Festival Diaries

The Carling Weekend 2007 is dead.  Literally, leaving behind ashes (of tents, drunks and Johnny Borrell effigies), contents of the pit toilets and of course the many memories, at least it made its mark!

So what was it that made Leeds Fest, Leeds Fest, this year?  Was it unofficial fancy dress convention? The fact that most people don’t remember it due to copious amounts of one substance or another?  Or could it perhaps have been something to do with the music, I wonder?

The one thing that does stand out in my mind though is the mud; and by that, I mean the complete lack of it! Far from the images I had of seeing my tent and bands floating away, Bramham Park was (apart from a token patch of possible urine induced mud by the toilets) bone dry.  Not that I am one to insult the rare gift of sunshine in these parts, but, I did have an extensive list of mud based activities in mind which have remained unfulfilled…  

But what of the bread and butter of the festival: the music? From Devendra Banhart providing a folk solstice amongst the indie dance acts on the NME stage, to Crystal Castles shaking the cobwebs out of our sleep-impoverished brains, to Eagles of Death Metal sticking two fingers and one hell of a meaty moustache up to the stage slot times; my what a banquet of unlikely and diverse treats have the festival goers of this year sampled.  As if that wasn’t enough for some, well then lest I forget about the explosive Friday set from the Klaxons with two tonnes of glow paint covered, neon clad kids surfing half/unconscious over the crowd; jerky glam-disco quartet Late Of The Pier, giddily euphoric-pop Cajun Dance Party and unsigned darlings The Swing Movement who provided the soundtrack to the weekend along with the relentless cries of “b*****ks!”. 

Twisting the night away

The Red Hot Chili Peppers sadly proved to be like a harsher tasting marmite to the tens of thousands who came out to watch them on their last show after one and a half years of touring.  What started as a promisingly adrenaline fuelled, almost psychedelic jamming intro, ended as a much more egotistical… jamming session.  As the weathered, superstar band that they are, they should have known that playing anthemic gems such as “Under the Bridge”, “Scar Tissue” and “Suck My Kiss”, whilst using a little bit of their musical authority to perhaps even have played an encore encore (well, I can always dream) would have pardoned them for their lack of crowd interaction and an arrogant, self-absorbed stage presence. 

One thing that has and will continue to not only perplex but haunt me for quite some time is the relatively new emergence of the ‘powder room’.  How it got in to Leeds Festival I shall (and do) not ever want to know, but if going there was a priority in your mind-then why on earth were you at a music festival? The paradox could not be more wanton.  Surely not going would be better than being thrown down the toilet pit as a punishment for getting a facial, no?

Conga lines through the silent disco, asthma attack-inducing comedy sets from Simon Amstell and Ed Bryne, friendly pirates crowd surfing in their pirate ship, gaining muscles from endlessly winding up phone chargers, putting whole camps on fires, forgetting to brush your teeth for several days at a time, buying a ridiculous hat, twisting the night away in the Oxfam music tent to Pulp and the Beach Boys, not sleeping in your own tent, not remembering exactly what did and did not happen, wearing wellies purely for ironic reasons and watching a naked man do the helicopter: it wouldn’t be Leeds Festival otherwise, would it?