Well, it's all over for another year.
It was a weekend filled with music, fast food and camping in the country.
Among my highlights was watching Kaiser Chiefs last night - it got the crowd going in a way few other bands had managed over the weekend. The worst offenders that I saw were Arctic Monkeys, who failed to live up to their headline slot on Friday. Playing just a handful of their many well-known hits, they instead chose to focus on material from their new album released just four days previously. The set list might have gone down well with die-hard fans, but in the chilly Bramham Park night they needed to do more to keep the neutrals entertained.
Kaiser Chiefs, by comparison, gave a lesson in crowd-pleasing performances. They stormed through their radio-friendly hits to keep everyone singing, splitting the crowd in two to chant "Kaiser" and "Chiefs" at lead singer Ricky Wilson as he bounced around the stage. They lived up to every expectation I had and rounded off a great weekend.
Which brings me back to my previous post about taking full advantage of the free ticket. As predicted, I set out with the best intentions of sticking out the whole weekend, with perhaps a couple of trips home for a warm shower. By 11pm on Friday, my determination had all but blown away in the freezing wind coming across Bramham Park. Even insise the tent a few hours later I was struggling to keep warm (despite three jumpers and several pairs of socks, along with a three-season sleeping bag - I might contact Trading Standards...).
The weather deteriorated over the weekend and Sunday, particularly, was foul. We spent a great deal of time enduring some questionable comedy acts just because the stage was in the only tented area which still had standing room inside.
So do I feel I missed out by not spending the whole weekend on site and dropping out when it all got a bit too - well, festival-like?
No, not in the slightest. I had a great time and, to top it off, I stayed warm, I had clean hair every day and I didn't get stuck in a portable toilet.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Joining in the Festival fun
I love Leeds Festival.
I've loved it since I was 16, when, as a post-GCSE treat, I spent a day in the grounds of Temple Newsam with my friends enjoying a range of music. We watched bands we'd never heard of, ran away from the slightly scary Slipknot fans in the crowd and drank luxury Cadbury's hot chocolate. It all culminated in a two-hour set from my favourite band in the world EVER (at the time), Stereophonics.
My festival experience was limited to that until last year, when I discovered I could get free press tickets through work, in exchange for writing a few words and printing some pictures of the event. Not only were these free tickets - they were free VIP tickets. Fabulous. No slumming it with the Great Unwashed, no trekking four miles across the Yorkshire countryside to reach the arena or return to the campsite, and certainly no knee-deep mud pouring in as you unzip your tent in the morning.
So, in 2008, I enjoyed a rather pleasant weekend camping in the grounds of Bramham Park. I watched a variety of bands and comedians, ate a pizza which was stonebaked while I waited and got near enough my eight hours' sleep at night. I also regularly made the three-mile trip back to my house to make use of the facilities and have a warm shower every day. Bliss.
I intend to do the same this year, with an even better line-up on offer. I shall watch Kaiser Chiefs in clean underwear and enjoy Arctic Monkeys with freshly-washed hair.
Yet I can't help feeling I'm not getting the full festival experience. I won't queue for an hour to use a toilet so disgusting I don't dare touch anything. I won't plait my hair on Friday and leave it as it is until Monday morning. And I certainly won't be fighting my way to the front of the crowd so I can be thrown back over the heads of other revellers, only to try again (as much as anything else, I'm fairly sure I'd get dropped and then trampled).
When my friends heard I've got free tickets and I'm close enough to home to nip back for a change of clothes every day, you would expect they'd be enormously jealous. But instead, they look at me in disgust and tell me I'm not doing it properly. Instead, like them, I should pay £200 for a weekend pass and refuse to leave the site, no matter what the British summer weather throws at me.
Perhaps they're right. And I suspect, six or seven years ago, I would probably have agreed and stuck the whole thing out like them. But it doesn't matter what my intentions - as soon as that cold wind cuts across the Bramham countryside, I want a proper bed and a hot bath. I'm just not the festival sort. And besides, I suspect my friends are only so annoyed with me because they're stuck out in a freezing field in the pouring rain without any clean clothes.
I've loved it since I was 16, when, as a post-GCSE treat, I spent a day in the grounds of Temple Newsam with my friends enjoying a range of music. We watched bands we'd never heard of, ran away from the slightly scary Slipknot fans in the crowd and drank luxury Cadbury's hot chocolate. It all culminated in a two-hour set from my favourite band in the world EVER (at the time), Stereophonics.
My festival experience was limited to that until last year, when I discovered I could get free press tickets through work, in exchange for writing a few words and printing some pictures of the event. Not only were these free tickets - they were free VIP tickets. Fabulous. No slumming it with the Great Unwashed, no trekking four miles across the Yorkshire countryside to reach the arena or return to the campsite, and certainly no knee-deep mud pouring in as you unzip your tent in the morning.
So, in 2008, I enjoyed a rather pleasant weekend camping in the grounds of Bramham Park. I watched a variety of bands and comedians, ate a pizza which was stonebaked while I waited and got near enough my eight hours' sleep at night. I also regularly made the three-mile trip back to my house to make use of the facilities and have a warm shower every day. Bliss.
I intend to do the same this year, with an even better line-up on offer. I shall watch Kaiser Chiefs in clean underwear and enjoy Arctic Monkeys with freshly-washed hair.
Yet I can't help feeling I'm not getting the full festival experience. I won't queue for an hour to use a toilet so disgusting I don't dare touch anything. I won't plait my hair on Friday and leave it as it is until Monday morning. And I certainly won't be fighting my way to the front of the crowd so I can be thrown back over the heads of other revellers, only to try again (as much as anything else, I'm fairly sure I'd get dropped and then trampled).
When my friends heard I've got free tickets and I'm close enough to home to nip back for a change of clothes every day, you would expect they'd be enormously jealous. But instead, they look at me in disgust and tell me I'm not doing it properly. Instead, like them, I should pay £200 for a weekend pass and refuse to leave the site, no matter what the British summer weather throws at me.
Perhaps they're right. And I suspect, six or seven years ago, I would probably have agreed and stuck the whole thing out like them. But it doesn't matter what my intentions - as soon as that cold wind cuts across the Bramham countryside, I want a proper bed and a hot bath. I'm just not the festival sort. And besides, I suspect my friends are only so annoyed with me because they're stuck out in a freezing field in the pouring rain without any clean clothes.
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