when their stash ran out) called eachother ‘foogasey’ constantly in a strong Liverpudlian accent. It’s funny how when you’re a teenage girl, the bigger the idiot and the lower the IQ, the more wildly attractive a guy appears to be. (My mum would argue here that despite no longer being a teenage girl, my dating history shows not much has changed..)
I don’t think even to this day me and my friend have any idea what that word means-but it has been our nickname for each other ever since.
Anyway, back in a field in Kent, after traipsing through the grass finding a spot, we somehow manage to park our tent in what seems to be a subconscious walkway; even though it was definitely not on any official path, the tents plotted in such a fashion that everybody seemed to walk straight into ours. After the 18th person tripped over the string attaching my Tesco tent to the mud, I enquired as to what, if you don’t mind, is the godamn problem? A woozy teenager scratched his head thoughtfully and then said helpfully- “You know what it is? This tent wasn’t here yesterday.”
There you go guys, your first piece of advice when it comes to festival camping, don’t arrive on the Saturday, arrive on the Friday- because otherwise people will have cemented their field map in their minds and the amount of alcohol that’s consumed means that regardless of the fact that your tent is bright purple, people will simply not see it.
Me and my Foogasey proceeded to drink an entire crate of cider before moving on to the VIP tent, listening to Katy B, Ellie Goulding and Example play live out on the grass. This particular area was full of very suave looking people in fashionable ray bans and wellington boots that were obviously far too expensive to really be for mud, one particular fellow lounging on the grass like a Greek at a feast waiting to be fed grapes, sporting instead of a toga, the welly/rayban combo. He tells me casually as he smokes a cigar (what kind of festival is this?) that he works for the Mercury prize, but is leaving the music industry to become a pub landlord.
“Why?”
“Because people can’t download pints for free,” he says mournfully.
As the sun sets, me and my Foogasey proceed to ‘the cow shed’ which is literally just that- a huge barn that was built for raving, dubstep and drum’n’bass pulsating into a heaving crowd and we dance like the sun will never rise, sweating like its an aerobics marathon, and not caring at all. We stagger back in the dark, now hoping we will indeed fall upon our tent the way 25 thousand other people no doubt have done during the evening, and we end up being momentarily distracted, ‘planking’ on bails of hay and eating late night burgers and wondering why didn’t we buy more cider?
***
Waking up in a hot, sweaty tent with a stinking hangover was officially on the list of one of the most horrific mornings of.my.life. Do you know how early the sun rises in the summer months? Damn early I’ll tell you, a fact I was blissfully ignorant of until I had the pleasure of sleeping in a florescent synthetic bubble which was rather like being in a plastic pocket in a microwave- but instead of a spag bol churning inside, it was two Essex girls churning full of cider and rum.
So apparently this is the deal with festivals- you’re expected to get up hungover, early, deal with the hangover with no comfort and most importantly no shower or hot running water and a portaloo so full I could smell it before I saw it. And then you want me to start drinking alcohol again? I’m going to say here that I don’t care what you think of me after reading the next paragrapgh. I stand by my hangover-fulled decision.
“Foogasey- lets rock and rolla.” We discarded our tent- or sweatfest 2011- into the nearest bin after discovering the bugger was not quite as easy to fold back up as it was to pop out. We then jumped into my buddy’s air-conditioned vehicle and went off to Burger King. And then we went home. I don’t do camping Foogasey.
Foo Fighters, Milton Keynes Bowl
It seemed to be a bit of a running joke that I was a gig reviewer afraid of crowds, a city girl terrified of the tube, but one of our gang that fine day was a scaffolder afraid of heights; I couldn’t quite tell whether this made me feel better, or just feel a little bit sorry for the pair of us.
I probed him for some pearls of wisdom- at one point his feet wouldn’t leave the ground (making his job slightly difficult I imaged) but now he was at top of buildings on a daily basis. What did he do to make the fear go away?? When did it go? Somehow I didn’t think he was going to give me a date for the calendar, but I wanted to know that one day, however far in the future, that goblin clinging to my ankles who pulls me to my knees more frequently than I would like to admit, one day he would be gone and my life would be mine again without me subconsciously checking at every corner whether he was lurking in there, waiting to get to get me.
The scaffolder thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. “Eventually, it just went away. You just have to get on with it don’t you. After a while, because I had to, eventually it got a bit better, and now, it’s just ok.
Great.
I think that although not quite the answer I was hoping for, there was an important slice of wisdom underneath the shrug of his shoulders. No one else can help you or give you the answer- there isn’t enough valium, diazepam, any of the pams to make whatever your problem is go away. The hardest advice, but the only advice is that no matter what it is that is causing you to suffer, you have to face it, head on, over and over and over. And if you can do that, regardless of how completely shit it feels, eventually you see that fear is nothing. I mean that logically- it has no weight or form, it has no substance apart from what you feed it yourself, and you feed it in avoiding it.
At the top of a building or in the depth of anxiety and depression, if you just keep ploughing on into it and simply refuse to give it an inch of your life, one day you’ll see that that goblin clinging around your ankles isn’t there at all.
But for now he is here, he’s amongst the 70,000 people in Milton Keynes despite the sunshine because he never strays far from me no matter where I run. But I loose him in the songs and the atmosphere, and for a while, all I hear is the music.
***
Rock concerts have this strange ability to make me fall in love with men that usually I would recommend to take a shower before I let them anywhere near me. The lead singer of the day’s supporting act- Biffy Cyro- being a prime example here, having me utterly entranced with the killer combo of A. playing the guitar, B. blue eyes and tattoos and C. well, being a rock star. Rock concerts also have the ability to bring out the inner rocker in even the most reserved of us, the guys in our little gang having ripped shirts and bandanas round their head by the end of the evening. One of them was going two days in a row, and was starting this marathon with a mammoth hangover- throwing up in the cab on the way to Milton Keynes. He was so green he possibly was from Mars and I marvelled at his love of for this band that he was going to put himself through this, but when in doubt, drink, and it wasn’t long before he was bouncing around like the rest of us.
Milton Keynes is quite simply, a glorious venue. It’s like sitting in God’s cereal bowl, sunshine pouring in, space to sit on the grass, Biffy Cyro, Death Cab for Cutie and the unbeatable Foo Fighters completely taking over my life from 1pm-1am.
The most important thing I learnt that fine day was the importance of the mosh pit- a rite of passage in the world of live music. I was slightly unsure if mosh-pitting with rock fans was maybe a slightly ambitious one to tick off my anxiety list, but the boys would stride forward disappearing to the front returning a few songs later breathless, gleaming with sweat and bruises but most importantly- beaming. Smiles radiating as they explained to me that mosh-pitting was the only way to enjoy a gig- to throw yourself around, loose yourself in the music (and other fans) and not worry about the bones being smashed to pieces beneath your skin. A few buckets of cider served as dutch courage and with the atmosphere being so delicious in its fever and excitement, I heard myself say- yeh, why not- wait for meeeee!
Well, I must report that I rocked the socks off that mosh pitt- apart from that fact my 8-day old camera was smashed to smithereens. I was smashed to smithereens. But mosh pitting is good stuff guys. Its like a friendly punch up- everyone picks each other up, friendly rock-loving strangers peeling me off the floor as I tumbled and ran and threw myself around the tight tornado that had formed 20 metres from the stage, Dave Grohl so close he could almost definitely catch the kisses I was blowing at him (if he would stop tossing his hair around for a second.)
“Dude- we forgot to eat!” It was 3am and our bodies were running solely on large plastic cups of cider by this point, my Weetabix at 10am being a long time ago. Our exasperated cabbie had nearly lost the will to live looking for us among the thousands of drunk and tired fans taking into consideration that Milton Keynes consists of nothing but roundabout after roundabout and in our collective state of merry dishevelment the only directions for him to find us was- “We’re at a roundabout! We’re at a damn round about! Where are you?”
To which he consistently replied: “I’m at a roundabout!”
Finally united we then hit the most ridiculous traffic with road works on the M something mixed with 70,000 rock fans dispersing.
“Mr cab driver, how many miles to go?” I asked hopefully as we went along at a pace that would make snails look like Formula One cars.
“Fifty seven.” He mumbled. I tossed and turned, hitting the uncomfortable point between drunkenness and sobriety that usually you go through while sleeping, waking up with the finished product of a hangover without having to live through the transition aswell. I dozed fitfully, waking up 45minutes later.
“Mr cab driver, how many miles to go now?”
“Fifty six.”
Are you freaking kidding me!? My bladder screamed. I suddenly had a startlingly clear epiphany- we were going to die of old age in that cab.
Four and half hours later at 6am with the early morning sunshine breaking through, I crawled into bed, my ears still ringing, my jaw aching from all the smiling and yelling for 16hours. Best.gig.ever.
Professor Green- Somerset House
Somerset House by the River Thames on a warm summers evening, a cheeky bit of VIP and a large alcoholic beverage is a pretty agreeable combination for a Thursday, or at least it would be without the bonus of an annoying male chewing your ear off so you can’t actually pay attention to what’s going on up on stage…
The amount of bollocks this guy has in terms of confidence whilst talking to me, grows exactly in proportion to how much shit he’s shovelled up his nose. Now without launching into an anti drugs tirade here, you have to admit, the white stuff does seem to make even the most moronic of men suddenly think they’re a bit of a Casanova. ‘A whiff of the white does not a good looking bloke make.’ Shakespeare, I’m sure, would agree.
I’m doing my best to use the subtle art of body language to show this gentleman I would love him to sod off so I can enjoy the gig, considering I don’t know who he is and he’s spitting on my face as he talks, his jaw about to come off its hinge as if chewing something invisible.
“Did I tell you I just got back from Malia on Sunday?”
Oh dear.
I get a full and detailed account of this trip that leaves me wanting to take a shower when suddenly he drops what I think is supposed to be the winning ticket in his wooing technique;
“I work for Barclays Capital.” He stops for dramatic effect. “Yep, yep you’re right, I am indeed a banker boy.”
Dear god. He actually used those words, and then, smoothing his suit jacket with his palms, he winked at me.
Mate, a wally is a wally, regardless of how you dress it up. He had apparently followed the expected rites of passage- boys holiday to a shitty resort, sex, STDs, cheap drugs, dirty hangovers, dull job title- but I wasn’t quite convinced that the final product was a man worth being spat on for an evening. He was still grinning gormlessly at me, apparently not noticing that I hadn’t even remotely participated in the last 20 minutes of the conversation, with even Professor Green fighting to be heard over this boys insistent waffling. I don’t think he could see the words ‘loosing’ and ‘battle’ floating in the air, but to be fair, it wasn’t so much a loosing battle as it was the battlefield after Mel Gibson had dropped his Scottish-ass over it Braveheart style.
Bye Bye banker boy.
-Oh, and Professor Green was really good by the way.
Thursday 20 October 2011
Sunday 2 October 2011
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: Music Related Life and Encounters
(Part 1)
Writing breathes life when it contains something that means something to the person holding the pen, and so having the opportunity to review and write about some of the best artists has been a bucket of fun but not always suitable for print.... Here are just a few of the highlights - the stuff that didn’t make into The Independent…
It’s probably important to take into consideration before we enter this music filled world, that before I got this job, I had never been to a gig. Not that I wasn’t a fan of all things music. But to say I was not a fan of crowds was possibly an understatement in a much longer story (For another day.) More and more with this job I seemed to place myself in front of things that I thought I couldn’t do; tubes, crowds, lifts, trains- any crowded small spaces, which seemed nothing short of unfortunate and downright exhausting, until I can across this paragraph one day;
‘We attract that which we fear most into our lives, so we may know what our fears are, face them, and master them.’
Diana Cooper
* * *
David Guetta- Brixton Academy
Brixton, from whichever angle it’s looked at, is just not somewhere I think I want to live. Ever. I don’t quite know how to go about describing this infamous part of London without slipping into stereotypes or regurgitated opinions, but there was a sharps bin in the porta-loo toilets of the Wetherspoons- and so I think that probably sums it up.
The streets this particular warm evening were lined with people covered in neon paint and very little clothes- a slice of Malia/ Falaraki or whichever Brit-endorsed island takes your fancy, heading for one place- Brixton academy to worship the DJ-ing legend that is Mr Guetta.
Inside was a hot sweaty jungle, thousands upon thousands of bodies dancing as if that Saturday night was to be the final sunset, the body heat radiating to such a temperature that it could be felt from the entrance, you could barely move inside without being covered in someone else’s sweat. This happened to be the exact combination of elements that would usually have me running in the opposite direction.
But I couldn’t write a review from outside. So beer in hand- off I plunged into the jungle.
And oh what a jungle. The best way to describe this gig would be somewhere along the line of it being the love-child of a passionate affair between Las Vegas and Ibiza in the height of the season, with a light show behind the decks that was like Disneyland on drugs mixed with Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory on an LSD trip. This was music, when it completely engulfs you, when it’s the only thing that matters, when you can’t remember your own name and don’t even want to and when pitching up a tent and living in Brixton academy forever sounds like your vocation.
The best thing about David Guetta when you see him live is his facial expressions when he’s DJing. He looks so ecstatic at the music he is playing, looking up wide-eyed from the decks with such delight to see a collection of random party lovers enjoying the music he’s passionate about. There’s something very genuine about the blonde Frenchman, a man so in demand by every musician in the charts, he’s moulded pop into an entirely new dance genre that the mainstream are lapping up by the gallon.
Down in Brixton, he climbed onto the decks, arms spread wide, almost Jesus-like with the florescent glow of lights behind him raving away. Somehow I managed to get the Phrase ‘Guetta is God’ into my review. And they printed it.
I woke up the next morning with the feeling (no not just the hangover feeling) that something very significant had happened to me, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I’d rumbled in the jungle and didn’t flip out and panic. Last night a DJ saved my life…
Camden Crawl- Razorlight/Tychy Stryder/Lethal Bizzle/ CockandBull Kid
Camden to me is the Narnia of London; technically part of the same city, but a different side of the coin: you’re never quite sure who you’re going to meet …The crawl had gigs taking place all day and night in numerous bars from one end of Camden to the other and I’d spent the day happily drinking Corona and going from one venue to another skipping ques with the magic thing called a press pass with friends, when who do we bump into? Pete Doherty….
Doherty strolled in front of me at the cash point and I couldn’t resist the temptation- I leant over as the screen flashed ‘you have insufficient funds’.
Well well well..
He turned around giving me a full frontal view of actually how unattractive his was. Pete is the type of guy you want to hose down with a jet wash and stick on a sunbed for a few sessions; dirty, pale, and in need of a bit of Lynx. His skin was sallow but not drawn, in fact he looked slightly poggy-faced like a badly put together plasticine man, wearing some ridiculous hat that I’m sure somewhere was ‘cutting edge.’ Just not here around people with their sanity intact. (Can I just chuck in here- why oh why do men where skinny jeans? And what oh what is wrong with girls that like men in skinny jeans???)
“Can I borrow 20 quid?” He asks me.
I stare at him as he looks unfazed at me and the other people in the que. Someone whips out their wallet.
“Yeh here you are mate, yer there you go Pete” the guy behind me says.
“Thanks mate he replies and scuttles off.
I probably would have given him some money, but he’s not my ‘mate.’ So I didn’t.
Swedish House Mafia – Alexandra Palace
The record label EMI decided that they liked me and my 5 star review for their boy Guetta, (they have since sent me every single he has ever consequently worked on and his album download 3 weeks before general release thank youuu) and so sent me four VIP tickets for Swedish House Mafia at Alexandra Palace for a review.
The atmosphere in the entire area of North London was brewing like a cauldron of bubbling excitement but we were so busy getting pie-eyed on the interesting combo of jaegger bombs and Cornas in the Wetherspoons (it’s always a Wetherspoons) that we missed the Swedish DJs themselves who were having a pre drink in the VIP bar we had access to. Damn the jaeggermister.
Ally-Pally’s impossibly high ceilings give it an outside feel - something that many revellers took literally as cigarettes were smoked all night and looking around I had a feeling that no amount of security could control this crowd. This was verified by the ‘apples and pears’ style voice that rolled through the crowd calling ‘Pills, mdma, gggggget cha pills and mdma right ere…’
Raving away to their hit tracks- pumping electric rhythms with snappy baselines- I turned around to see one of my brother’s friends, who from the expression on his face, looked like he couldn’t remember where he was and what he was doing. Considering there was 25,000 people in there, it was quite a coincidence that ‘Crazy Liam’ was there wandering about. It’s not quite so much of a coincidence that he was on his own in a state of merry dishevelment; having been on a group holiday with him in the past, the nick-name ‘Crazy Liam’ arose from his entertaining yet worryingly erratic behaviour when under the influence; including pouring bottles of San Miguel over his head grinning like a mad man, and humping the sand in the middle of the night informing us all he was in fact, a turtle.
We took him under our wing, or under our legs- as he became a perfect candidate for sitting on his shoulders sing at the top of our voices “Whose gonna save the world tonight..”
Razorlight/ The Noisettes- Clapham Common
When the rain falls and it’s festival season, you pray to the Lord for Hunter welly boots, and failing that, pray for a Moroccan style VIP tent with unlimited alcohol.
Clapham common was wet and grey and my buddy and I positioned ourselves on the cushions in what looked like the Moroccan tea tent that seen in the desert of Sex and the City 2. Not bad. Also not bad was the company- we befriended a group of guys that to be honest didn’t look like they belonged with the funky looking music mogals (neither do I to be fair), aged between thirty-and thirty five and completely uninterested in any of the artists playing- in fact they hadn’t heard of most of them. BUT what they did have was unlimited free drinks tokens as their buddy was head of security and so viola, they had two new best buds in the form of two Essex girls.
We continued to get sloshed sheltered from the rain until our pyramid of beer cans grew to an impressive height and I realised I bet go and review some music.
Razorlight were belting out the classics (write some new material soon mate?) Johnny borrell looking like a rock star in so much as he looked dishevelled and we danced in the rain and the mud to those cracking guitar rifts.
The merriment continued as we wandered into the nearest pub along Clapham Common, a pub that had the genius idea of giving us wet and muddy music lovers a box of Jenga. As we descended into new levels of merriment, became more and more difficult (especially with forfeits of shots) until it was a complete impossible game that no one in the history of the earth could have ever possibly have done so why was in invented- bah humbug.
Read the Reviews:
David Guetta
Camden Crawl
Swedish House Mafia
Razorlight
Part 2- Foo Fighters, Black Eyed Peas, Take That and many more…
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