Highlights of Glastonbury 2014

This post is based on the Guardian's "Best and Worst of the World Cup" interviews. My highlights of Glastonbury 2014:

Best Set at the Festival: I've been asked this a few times, and it's been really hard to choose between Metallica and Kasabian. Metallica probably, for sheer uniqueness - never before has a metal band headlined Glastonbury, and they were refreshingly grateful to be there. Also, giant beach balls!

Best Performer at the Festival: I'm tempted to go with Ed Sheeran, which is not something I would ever have said prior to Glastonbury. I just admire the sheer nerve it must have taken to stroll onto the Pyramid Stage, just one 21-year-old man and his guitar, in front of thousands of people who have just seen what will be the iconic performance of Glastonbury 2014 - Dolly Parton. If he was nervous, it didn't show one bit, and everyone had a great time.

Glastonbury Moment: Always a personal thing. For me, managing to sneak out of the bar on my lunchbreak, quickly purchase some magic muesli (£3.50 for a huge bowl of muesli, yoghurt and fruit, which would not be a bargain anywhere else, but the average price for lunch at the festival was £4-£5, so, winning!) and head to the Other Stage to catch White Lies' set. One of their songs, "Death", is one of my favourites. I got there in time to hear it live. It's those little moments when it all comes together that make things perfect.

Personal Highlight: See above, but also the way the team bonded. Fun was had by all. Also the Glade dance tent was awesome, I'd have stayed there all night jumping up and down if my feet had let me.

Biggest Disappointment: The coach containing one of my volunteers, which was due in at 1.30am, turning up at 3am, having taken a detour nearly to Wales due to their having a driver who had no idea where he was going, and who hadn't driven a coach in ten years. I was literally having to turn the mobile data on my phone, log onto the AA Route Planner, and text directions to the volunteer, who was battling the force of a nearly flat phone battery. I had brought a paperback, a snack and my warmest clothing, but having to sit there for an extra hour and a half listening to an unlucky guy who'd lost his festival ticket having the same argument with the festival security staff every ten minutes was not a lot of fun.

Non-music attraction of the festival: The hammocks just down from the festival sign. I'd have stayed up there, swaying gently in the breeze, for a lot longer if I'd been able to.

Trickiest moment: Trying to avert a walk-out due to a preventable injury to one of my team. I entirely sympathised with them, but walking out would have meant the end to our volunteering with the WBC, for good. We managed to work things out.

Innovation I'd like to see for 2015: That the git who kept the music system in the campsite tent blaring loudly until 3am is identified and prevented from going anywhere near it. After three repetitions of "I Wanna Be Sedated", the joke wore very thin.

Fondest memory: A special mention to James the Organiser, for getting my injured volunteer to see Dolly Parton in a buggy.

Never Seen A Man Juggle A Hat Before

Halfway through the week, I got a text from my friend D: "Our kid's band is playing at the Star and Shadow this Friday - spread the word". I spread the word, and duly found myself at the Star and Shadow yesterday evening in the company of friends, including D. The band was on as part of the Circus Circus night, which has just started (as of yesterday), so as we walked in we were greeted with three acrobats on hoops, trapeze and ropes.

The Star and Shadow, Newcastle's independent cinema, is an interesting venue for this sort of thing. On the one hand, the main space is a wee bit small for circus performers, and means that anyone on the far side of the room wanting a drink has to sneak across the performance space and pray that they don't get dragged in for a bit of audience participation. On the other hand, everyone can see what's going on, and the proximity to the audience does add that thrilling live performance sense that something might go wrong, as indeed it did at one point, where the lady twirling a hula hoop (very gracefully, it must be said) accidentally let go and knocked over someone's pint. The audience ranged from around 10 to around 70, and everyone seemed to be having a good night, including the Tyne Bank and Wylam Breweries, whose beers were shifting fast over the bar.

The night was one half circus cabaret, and the second half D's Brother's Band playing their take on jazz classics. The circus performers were great, including the aforementioned Lady of the Rainbow-Coloured Hula Hoop, a burlesque dancer, the compere, who had a nice line in juggling hats and machetes, and a contortonist whose party piece was to feed himself through two tennis rackets at once, whilst commenting "My name is Mr Freak, and I'm here to make the world a bit stranger!". (One of my friends commented it would be even more impressive if he'd fed the tennis rackets through himself. Like Werner Herzog and his shoe.)

Carnival of Crows were the final act. I originally knew them as Elaine Binney and the Jazz Rascals, and was there for their recording of "Live at Durant Hall" (Durant Hall being part of my church, the Newcastle Unitarian Church). I'm no music critic, so my best comment is that it was great to see them perform again; they're a great band to dance to. The rest of the evening was taken up with drinking Wylam Bohemian, trying to prevent loss of life and limb being caused by another friend's dancing (impressive, but when it happens at the Boiler Shop people nearby usually clear a space), and listening to the Tale of the Dead Dog in a Suitcase. Tune in next week for the recalling of that one...

Back at the Boiler Shop

Went back to the Boiler Shop a couple of weeks back with friends. There were no cyclists or yoga teachers with broken backs present, but there was good food, good beer, and a very pleasant surprise. I last saw Tankus the Henge at Glastonbury this year, and have wanted to catch them again ever since. Amazingly (they're based in London), they were headlining the Saturday Boiler Shop when I happened to be there. Coincidence is sometimes a fine thing.

I also learned that ping-pong is more fun when you're tipsy, and that certain of my friends should only be allowed to dance when there's a large space around them.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 2: Audience of Psychopaths

So I went to see Laura Marling at the Sage the other day (my life is a whirlwind of fun and excitement, except for the three-day bouts of depression and the knowledge that it will not be 13 people leaving my team of 33 people in September next year – it will be 15). It was a good night, despite the fact that Ms Marling was battling the forces of illness and failing musical equipment. 

It is a tribute to her musicianship that she played an entire one and a half hour set entirely on her own whilst having to make up the set list pretty much as she went along, since her main guitar wasn’t working. She was also suffering from the after-effects of the incompetence of whatever restaurant she’d eaten lunch at – she has coeliac disease and, as she put it “They glutened me, the bastards!”

Nick Mulvay, the support act was pretty good too, although I couldn’t help fondly remembering the support act last time around, Timber Timbre. This was basically one guy and a guitar, and I (perhaps unfairly) remember one thing about his act. You have to imagine a man, sitting on a stool at the front of the Sage’s Hall One stage, spot lit, strumming a guitar and singing a romantic ditty…

Timber Timbre, tunefully: “I’m coming to Paris… to kill you…”

Audience laughs, musician stops singing and playing and looks around thoughtfully.

Timber Timbre, matter of factly: “I have an audience of psychopaths”.

(Begins singing again) “I’m coming to Paris … to kill you…”

We Are the Motherfucking Eels (at the O2 Academy)

So, taking a break from Glastonbury, I went to see the Eels on 4 September, and they were good. Here's where I owe my friend A a big vote of thanks. Had it not been for him, I'd never have really got into Eels, so top marks to A for lending me their entire back catalogue, and also buying the tickest.

There's a really good review of the gig here, which saves me having to do any musical criticism. Instead, I can just say that I enjoyed the gig, apart from the O2's famously awfully-high prices for awful beer. (Thank God for hip-flasks; you didn't read that here.) The support act had listened to a lot of Laura Marling, though it could have been worse; it could have been Kei$ha.

Eels themselves were excellent. I'd forgotten how much a band can ROCK when they play live, or maybe I've just been listening to "Blinking Lights" a lot recently. "Tremendous Dynamite" was awesome, although I must admit to a slight twinge of disappointment that there was "Last Stop: This Town". Also, it is very cool when people play guitars and sing when wearing sunglasses indoors, and always will be.

I also got to see an unusual sight. Eels had a bit of a theatrical thing going on at the end of the show, with a (I'm guessing) fake tour manager who kept doing the "one more song and NO MORE" routine. This happened, we assumed the encore was over, the house lights came up, people starting heading out of the doors.. and then Eels stepped back on stage for one final song. I really wished I'd had my video out and pointing forward, because the sight of people streaming back into the fully-lit O23 arena at the end of a gig was memorably surreal.

It was a good gig. Next: Laura Marling.

Narrative Inevitability at the Boiler Shop Steamer.

So, earlier this month, I roamed with some friends down to the Stephenson Works, to enjoy the Boiler Shop Steamer. One of my friends, A, had been raving about this monthly event for weeks, and it did sound good. Music, my favourite pubs (Wylam Brewery, the Cumberland Arms), my favourite types of food (who doesn't love a chilli paneer wrap?) and a great venue.

We arrived, settled ourselves at a table with pints from the afore-mentioned Wylam Brewery, and after half an hour, I remarked "Well, this is unusual - an Ouseburn-themed night in Newcastle and I haven't yet met anyone I know". We nodded, and commenced enjoying the night, which was not difficult. It was a great night, sunny and warm, the beer was flowing, the food was great, A was persuaded to go on a sponsored cycle time trial*, and we were entertained by the Most Unrehearsed Cajun Band in Newcastle, AKA Bob Stork and the Heaton Playboys, aka "Rob Heron of Rob Heron and the Tea Pad Orchestra's other band".

We'd seen Rob Heron performing at the Cumberland Arms a month ago as part of the NARC festival in the Ouseburn, and it was great to hear "Danse de la Limonade" again. The evening wore on gently, punctuated by debates over tattoos, which Wylam beer was best, and how long it would take a man wearing a black t-shirt and shorts to wander up a ladder and fix the lights when they went out half-way through and left us with only the emergency lights. (Twenty minutes, but we didn't much mind.)

As the evening ended, we stood, we danced our last jig, and we prepared to leave, when I glanced to my left. And turned to my companions.

"You know what I was saying earlier about not meeting anyone I know here, and how unusual that is for Newcastle?"

"Yup."

"You know my blog, you remember that post I put up recently?"

"Yup."

"Well, there's a very familiar back brace to my left."

We turned our heads.

Newcastle really is a very, very, small town sometimes.


* I was also invited, but declined on the grounds of having been to two circuits classes led by sadists in the past two days, and being physically incapable of generating speed due to having fuck-all glycogen left in my leg muscles.

Back From Glasto

 I returned from Glastonbury last week, having seen the Rolling Stones, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Vampire Weekend, and many more. I also caught a hideous cold that left me unable to speak or type for a week, hence absence of blogging.

Blogging will happen soon, but until there, here's a video of Mumford and Sons closing the festival to make up for it.

Unexpected Bon Jovi

Funny how life works out. I was sitting at my desk at 5.15pm last Thursday vaguely thinking about doing another hour’s work, then going home and making a chicken curry, when my phone beeped and displayed the message “Sorry about the short notice. I’ve got some spare free tickets for Bon Jovi at the Stadium of Light tonight, do you want to come? Need to be there for seven.”

I’m not great at sudden changes to plans, so I gave myself a minute to figure out what I wanted to do. The answer turned out to be “go and see Bon Jovi with JK and C”, rather than “go home and do some work on the management course assignment”. That decided, another choice presented itself. My best friend, J, is a HUGE Jon Bon Jovi fan, to the extent that she used to draw pictures of him for assignments in Art class when we were at secondary school. (We’ve now both got mortgages and she’s got two kids; Bon Jovi have been going for a while.)

It occurred to me that J would possibly want to kill me if she couldn’t go. I then decided that she would definitely want to kill me if I didn’t offer her the chance to go, so called her to ask. I then called her husband’s phone, just to be on the safe side.

15 minutes later, I got a very excited phone call, and the plans were made. I was struck by the sudden fear that JK might have had other offers for the tickets, and called him to find out, whilst simultaneously taking a quick inventory of whether I had any clothes with me that were suitable for a rock gig, trying to figure out how to get there, wondering what to do about food, and hoping that the office bike shed would be sufficiently secure to leave my bike there overnight*.

As it was now quarter to six, I fled the office hoping that there would be enough tickets, taking with me my emergency coat from the coat rack and the trainers I’d cycled to work in, and sprinting to Boots in search of a sandwich. As I dithered between a tuna & sweetcorn and a chicken wrap, the phone beeped again. JK solved one of my problems by confirming he’d got enough tickets, and then introduced the other by asking which Metro station we were going to meet at. Confusingly, it turns out “St. Peter’s” is nearer the Stadium of Light than “Stadium of Light”; go figure. I didn’t know this at the time, so agreed we’d meet at the Stadium of Light Metro station around 7pm.

Next stop, Primark, for a cheap pair of jeans, then Haymarket to grab a train ticket. On the other side of the river, J’s husband arrived home on time. Had he not done so, I suspect J would have thrown the baby, the pram and the dog into the car, and dropped them off at his office with the words “Darling, these are yours for the evening. Mwah, see you later!”.

I got the ticket and scurried down the escalator and onto the platform to find a train already waiting with “South Hylton” on the front, which meant naff-all to me as I don’t get the Metro very often. I scurried further down the platform until I found a Metro map, confirmed that this train would land me in Sunderland not South Shields, then did what all the posters tell you not to do and hurled myself bodily onto the train as the doors went “BEEEEP” and started closing. Half a minute later I was glad I’d got on at Haymarket not Monument, as the coach half-emptied and I managed to sneak myself onto a seat in the corner and make a start on the sandwich.

Half an hour later, I was really glad I’d got on at Haymarket not Monument, as the train was heaving. The announcer kept reminding people that there was a train directly behind us calling at the same places. I doubt anyone trying to get on actually heard him, and if they did, I doubt they took any notice. It reminded me of an email about real-life Tube announcements that did the rounds a while back, one of which was: “Please let the passengers off the train first. Please let the passengers off the train FIRST ::pause:: Oh go on then, stuff yourselves in like sardines, see if I care. I’m going home”.

As we nearer Sunderland, I found myself trying to coordinate a meeting by phone between four people, one of whom had never met two of the others, and two of whom had never been to the Stadium of Light before and had not a clue where they were going. We’d agreed to meet at Stadium of Light metro station. Just before we got there, JK & C texted to say they were waiting at St. Peters. I decided to get off at Stadium of Light to meet J. Just as I reached the top of the station steps, my phone rang. It was J, and she was at St Peter’s. I had no idea where this was, other “further down the Metro line”.

At which point, inspiration struck, in the form of me remembering the earlier train announcement. I hurtled down the steps against the flow of people, then jumped back onto the train which was running behind my train (and which was, noticeably, a lot more empty). Five minutes later, I was at St Peter’s and had located everyone else. J was nearly jumping up and down with excitement. It’s nice when you can do good things for your friends, particularly since neither of us could have afforded the tickets due to the afore-mentioned mortgages. When we were inside the stadium I took a look at how much we’d have paid to get in (JK got them at the last minute through his employer), gulped, and realised that it was probably a good thing none of the people standing around us knew we hadn’t had to pay - £65 is a fair chunk of cash.

The gig itself was great. Whilst J LOOVES Bon Jovi, for me, they’re more in the “some quite good songs” bracket. I can, however, appreciate a really good show, and this was a really good show. We were lucky with the weather, which helped, and the “giant car” stage set was great, but what made the gig was the band’s showmanship. It is no mean feat to perform the same gig to a different location every night and still make the audience think you really care about them having a good time, but Bon Jovi had worked out that if the audience wants very loud American rock with a giant car, and flashing lights, with a short pause to wave your cameraphones in the air so that the stadium looks like it’s filled with little twinkly lights and a speech from the frontman about people capturing little pieces of history at that moment**, that’s what you give ‘em. They did, and we did. (The only thing they couldn’t give us was a pint of Foster’s that didn’t cost more than £4, although I think the “2-pints of beer in a glass” should catch on at more stadiums.)  Jon Bovi is a great showman, and they did a nice mix of classics and new ones.

Funny how many Bon Jovi songs you know. I realised that quite a few would have to make my “grew up listening to this” list: “Always”, “Bad Medicine”, “You Give Love a Bad Name”. Quite a few more would make my “left home to this” soundtrack; when I lived in Wiltshire I spent a lot of time in my car, and had “Crush” on the cassette player a lot. I was especially happy when “Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen From Mars” came over the speakers, though I was a little disappointed at no “Janie, Don’t Take Your Love To Town”. We danced, we sang, my camera battery miraculously didn’t run out, and we left the stadium happy.

I was even more happy when, having seen the length of the queue for the Metro home, J offered to give me a lift.

One amusing postscript: having dragged myself into work the next day feeling exactly how you would expect to feel if you’d spent four hours on your feet jumping up and down and singing, my boss approached our desks and announced to the office that he would be hiding in his room for the rest of the day, because he’d been to see Bon Jovi the night before, and had lost his voice.

* It was.

** Cheesy, but if that’s not your thing you’re at the wrong gig.

Leeds Day 4, Part the Second: The First Sign of Madness is Suggs Streaking on the Stage

And the festival continued, though by now both festivalgoers and the site itself were looking more than slightly worn around the edges. Luckily, we had the final shift of the day, so were free to go and see some of the acts. A and I plonked ourselves by the main stage, where we were treated to Seasick Steve, and Madness. Seasick Steve was great, lifting a bottle of Thunderbird wine aloft, pronouncing “Don’t think a grape ever got near any of this shit", then beginning his ode to Thunderbird before being interrupted by a streaker who bore a remarkable resemblance to Suggs from Madness. He began with his modesty protected only by an inflatable ball, before flinging said ball into the audience and dashing offstage again. Seasick Steve smiled into his beard, and continued the song. 

We were later treated to Madness themselves, and the sight of a thousand-odd people nutty-dancing to “Baggy Trousers” was indeed one to behold. The memory sustained us through a long shift. The end shift on the Sunday is always a bit of an experience, as by this point both the drinks and the cash are running out (the bar company reasoning that they may as well run the stocks down, and also that people who are desperate for a drink will buy anything once they’ve fought their way through a 20-minute queue to get to the bar). We slogged our way onward. 

I was hoping for a quiet shift, but it didn’t turn out that way. The bar was absolutely slammed all shift, meaning that the most we saw of the Strokes was a faint background sound of “Last Night” over the hubbub of the crowd demanding pints of lager (and being disappointed). 

Luckily, Pulp made up for it all. Alas, we didn’t get to see as much of them as we’d hoped, but we did hear all the hits. Towards the end, we started visually hinting to people that the bar was closing by the subtle means of dropping the covers down over sections of it, starting at the edges and working inwards. Anyone taking time-lapse photography would have seen the increasingly excited bar staff being slowly squashed into the centre of the bar. The excitement increased in proportion to how well we knew the songs, until by the finale of “Common People”, we were all squashed into a space about fifteen feet wide and jumping up and down like loons. Definitely a festival highlight. 

Our bar manager kindly handed out a few drinks, and with that we were off to see the festival (and eat a stone-baked pizza) one last time. We rejoined C, who’d swapped his shift in order to see “Rise Against”, who were playing in the afternoon. Truth be told, there wasn’t much to see, apart from drunks, so after we’d eaten our pizza and drunk our drinks vouchers, we wended our way slowly homewards to the party in the Village Bar. The drink flowed, the chips were nibbled, and everyone joined in the chorus to “I Wanna Be Sedated”. As we trekked our way across the abandoned campsite the following morning to catch the National Express home, fun had indeed been had, and I’d achieved a small goal of FINALLY seeing Pulp live. A good festival indeed.

Leeds 2011 Day 4: Na Na Na (Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Na Na Na)

Leeds 2006

As we wandered out into the Sunday morning sunshine, reflecting happily on the previous day's fun and digesting the canteen's oddly tasteles porridge, I thought back once more to Leeds 2006. Annoyingly in retrospect, I could have seen My Chemical Romance live for the first time (first time for me that is) at Leeds 2006. It was very shortly after this I really got into them. 

At the time, however, they hadn’t really registered on my radar. As was famously the case, they had to play after Slayer, on the “hard rock” day of the festival. I seem to remember Mastodon were the opening act, followed by Killswitch Engage – after that, it was all just noise to me. (Just checked: the others were Bullet for My Valentine, Less Than Jake, and Taking Back Sunday).

With the exception of Slayer, who were on at the end of our shift; we’d got the 12-6pm on the Friday. I seem to remember thinking “Hey, these guys can actually play!”. I’m old-fashioned; I like my music to have identifiable tunes and words. So did most of the team, and the aural battering we took over the course of the shift, combined with huge queues, malfunctioning MDUs, and a manager who seemed hellbent on off everyone on the bar, and it was one of the least fun shifts I’ve ever done in six years volunteering for the Workers Beer Company. (I seem to remember Killswitch Engage’s frontman yelling “You guys fucking suck!” at the crowd, and thinking “Yeah, we’re thinking that right back at you”.) 

As the end of the shift approached, we sidled to the back of the bar, ready to make a quick exit, and bumped into the team coming on shift. They were staring at the front of the bar, eyes wide in shock.  

We turned to see what they were looking at, and realised that the queues of, black-clad, dirty, tattooed metallers were about ten deep, and they were still coming. When you’re at the front of the bar, you don’t see this. You just appear in front of one customer, get the order, give them the drinks, get the money, go tot the next customer, same thing again, lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. At the back of the bar, though, the oncoming hordes were clearly visible. It was like being in Shaun of the Dead without a cricket bat. 

I’d liked to say we muttered some comforting words and patted their shoulders. In reality, it was more like we grinned evilly, muttered “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!”, grabbed a six-pint holder of cider each (this was before the WBC really cracked down on servers helping themselves to free booze – these days you’d get fired for it, and technically back then we weren’t supposed to do it, but after that shift, I was really not inclined to stop my guys helping themselves to drinks, not least because I badly needed one myself), and scarpered as fast as we could.

We paused briefly to ask each other “Do we want to stay in the main arena?”. The answer was “Nope, can’t take any more of this racket”, and we skittled off in search of the NME tent and better music. And that is the tale of How I Didn’t See My Chemical Romance At Leeds 2006.

Day 6 and Day 7: “She Stars in Her Own Private Movie”

Sunday, Day 6, 3pm, Come On Eng-ur-land
3pm found me trying to cram myself into an entirely over-occupied bar so that I could see a tiny corner of a fuzzy screen displaying the England vs. Germany match. It was so full any more people would have had to swing from the rafters, and the fire safety signs should more accurately have read “IF THERE IS A FIRE, THIS IS WHERE PEOPLE WILL BE TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT IN THE STAMPEDE”. I realised that I was basically being a lemming, and headed off in search of something more fun to do, like have a sit-down and a cider.


Monday, Day 7, 4pm, on the coach
A Team Leader’s role is never done. Not until everyone steps off the coach or the train in Newcastle. Admittedly, this time around I wasn’t really a team leader, since my “team” consisted of me and N, who was more than capable of looking after himself. Indeed, I think the reason I enjoyed this year’s festival so much was because I wasn’t having to look after people for once. Co-ordinating six people to turn up to their shifts at the Glastonbury festival, all of whom want to run off and do their own thing, is not unakin to herding cats (although in fairness, I have a beautiful beaded purse at home that last year’s Glastonbury team bought me as a thank-you for doing all the organising). 

Still, of the five of us I was the only one who had been to Glastonbury and volunteered with the Workers Beer Company before, and old habits die hard. Like many people on the coach, our epic journey home would not end with our stepping off the WBC coach in Leeds; that was just the end of stage 1. Had the coach left at 12noon as scheduled, we’d have been late home in Newcastle, but we’d still have had plenty of time to get up to Leeds Railway Station and get the train home. As it was, we were seriously beginning to wonder if we’d make the connection.

I busied myself on my phone, contacting National Rail Enquiries to check the times of the last trains home, and ringing my brother to let him know that there might be people he didn’t know crashing on the floor of our parents’ house. (My family lives near Leeds.) I didn’t really think that we’d need to do that, but being insanely helpful and over-prepared is one of my characteristics, and I was if I was going to stop now. After that, I leaned my head against the window, sighed, and tried to fall asleep. 


Sunday, Day 6, 4.45pm, inside the Avalon Tent – “There Are People In Here!”

My crowd-slipping-into skills got a workout, as I made my way inside the Avalon Tent to hear Keane play. It was so full there were people standing outside. I suspect this is not surprising, since if you picture Keane’s fans and England football fans, there probably isn’t a massive overlap, although as we stood there shifting our weight from foot to foot and waiting for the band to come on, quite a few people were checking their phones and putting them away with exclamations of disgust. (England were roundly beaten by Germany.) The band were late coming on. I wish I’d gone with my inner raconteur and yelled “Come on, stop watching the footie!” at the stage. 

Eventually the band walked out, led by Tom Chaplin who started at the sight of the tent and exclaimed with seemingly genuine surprise: “Fuck me, there are people in here! We thought we’d be playing to an empty tent”. They were clearly thrilled at the sight of the crowd, all of whom were definitely in the mood for a happy sing-a-long in the sunshine, and joined in the choruses of “Somewhere Only We Know” and “Everybody’s Changing” with great gusto. The band covered “With Or Without You” as a tribute to U2, and it was a very happy gig. You can always tell when a band is having a good time on stage, and Keane were clearly enjoying themselves, so much so that the NME reported afterwards in their write-up of the Sunday: “Either we’re having delusions, or Keane have just persuaded several hundred people that they’re one of Britain’s best-loved bands”.

It turned out that I was wrong about them being delayed by watching the footie. As they left the stage, Tom Chaplin paused and called out: “Hang on, what was the score? 4-1 to Germany? Oh well, it’s just as well that I don’t give a fuck then, isn’t it?” We all laughed. It was great to be so close to the band; the last time I saw them live (2005), they were several hundred feet away on the Pyramid Stage. Definitely one of my highlights of the festival.


Monday, Day 7, 5pm, Service Station
The coach paused for the driver to have a break. The overheated,grumpy inhabitants decanted themselves into the service station in search of rehydration and, in some cases, a quick fag. 

My bedraggled team glumly checked the National Rail Enquiries hotline to discover whether we could actually get home that evening. Answer: yes, if we got to Leeds in time to get the train to York, that connected with the final train to Newcastle of the day. Oh joy.

Whilst lying about on the grass near the coach waiting for the driver to return, we caught up with our foul-mouthed friend from the journey down (remember him?) who let us in on the fact that the coach had actually been stuck in the car park at noon, but without a pass it couldn’t enter the site to pick us up. (Access to Glastonbury is really, really strict.) Why exactly no-one had suggested we simply walked up to meet it is a mystery for the ages. 


Sunday, Day 6, 6pm, Glastonbury
I went for a final wander around, aware this was the last time I’d be seeing the festival in daylight since our shift would finish long after the sun had set. 


Monday, Day 7, 8pm, Outside Leeds Bus Station
8pm, hours after we’d expected to get home to Newcastle. It was chucking it down. We hailed a taxi and crammed ourselves plus our luggage into it, then hastened to the railway station. 

Sunday, Day 6, 8pm, Glastonbury – “Everyone Danced”

And we were back in the bar again, for our final shift. Heads down to get it over with… It’s not much fun spending your final evening at the festival behind the bar, particularly since by this point we’re usually running out of both change and the most popular drinks, but someone has to. We arrived ten minutes late due to the crowds, but got away with it. 

Fortunately for me, the Sunday headliner was Stevie Wonder. Let it not be said that I don’t like Stevie Wonder. Nobody doesn’t like Stevie Wonder. Yet, at the same time, given the choice… he was the headliner I would have been prepared to miss.

So we settled in behind the bar on a sunny evening. And to quote a popular slogan, “Possibly the best live bar background music in the world”. We had Shakira… and then we had Stevie Wonder.

You can tell when the headline act is good, because the bar goes quiet. This went quiet. Then it went noisy, because everyone knows the words, and everyone joins in. By the time we got to “Superstition”, all the punters were dancing. The people in the field beyond were dancing. The person next to me was dancing. I looked around, and realised: every single person in the bar and outside it, from the station supervisors to the manager, was dancing to Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition”. And yes, I was dancing too.

  

Monday, Day 7, 9pm, Leeds Railway Station
We glumly contemplated the timetable. Our only chance was to go to York, then change for Newcastle. We’d be getting the last trains all the way, so here went nothing, hoping hard that we wouldn’t get stranded.

Sunday Day 6 / Monday, Day 7, 2am, Glastonbury – Shall We Wander?

And the shift finally finished. N and I decided to go explore the festival. This is a perfectly rational decision to make at 2am on the final day of the Glastonbury festival, as it never really stops. (I’ve read that each year Michael Eavis has to round up about a dozen people who haven’t accepted – or possibly haven’t realised – that the festival is over, and put them on the next train home). We stopped off for some pancakes, then wandered around staring at interesting things. There was a lot going on, despite the fact it was pitch black and cold, despite the day’s weather. (As the NME commented on a photo they took at the Stone Circle: “If you look closely, you can see that these people are wearing every stitch of clothing they’ve brought with them. Seriously, the Sahara Desert by day, the fucking Ice Age by night.”)

We stopped in a tent for a drink, then a woman in a turquoise taffeta ballgown wandered onstage and started singing Britney Spears’ “Toxic” in the style of George Formby whilst accompanying herself on the ukelele, so we stayed for a bit longer.

After this, we strolled around to take in any bits of the festival we hadn’t seen yet. We made it to Trash City, which I’ve always wanted to see at night – it’s really a bit pointless seeing it in daytime. It was lively, but not our scene, so we strolled slowly back down the old railroad path to the WBC village, dodging happy drunks and people falling about in costumes in the glare of the overhead floodlights. Eventually, we ended back in the WBC Village bar, where the traditional end-of-festival WBC workers’ party was in progress. People were jumping around and drinking large amounts of cheap booze. N and I settled down with C (T and L were off partying somewhere else), had a few drinks and reminisced about the past week.

As it got round to 3.30am and the first hint of dawn began to appear in the sky, we began to talk about turning in for the night. I strolled out of the tent…

And then the thought occurred to me. I’ve always wanted to see the sun rise over Glastonbury from the Stone Circle, but events and tiredness have prevented.

And the thought occurred: “Why not now?”

True, it was early in the morning, I was tired and I’d have to retrace my footsteps all the way along the railroad track and up to the top of the hill on my own. I’d also get about three hours’ sleep before we were off in the morning.

But I’d have time to sleep on the coach.

Why not now?

I slipped quietly out of the WBC village, leaving N and C to finish their drinks, passed the security guard, and headed out along the path.

Monday, Day 7, 10.30pm, York Railway Station

We hung grimly around York Railway Station, propping ourselves up on our luggage, and waiting for the last train of the night to Newcastle. Museli bars, chocolate and Coke were all that was keeping us going.

Sunday Day 6 / Monday, Day 7, 4.30am, Glastonbury – Sun It Will Rise

Light-headed, I climbed slowly through the morning mists and towards the top of the site and the Stone Circle. Any number of people were shambling about, drunk or tired or euphoric. I shambled a bit too, to fit in. All around me, people were watching the sun rise and lighting sky lanterns, the small lights rising slowly into the sky. I climbed to the top and flattened myself against the security wall, watching the sun rise slowly into the sky, thinking, finally, five years after I first came here, I’ve done it.

Tuesday, Day 8, 0.30am, Newcastle Central Station

“Farewell then.”

 “Farewell.”

And here we were at the end. Seven days after we departed Newcastle, nine hours after we left the festival, we were back home and staggering into taxis to get back to our homes. We said farewell, promised to meet again, and left each other there and then.

I reached for my money pouch around my waist containing my driver’s license and credit card.

It wasn’t there.

Motherfuck.

But it hadn’t been a bad 24 hours. I thought back to meeting N at Central Station, L, C and T at Leeds. To hearing “Melancholy Hill” for the first time, to Muse on the Saturday night, to the entire bar dancing to Stevie Wonder. And to 6am on Monday. Morning.

  

Sunday Day 6 / Monday, Day 6, 6am, Glastonbury – She Stars In Her Own Private Movie

As the morning began, I made my way slowly back down to the WBC campsite through the remains of the festival. I didn’t really know where I was going, but I have a good sense of the festival’s layout and which direction to head in, and wandered past the sign, past the tower of ribbons, down to the WBC village. As I walked through Avalon, a few bars and stalls were still heroically open, ra-ra, Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine…

I went through the Avalon gate, past the cows, and back home, humming “She Has A Halo”, she stars in her own private movie…

“You look happy” said the security guard on the gate as I danced slowly past him.

“I am.”

 Epilogue

•  I didn’t ever locate my missing waistbelt, but managed to cancel my cards and get a replacement driving licence in the weeks after.
• We sent a strongly worded letter to the Workers Beer Company about the coach fiasco. Things were much better the year after.
• Myself and N returned to the festivals in 2011.  
• C married his fiancee the following year.

Glastonbury 2010, Day 6 and Day 7, Part the First: "Where's The Coach?"

Monday, Day 7, 10.15am – WBC campsite, Canteen Tent:

“Thank god, no more peculiar scrambled eggs.”



Sunday, Day 6, 10.15am – WBC campsite, Canteen Tent:

“Um, guess what?”

We were sitting around the table eating breakfast. Which, in my opinion, was far better than some of the breakfasts we’ve previously been served in the WBC village, although the others were not entirely keen on the scrambled egg.

The speaker was C. “Me and my missus are engaged.”

Loud cheers filled the tent. We congratulated C on his engagement, whilst he sat there looking as pleased as punch.



Monday, Day 7, 11am – WBC campsite:

“Think the coach to Leeds will be here soon?”

“They said it would be 12noon.”

“It’s far too late.”

“I know, I’m really sorry for misleading you. Every year other than this, it’s left at 7am on the Monday. They shouldn’t have made that change without asking us first. I’m going to complain afterwards. Are we all packed?”

“Yeah. Can’t wait to get home and see the missus-to-be. What time do you reckon?”

“Maybe 8pm, 9pm?”



Sunday, Day 6, 11am – WBC campsite:

Overheard in the WBC Village campsite:

C: “My feet keep overheating.”

Me: “You shouldn’t wear trainers, they’re no good in this weather. You need sandals. See, I have them. It’s like a shoe with built-in air conditioning. These sandals is made for walking.”

L: (deadpan) “And that is what they’ll do.”

Me: (deadpan) “One of these days these sandals is gonna walk all over you.”



Monday, Day 7, 11.45am – WBC campsite:

“This is a piss-take.”

“It should be here soon.”

“It’s baking hot, and we’re stuck in the sun. And I’m not going to go clean up the campsite. Other people get paid to do that.”

“I’m going to go help. Might as well. It’ll keep us busy. You will let us know when it gets here?”

“Should be any minute. Yeah.”



Sunday, Day 6, 11.45am – on the path out of the WBC campsite:

T: “Are you going to see England play? They’ve put the big screens up in the field so that people can watch.”

Me: “Hmm. No. The way I see it, if England win, I’ll get to see them play again, so it won’t matter that I’ve missed them this time. But if they lose and I go watch them, I’ll have wasted an afternoon at the Glastonbury festival which I can’t get back.”

N: “Fair enough.”

We strolled on down the path alongside the cow barns.

C: “I’ve got that many patches of sunburn, I look like a cow anyway.”

Me: “You want to be careful, L will get confused and start trying to milk you.”

C: “Wahey!”

T: “Give it a rest, you’re going to be a married man”.



Monday, Day 7, 12.15 – WBC campsite

“Hope this bus hurries up. I am roasting. People will get sunstroke.”

“We’ve got some money left from the tips. Shall wehave ice lollies?”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll go get them. Anyone want a festival review magazine?”



Sunday, Day 6, 12.15 – Inside the Festival

We’d all split off to do our own thing. I’d gone to see a couple of bands I fancied: Temper Trap and the Hold Steady. The Hold Steady are fronted by a cheerful plump man in glasses and a blue shirts who looks like the manager of the local Dixons, but bloody hell can they rock. They were on at the Other Stage, and I settled in with a cold cider to watch them, and jump up and down a bit.



Monday, Day 7, 1pm – WBC Campsite

“This is seriously a piss-take. I am not a happy bunny.”

We watched as several people moved a gazebo to cover someone in the waiting queue for the buses who was suffering badly with the effects of the heat. The bus was now an hour late. Or, from the perspective of those of us who until the previous day had expected it to be departing at 7am, six hours late. We’d been stuck in the sun since 11.30am, and we were not at all happy. Repeated enquiries to the WBC cabin elicited very little response other than “there’s nothing we can do about it”.


Sunday, Day 6, 1pm – The Other Stage

After the Temper Trap finished, I moseyed around a bit, ate a sandwich in the shade of a tent, checked to see if the King Blues were playing at any time when I was likely to be able to see them (they weren’t), then returned to the Other Stage to watch the Temper Trap’s melodies filling the air and mused on the fact that this year’s Festival Look was “patches of sunburn, with a straw hat on the top”. Better than the Mud Monster of previous years, I suppose.



Monday, Day 7, 2pm – WBC Campsite

“I don’t believe this.”

“It’s reaching new heights of incompetence.”

We were still waiting for the coach, although in a new location. There were rumours that it was stuck in the car park at the top of the festival. I’d finally suggested to the WBC management that we waited in the canteen tent. People were desperate not to miss their coaches, and only repeated reassurances that they would be fetched when the coach finally arrived got them inside. It was not noticeably cooler, but being there did at least get everyone out of the direct rays of the sun.

I popped back and forth between the canteen tent and the staffing cabin to keep an eye out for the coach, noticing on the way that I had added an interesting new patch of livid red sunburn to my increasingly patchwork appearance of pale skin, tanned skin, pink skin, dusty skin, and scratches.



Sunday, Day 6, 2pm – The Railway Track

I texted the others to say I wished England good luck, and refrained from adding on the end “they’ll need it”. It was time to make my steady way along the Railway Track to the Avalon Tent, where Keane were due to play at 4.20pm. The Railway Track is the main pathway through the festival, and is never quiet due to this fact.

Wander along it, and the festival divides in two before you; celebrities, drink, and the Pyramid stage on the left, peace, cider and hippies on the right. The right hand side holds the Green Fields, Healing Fields, people selling candle-powered boats, and just about everyone in the festival who likes to stare into their herbal tea and mutter sadly “It’s not what it used to be”.

It also holds the Alternative Worlds area, where people put up displays showcasing other ways to live without dependence on fossil fuels. These tend to work best in sunny weather, just like the weather we were getting, so I strayed off the beaten track.

The Alternative Worlds area is in a part of the festival with a lot of trees, so you wander around the path between the trees, stopping to look at people with biocomposting toilets and herbal gardens. I turned a corner and encountered a man cooking a pizza inside a cat, or at least inside a cat-shaped clay oven. He seemed busy, so I didn’t stop to chat. I had cider to drink and “Somewhere Only We Know” to sing along to.



Monday, Day 7, 3pm, on the coach

“About fucking time.”

The coach rolled slowly forwards, bumping over the ruts. The people inside it were too tired and fed up to do anything much but stare out of the window.

At 2.10pm, the news had arrived that the coach was stuck in the coach park at the top of the site. A lack of the correct pass to enter the site and come down to the village to pick us up had held it up there.

Some time earlier, we might have been able to pick up our weary selves and camping gear, and walk up the hill to meet it. In cooler weather, this might still have been an option. As it was, the decision was taken to wait until the coach could make its way down and pick up the bunch of weary, overheated, dehydrated and deeply grumpy volunteers.

Rarely have I ever been so glad to see a mechanical object. The only comparable instance was the 2007 mudbath when we were on the National Express coach, leaving from the coach park. It had rained pretty much solidly throughout the entire festival. Despite this, my team still managed to find moments of fun amidst the mud, but on a Monday morning with no beer, no music, nothing to look forward to, and a solid wall of rain beating down on you, we had but one thought in our heads: “get us the fuck out of here”.

We arrived to find a scene which I’ve read described elsewhere as “being like the end of the world”; masses of cold, confused, tired people wandering around beneath the grey skies, in the wind and rain and mud, being yelled at by people with megaphones. The coach park fills two fields and has about 26 different queues. We had no idea which one was for our coach, and nor did the hapless stewards.

Displaying that unique form of teamwork which only desperation can fuel, my team divided into pairs and combed the coach park until we found the National Express queues. I have never been so glad to see a grumpy coach driver wielding a roll of bin liners in my life. As the coach left the festival coach park, and I stared out of the window at the mass of forlorn humanity, some of whom had been TURNED AWAY from the coaches they had tickets for, due to being covered in mud (I am not making this up), I reflected that I might at that moment be wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of shorts (these being my only clothes not covered in mud), I might be going to spend the next three days removing mud from my belongings, but, thank God, I was going home to my warm, centrally heated house with its cosy bed and hot shower.

I hadn’t thought I’d be that glad to leave Glastonbury again, but it turned out I was wrong.

Leeds Festival, Day 3, Part the Second: Let's Watch This World Explode

We headed in search of food. Specifically, a stonebaked pizza. There was a huge queue, which is always the way. The only van that doesn't have a huge queue is the "Goodness Gracious Healthy Foods" vegan stall. Here, all was chaos and order as people with flour in their hair ran around throwing dough about and yoicking pizzas in and out of ovens. I ordered one with butternut squash on, and it was delicious.

With time to kill, I joined A in seeing Noah and the Whale - the deal being that I saw them with her, and she saw My Chemical Romance with me. I'd never seen them before and was curious. And they were very, very good. The turnout was fantastic. We were stood near the back, behind two men with matching Bert-and-Ernie-from-Sesame-Street hats, but it did look like the band were thrilled by the crowd, and made every effort to give them a good time. We jumped up and down, we sang along to "Bohemian Rhapsody", and I'd discovered a new band.

From the new to the old, as it were; it's somewhat of a surprise to think that My Chemical Romance have been around for ten years. (Possibly not as much of a surprise as it may be for the band, given their previous personal histories.) Leeds and Reading, famously, were when they were bottled by angry Slayer fans. (Gerard Way's take on it: "So I come on stage, I have white hair, I look like a super creep, everything about me screams 'Throw piss at me'...".) They swore that they would not return unless they were headlining, and four years on, here they were, and here was I. Having missed them in 2007, I would have been deeply, deeply, irritated if it had happened again, but it hadn't. And, even better, it wasn't bloody raining.

I had that faint nervousness I usually get around watching My Chemical Romance live, although I was distracted by 30 Seconds To Mars's final show, in which the audience were invited to invade the stage, and did so with gusto, screaming along to a song the name of which I do not know. Gotta say they don't grab me. All was silent... and then, BANG, My Chem were onstage and I forgot all nervousness and tiredness, and prepared to be entertained.

And boy, were we entertained. C, A and I jumped up and down until we spilled our drinks. I have never seen a band give so much to one performance, with the possible exception of Blur at Glastonbury 2009. You could see in their eyes "We are headlining, and fuck it, we will demonstrate that we have got what it takes". (What they didn't have was Brian May, who only showed for Reading, but frankly I didn't care.) A asked wryly if Gerard Way's hair was really that colour. (Me: "The colour depends on what album they're promoting at the time".) It was a brilliant, brilliant gig. The only very minor thing I would have changed is the absence of "Bulletproof Heart", which is probably my favourite My Chem song, but you can't have it all.

Back to the WBC village, still riding the high, and we joined in the late-night party in the bar. I drank slightly too much, learned the words to "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones, and we had a great time. One day left, and so far it had been brilliant. Could Pulp knock it out of the park for the trifecta? We could only wait and see!

Leeds Festival Day 3, Part the First: Real Blues and Fake Amy Winehouse

And action. Come Saturday morning, we headed back out in search of breakfast and music, before our midday to 6pm shift kicked off. The catering team were doing sterling work. I told them this. I make a point of doing so each festival; they always look so grateful. Shame they couldn't have made the porridge taste of something - you had to douse it liberally in dried fruit and maple syrup to achieve edibility - but there's a limit to what even miracle-workers can do.

C and A were still ribbing me about last night, when I'd mentioned that I was drinking red wine in tribute to Matt Bellamy, whose favourite drink it is. I maintained that: "Fandom is happening to read an interview in a magazine where he mentioned he likes red wine. Stalkerdom is where you try to find out what sort of wine it was and buy it". (Also, I really like red wine, and find it pleasantly warming at festivals. It also lubricates the creative processes, which is why I'm drinking it, right now.)

C had headed off to meet his mates, who were attending the festival as ordinary folks, leaving A and I to see what was happening. Fortunately, the mud was rapidly drying, and with the festival in full swing, there was music. We headed in the direction of one of the big tents (can't remember if it was the BBC Radio 1 or NME tent, don't care enough to look it up) to experience the delights of "Pulled Apart By Horses", heard what sounded like ten minutes of non-stop screaming emitting from it, and just as swiftly did an about-face and headed in the direction of the other big tent to see a blues band called "She Keeps Bees". This proved to be an up-and-coming American bluesy rock bank, fronted by a down-to-earth woman with blond hair, a demin shirt, and a guitar. Since she could sing, we enjoyed it. (I'm sure "Pulled Apart By Horses" are great, if you're into that sort of thing. I just prefer singing to screaming.)

Alas, good things must end, and bar shifts must begin. We yomped off in search of our bar, stopping on the way to buy a souvenir T-shirt for a friend of A's, a good-natured young lad who apparently once had a bad experience at Leeds involving ketamine. We found a suitable souvenir saying "Ketamine: Just Say Neigh". I pondered buying one, then remembered my rule about not buying stuff at festivals, and joined A on the yomp to the bar.

The bar shift was not too bad. Yet again I must praise the hard work of the other servers and the bar management, who were excellent. Things weren't too bad; busy, but not unmanageable. My nightmare is that I'll accidentally serve someone underage and get fined £80. So far it hasn't happened. Thank God, this year Leeds had decided to give people the option of buying a pink "I'm over 18" wristband for a few quid, which made life infinitely simpler for them and us. We were also visited by two men who apparently felt the need to pay tribute to Amy Winehouse, which made a refreshing change from the legions of students wandering around in full-length cow or horse outfits. I was so impressed I took a picture.

Between that, the odd fifteen minutes here and there spent listening to the acts on the main stage (nothing you'd want to write home about) and the odd break at the back of the bar, the shift passed pleasantly. I say pleasantly. Our bar was near the "fairground" area of the bar, meaning that all breaks were punctuated every minute by a giant fairground ride whirling overhead to the accompaniment of frenzied screaming. (Watching the ride to see which of us could spot the most terrified face on it soon became a favourite pastime among off-duty bar staff.) For some reason, they didn't insist that people take their shoes off before going on the ride, meaning the breaks were spiced with the low-level concern that at any minute a welly might fly off and wang you in the head. It didn't happen, I'm pleased to report.

We survived our six hours without £80 fines or being hit by flying Wellingtons, collected our drinks tokens, and escaped. I was really happy with how the festival was going - C, A and I were getting along just fine! We had a couple of hours to kill before My Chemical Romance hit the main stage, so there was only one thing for it.

Have a stonebaked pizza, and go and see Noah and the Whale. Of whom more later...

Leeds, Day 2, Part the Third: Soylent Green and Giant Tuning Forks

And now it was Muse's turn to dazzle. Oh, how we looked forward to it. I'd strolled past the stage being tested the day before, and taken some rather blurry photos of giant tuning forks, instantly recognisable to any Muse fan as the image from the CD cover of "Origin of Symmetry", which Muse intended to play in its entirety. This split opinion. Some thought it brave, others pointed out that their most famous tracks ("Hysteria", "Supermassive Black Hole", "Stockholm Syndrome") are from albums 3 and 4 and no-one apart from die-hards can remember what "Screenager" or "Hyper Music" sound like.

Personally I was in favour of it, on the grounds that a band that just gives people what they want is a band doomed to achieve little more in future. Also, let's face it, when you can sell out Wembley Stadium, you're allowed to do things because you can, which I suspect was the logic here (that, and it's ten years since "Origin" came out). I was looking forward to it, even if it did mean that I'd have to stand through "Screenager". I don't hate it as much as a friend of mine hates "I Belong To You" (from "The Resistance"), but it's not my favourite.

We passed the drinks and nibbles around, and chuckled with amusement as "What's He Building In There?" played over the speakers (I later learned this used to be how Muse used to open their gigs) and then, with a roar of sound and a light show, Muse were on stage, and "Newborn"'s opening chords blasted out over the crowd. Instant hysteria, appropriately enough. (Yes, I know that's a cliche.)

It was a good gig, although the crowd was obviously split between the diehards who were lapping up "Citizen Erased" (probably the most Muse of all Muse songs) and those who had turned up hoping for a mosh to "Hysteria" and "Time Is Running Out" and who were standing around looking confused. You could also feel the sigh of relief from the latter as the opening riff from "Plug In Baby" screeched over their heads, and it carried over into "Citizen Erased". Even "Screenager" wasn't too bad, as it was thoughtfully illustrated with a rather amusing cartoon strip, basically the plot of "Soylent Green" in four minutes done in the style of 1950s cereal adverts. And I did enjoy "Darkshines", always a favourite of mine.

After "Feeling Good" finished, it was straight into the mosh, with the old favourites causing everyone to jump up and down and forget about the mud. (A asked me "Is it me, or can you not understand a word he's saying?" after every time Matt Bellamy opened his mouth - not unfairly, I've never heard anyone so eager to finish talking to the audience and get straight back into throttling a guitar - the contrast with Guy Garvey couldn't be much bigger!) Definitely more of a gig for the fans, then, but a great one.

Leeds Day Two, Part the Second: Whacking the Hell Out of a Snare Drum

And we ate quickly, then returned to the Main Stage to enjoy Elbow and Muse. Let me say that again. Elbow and Muse. I like saying that. Two of my favourite bands in one sentence. Elbow and Muse. (Okay, I'll stop now.)


I was slightly... well, apprehensive is over-stating it, since I really think Guy Garvey's charm has taken on the power of a force of nature, but I was interested, let's say, to see how Elbow would cope with the Leeds crowd, particularly that part of it which had been hanging around in the mud for hours in the hope of getting prime position for Muse. I need not have worried, since their patented opener of ambling on stage, fag in mouth, pint glass raised aloft, is usually guaranteed to win the crowd. (I'm reminded of the tale of the journalist who went to interview Elbow in a pub before a gig, and ended up staying there with them for most of the afternoon. Towards the end, he looked at his watch and muttered "Bloody hell, aren't you on in an hour?" The band nodded and made to leave. Catching his stare at the table littered with empties, Garvey apparently looked at him, winked and replied "Don't worry - we haven't gone on stage sober in 16 years".)


If anything, Elbow were probably what the crowd really needed, even if they didn't know it. I'd read an interview before hand in which Guy Garvey stated they were going to "do the cheesy festival stuff", and there was certainly plenty of "this section of the crowd, cheer loudly... now this section cheer EVEN LOUDER... now let's all wave our hands in the air", but this was no bad thing given the risk of incipient hypothermia. Also, Elbow these days have The Songs. Everyone knows "One Day Like This", which may well be one of the best closing tunes ever, in my entirely biased opinion, but "Neat Little Rows" and "Grounds for Divorce" are bloody good, especially with the light show going off at full blast behind them and Garvey whacking the hell out of a snare drum.


Appropriately enough, though, given that it's the song Elbow fought to play live on the BBC after winning the Mercury, "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" was The Moment. You don't tend to hear about "Leeds Moments" in the same way as "Glastonbury Moments" (or "Reading Moments" either - funny how being at Leeds makes you feel like the poor relation), but this was it. It is still the song that gets me every time when I listen to "Seldom Seen Kid", and I swear I saw the entire crowd at Leeds staring open-mouthed at the stage, temporarily transported by the sheer force of emotion coming from the stage. After that (and this is not a sentence I type often), Muse had a hard act to follow. Next time...

Leeds Day 2, Part the First: The Mud Has Reached Glastonbury Proportions

And it rained.

It rained, it rained, and then it rained some more. It rained during the night, it rained when we woke up, it took a brief pause in the morning, and then it rained the rest of the day.

We filled in the morning hours by seeing Mark Thomas recounting his tale of walking along the Palestinian – Israeli wall, and nearly being shot by the Israeli army. It was told with great vigour and amusement. After that, we turned up our hoods, tucked in our trousers, donned our T-shirts and trekked back to the Main Stage bar to start our noon to six shift.

Rarely have I ever been so glad at a festival to be working. At least for six hours we were inside a sturdy, waterproof tent with ready access to a toilet and some hot drinks. I’ve never served so many people who looked at risk of incipient hypothermia. By the end of the shift at 6pm, I was ready to start handing out blankets and hot water bottles to people instead of pints of Tuborg.

We had the usual cider saga of faulty machines, although given the rain, it’s not surprising. I vividly remembered my first Glastonbury, when the rain knocked out all the MDUs on site. The only drink we had for sale was the real ale, since you pour it from a cask. I’ll bet the real ale suppliers were very happy that year.

I also vividly remembered the other reason I like Glastonbury: big tents and lots of coffee and bar tents. Admittedly Leeds has lots of big tents, but it’s short on bar and coffee tents, which is a problem in this weather – people need somewhere to sit and chill out – or in this case warm up – and hide from the rain.

Still, we did have two big things to look forward to, a) Elbow and b) Muse. Two of my favourite bands of all time. We ate pizza, and then headed to take up our places in front of the stage.

Leeds Day 1, Part the Third: The View From Up Here

Again, my team bravely faced the Demons of Poor Organisation and Poor Timekeeping. Yup, we ended up as the only team on the bar. Three of us in one of the busiest bars on site. All credit to the bar management, who pitched in with a will, but we stayed on for two extra hours, and the team supposed to be relieving us failed to turn up despite the manager’s increasingly desperate radios to the site office.

After two extra and highly frantic hours, we’d finally had enough and left the unfortunate bar management staff to cope. There’s a limit to how long you can keep going on your feet with no break and no food. We reached ours, and left in search of food, which we found in the form of a Thai curry in the main arena. I’m usually good at truffling out the food stalls on site that make food out of actual ingredients, and my nose had not deserted me.

A curry and a pint later, we roamed throughout the site, vaguely intending to get into the Silent Disco tent, but the massive queue put us off. A and C headed for the Beer Company bar, and I took a ride on the Ferris Wheel, which I’ve always rather wanted to do. We rendez-voused for a quick pint and check of the weather forecast on C’s smartphone (not promising), then fell into our tents and fell asleep.

Leeds Day 1, Part the Second: Die, Stripy Bastards, Die

We strolled off the coach, attached our backpacks to ourselves, and staggered off in search of the WBC person who was handing out the badges and directions. Having acquired both, we yomped off across the site to the WBC camping village. As is the inevitable way of these things, it was at the other end of the site. By the time we’d got there, my shoulders felt they had fused together in the middle.

Fortunately, the sun was out, the grass was dry, and it was perfect tent-putting-up weather. We carefully selected a spot based on my past experience (“Not too near the bar because it’s always noisy, not too far away from the toilets or we’ll have long walks in the middle of the night, not too near the toilets or it’ll stink by Saturday and everyone will fall over our tents in the middle of the night”). We chose to volunteer for an extra bar shift in the Campsite Bar, and set off to acquire some lunch and explore the site prior to our shift.

Leeds hadn’t changed too much from what I remember in 2006, although sadly our campsite back in those days was much nearer the coach park! We ate pizza for lunch at what I’m pretty sure was the same pizza stall I ate my first lunch at at my first Leeds festival. (If I can remember this, how come I can’t remember where I hid the spare shed key last year?) The sun was out, the crowds were roaming, and the site was not yet covered in litter.

It may be apparent that my love for Leeds is somewhat less than my love for Glastonbury. This is largely due to the fact that frankly, I find Leeds a bit boring during the day. At Glastonbury, there is always something interesting or strange happening somewhere. At Leeds, it’s all about the bands and the alcohol, which is great in principle, but a bit dull in practice unless you get lucky and find lots of bands you like.


(Actually, for many people it’s also all about the drugs, the sex in tents and the fights, with added possibility of setting fire to stuff at the end. For us, the first isn’t our thing, the second would have required our other halves to be present, the third was unlikely to happen unless someone really kicked off behind the bar, and the fourth was unlikely to happen unless it got really cold!) This is particularly an issue if, like us, you can’t drink much during the day due to having to stay sober for your bar shifts.

As 5pm rolled around, we headed to the Campsite bar for our first shift. It is a source of some amusement to me that the WBC makes (rightly) a big fuss about briefing its teams, but that at least half the teams I’ve taken to festivals over the years have done their first shift (ever) with no briefing at all, since we always volunteer for the extra-day shifts. This was no exception.

Luckily, both C and A displayed unflappable calm, and got the hang of it with great speed. Although there was some flapping, as the hot weather and the sticky spilled drinks attracted every wasp in a 5-mile radius. We had some quite effective wasp traps, but most of us got stung at least once. I’m normally a peaceful human being, but by the end of the shift, I was standing in front of the wasp traps watching the little buggers flap their last in stale Irn-Bru and shrieking “Die, stripy bastards, die!”

Ah yes, the end of the shift. There’s a tale….

Leeds Day 1, Part the First: Thanks A Bunch, Ricky Wilson

And here I am again, writing up my trip to one of the UK’s many music festivals – in this instance, Leeds, where once again I was leading a team of intrepid volunteers to serve pints behind a bar for six hours a day to raise funds for our trade union. As myself and the other two members of my team, A and C, dozed gently on the National Express coach to Bramham Park, I found myself reflecting on the last time I was at Leeds Festival.

It was back in 2006, the last year there was no Glastonbury Festival. (There will be none next year either, due to a) their needing to give the site a rest, b) it being impossible to get Portaloos for love nor money next summer due to the London Olympics.) I was jointly leading a team of ten intrepid volunteers to raise funds for our union’s regional Young Members network. This was also the year that marked the beginning of my education in why it is unwise to trust people you haven’t met to turn up and volunteer.

Two of my potential twelve volunteers dropped out the night before due to illness and childcare problems, which was fair enough. Another asked to travel separately to the rest of the group, turned up, collected her pass, and didn’t work the festival; we never saw her again. There were other members I hadn’t met before they turned up at the coach station; looking back, it’s amazing that things worked out at all. (Since then I insist on character references for people from their line managers, and that the team meets for a briefing and travels together. I also hit people from the start with the “you have to commit to it months in advance, you’ll be on your feet for seven hours a day, and if you serve alcohol to under-18s, you’ll be paying an £80 fine” approach. It may be tough but it well works.)

Apart from that, I remember good things of Leeds 2006, funnily enough. Except for one of the bar managers, who was universally hated by everyone in the bar. He opened his account with us by being found in the bar we did our late-night shift on the Thursday in, lying in the bar’s rest area claiming to be too drunk to stand up. He then bossed everyone around for the rest of the week, to the extent that even I wanted to dot him with a trayful of twelve pints of stale lager.

Oh yeah, apart from that… I remember seeing Franz Ferdinand in my 20-minute rest break (I snuck out of the back of the tent and into the arena to get a better view), who were great. I also remember trying to force my way into the NME tent to see the Kooks. The crush was so bad that we made no progress, until eventually someone yelled “Sod the bloody Kooks, let’s get out of here.” I took their advice and shoved my way back out of the tent and back towards air. It was at this point I realised I had lost all my team, no-one was responding to my text messages, and I was facing the prospect of spending the entire Friday night on my own… until suddenly one of them appeared in front of me. Our catching sight of each other must have been a thousand-to-one chance, but it happened. The rest of the night was fun.

This was also where the famous “I Predict a Riot” event occurred. We were on the main stage bar. It could just be that at the time I was less experienced a bar worker and thought the crowd was worse than it actually was… but I remember queues ten deep at the bar and servers tripping over each other running around the bar. The MDUs pour twelve pints at a bar, and the trays literally would not touch the table before people snatched the pints out of them and dashed off. At the time, we had cup holders that would hold six pints at a time, and people would order two or three of them at a time to save having to come back to the bar. I was trying to fill one, waiting at the table for the machine to pour, when the harassed person on it yelled “It’s only doing three pints at a time! Sorry!”.

I turned round and caught sight of the queue for the first time. I could not see daylight between their heads, they were so closely packed together.

And then, with perfect timing, the Kaiser Chiefs struck up with “I Predict a Riot”. Thanks a bundle, Ricky Wilson.

Funnily enough, I discovered at Leeds 2011 that my memories are wrong. I’ve actually seen Muse not three times, but four; I saw them at Leeds 2006. This was before I really became a Muse-head though.

This time around, things were different. I deliberately gave up my place at Glastonbury 2011 to go to Leeds, which was not an easy choice. (I’m entitled to one place at one festival each year as a reward for doing the organising.) But when the festival headliners are Muse, My Chemical Romance and Pulp, supported by Elbow… well, when your four favourite bands are headlining, there can be only one choice, even when you love Glastonbury as much as I do.

The coach bumped its way into the coach park, and we hopped off into blazing sunshine.