Tuesday, August 31, 2004
The stuff that happened at the Festival that I haven't forgotten
If anyone was in any doubt about the value of this blog I will, from now on, bring to their attention an incident from Thursday at the festival. A girl walked past our camp saying "Why are they shouting bollocks? That's so last year, they should think of something new to shout." Indeed they should, but you are really showing your age there. No regular reader of Coments would have made such a faux pas. That's the kind of comment that would probably prompt bitter old festival goers to ask what you got in your exams. I still feel a bit sorry for the girl (a different one) who responded to the exams question with "Three A stars, three Bs..." and was greeted with a chorus of "F*ck off!"
In other chant related news the guys camping a couple of sites along from us started up a chant of "Chris Akabusi! which went down well. Especially after Alex from Rebus responded with "Awuga!". The response from The Akabusis, "No you dick, that's John Fashanu", provided a huge amount of amusement and the story was repeated up and down our campsite all weekend.
That said the chants of choice for the festival were definitely Goldie Lookin' Chain lyrics. "When I say guns you say wappers! GUNS!" "WAPPERS!" etc. The call and response version worked nicely, although it was a bit more risky than just shouting "Guns don't kill people, wappers do!" because there's always a chance you wouldn't get a response and then you'd look a bit foolish.
In a link that even Jim Bowes would be proud of, that leads me to the bands. It was the aforementioned GLC that opened the festival you see. They were one of the best things I saw. There's nothing like seeing 10,000 standing in the rain and mud wetting themselves with laughter. I saw them at Ashton Court Festival where you could hear absolutely nothing because of what appeared to be technical problems and they were rubbish. You definitely need to be able to hear the lyrics.
Other highlights included Jurassic 5. The section of their set where the MCs went off-stage and left Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark to show off their amazing skills was the most impressive musical display of the festival. There was amazing decksterity and some really cool gadgets but their talent can't be faulted.
Bloc Party were also very, very good. Special mention to them for being the band who looked the most happy to be there. It's an incredible change seeing them play to a packed Radio 1 tent after seeing them at the Rising Sun but they rose to the occasion.
I missed Auf Der Maur to watch 50 Cent get bottled and it was well worth it. The media seems to be saying that he was bottled off and didn't finish his set, everyone in the crowd seemed to think that he'd played to the end and weathered the storm (and it really was a storm of bottles). He fought back well though and I think everyone I spoke to afterwards had a lot of respect for the way he dealt with it. First thing he did when he came on-stage was hurl bottles back at the crowd! Good work Fitty. It was obvious he was in trouble when everyone was talking about him getting bottled off all day. When we were waiting for him to come on the kids heading towards the front, loaded with bottles, were getting cheered forward. It was quite an amazing thing to watch.
I would talk more about the bands but I missed most of what I wanted to see and none of it's really coming back to me at the moment. Maybe that'll come back in a later entry, anyway you can read about them on the NME site or something, this is the place for the more interesting stories.
The weather wasn't as bad as predicted, we were lucky (or early) enough to get a dry campsite and we were fine once we'd got that. There was mud but it wasn't enough to stop anyone having a good time. In the end it was mostly sunny. On Saturday it was so hot that Steve from Rebus' claimed it was nearly hot enough to melt the mud! Luckily this amazing prediction didn't come true and the heat did in fact just dry out the mud. It is true that some of the campsites did resemble paddy fields and I'm really glad I wasn't in one of those, that really would have been a nightmare.
Might post more about the festival if anything comes back to me.
In other chant related news the guys camping a couple of sites along from us started up a chant of "Chris Akabusi! which went down well. Especially after Alex from Rebus responded with "Awuga!". The response from The Akabusis, "No you dick, that's John Fashanu", provided a huge amount of amusement and the story was repeated up and down our campsite all weekend.
That said the chants of choice for the festival were definitely Goldie Lookin' Chain lyrics. "When I say guns you say wappers! GUNS!" "WAPPERS!" etc. The call and response version worked nicely, although it was a bit more risky than just shouting "Guns don't kill people, wappers do!" because there's always a chance you wouldn't get a response and then you'd look a bit foolish.
In a link that even Jim Bowes would be proud of, that leads me to the bands. It was the aforementioned GLC that opened the festival you see. They were one of the best things I saw. There's nothing like seeing 10,000 standing in the rain and mud wetting themselves with laughter. I saw them at Ashton Court Festival where you could hear absolutely nothing because of what appeared to be technical problems and they were rubbish. You definitely need to be able to hear the lyrics.
Other highlights included Jurassic 5. The section of their set where the MCs went off-stage and left Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark to show off their amazing skills was the most impressive musical display of the festival. There was amazing decksterity and some really cool gadgets but their talent can't be faulted.
Bloc Party were also very, very good. Special mention to them for being the band who looked the most happy to be there. It's an incredible change seeing them play to a packed Radio 1 tent after seeing them at the Rising Sun but they rose to the occasion.
I missed Auf Der Maur to watch 50 Cent get bottled and it was well worth it. The media seems to be saying that he was bottled off and didn't finish his set, everyone in the crowd seemed to think that he'd played to the end and weathered the storm (and it really was a storm of bottles). He fought back well though and I think everyone I spoke to afterwards had a lot of respect for the way he dealt with it. First thing he did when he came on-stage was hurl bottles back at the crowd! Good work Fitty. It was obvious he was in trouble when everyone was talking about him getting bottled off all day. When we were waiting for him to come on the kids heading towards the front, loaded with bottles, were getting cheered forward. It was quite an amazing thing to watch.
I would talk more about the bands but I missed most of what I wanted to see and none of it's really coming back to me at the moment. Maybe that'll come back in a later entry, anyway you can read about them on the NME site or something, this is the place for the more interesting stories.
The weather wasn't as bad as predicted, we were lucky (or early) enough to get a dry campsite and we were fine once we'd got that. There was mud but it wasn't enough to stop anyone having a good time. In the end it was mostly sunny. On Saturday it was so hot that Steve from Rebus' claimed it was nearly hot enough to melt the mud! Luckily this amazing prediction didn't come true and the heat did in fact just dry out the mud. It is true that some of the campsites did resemble paddy fields and I'm really glad I wasn't in one of those, that really would have been a nightmare.
Might post more about the festival if anything comes back to me.
# posted by Mike @ 11:35 
