So yeah, the reason I was away for a while a week ago was because I was getting special V.I.P. treatment at the V festival. Most of you over in America wouldn’t have heard of it, but it’s one of the biggest rock things over here. Yeah I’m making the thread late but I’ve been busy.
Anyway, it all started with my mum winning tickets on the radio and her giving them to me. So I decided to take my sig. Other with me. This was my first mistake, but I won’t delve deeper int that.
My second mistake was leaving our tent on the fucking TRAIN before we even get there. We managed to get lucky though when the rail workers looked for the tent on the train and recovered it. So we ended up getting there Friday afternoon, spent an hour or so walking around the place to find our campsite and then finally set up the tent. That night was ok, went to the nearby Marquee where they were selling drinks, stayed there for a little while, I got bitched at for being an “antisocial fuck” and then we went back to the tent and slept.
Woke up around 10 the next day, which is when the fun began. We both had showers and then while she sat in the marquee drawing or doing whatever, I went and spent £6 on a schedule that I found out later we didn’t even have to pay for. Then we went and looked for where we could get our VIP wristbands and shit, this took about an hour and a few miles of walking in mud. Finally got to the acoustic tent and then we had to wait another half hour for them to get there and power up the laptop to scan in the barcodes on the tickets. So at around 12 we were finally in the acoustic tent. Yay.
We had fun for a few hours, playing with the volleyballs and and other things on the mock beach outside of the acoustic tent. Treated with free food, drinks and ice cream too which was nice :P. We managed to watch Keane acousticly who were fucking EXCELLENT, and the lead singer of which looks so goddamn chibi it’s unbelieveable. Then we went and watched Pink for a while back in the outside world at the main stage. She was pretty good, even though I’ve never much liked her music. She also did a cover of What’s Up by 4 non blondes which I have to say was sub-par. Then Zarita went over to another stage since she wanted to see Jamelia and ended up staying there all day, leaving me behind.
I just decided to go back to the acoustic tent for a litte while then since no bands I wanted to see were playing. I saw Tim Booth play (He’s the lead singer of James, going solo), I loved his songs, mainly the lyrics, plus he wouldn’t stop staring at me while singing, which unnerved me slightly. Then I saw the Killers, never heard of them, but they were ok. Also got to see Kings of Leon who were pretty good. The real fun wasn’t until later on though, when I went back to the main stage.
When I went back Dido was playing, She was on for about an hour and a half and was phenomenal. I did kinda like her before this but she sings great live, even if she does strain herself a little. She also sung the first song she ever wrote which was when she was 16 and just discovered sex, and used it to seduce boys or something. I honestly didn’t think that much of it :P, but hey, for being written by a 16 year old, it wasn’t bad.
So after Dido finished, I managed to get up to the front row centre for the next band. THIS was DEFINATELY the highlight of the festival for me. Since Zarita had the schedule I didn’t know who was playing next. If I’d have known, maybe I would have considered being a bit more careful about where I was. So anyway, here I am waiting for the next band to come on and it ends up being MUSE. The fucking mosh pit formed AROUND me as they started. Now I’m not very big or strong, so I was getting pushed around like a bitch, but I loved every second of it in a fearing for my life sorta way. Muse ended up playing for like 2 hours which was so awesome, I don’t think they played Unintended though, which was a slight let down for me, still, they did manage to play Stockholm Syndrome and Time is running out.
So Saturday finished at around 11:30PM, I went back to the tent and Zar came back a little while later, we talked for a little while, I found out I missed the Human League which I was really sad about and she complained for a while about the rough time she had over where she was. Then I managed to get to sleep at around 4 AM thanks to the fucktards making loads of noise outside. Woke up the next morning at around 11, had the shower and went straight over to the acoustic tent, stayed there for a while and watched some more great bands: The Thrills who weren’t anything special, Badly Drawn Boy who’s a funny bastard and a great songwriter, The Stands who weren’t very memorable either, The Zutons who were pretty good and interesting and the main singer from Snow Patrol since the rest were backstage too drunk to come on, he was also slightly drunk forgetting words and everything in the middle of the songs. He got a few laughs too.
So I left there to go see NERD after Zar did, couldn’t find her, I REALLY didn’t like NERD, but I stayed since I managed to get close to the front, then the Pixies came on. Now I’ve never heard of the Pixies until then, but they fucking blew my MIND. I loved them so much and there was a guitar solo where they just left the guitar on the floor and let it play itself. Since I don’t know much about instruments I’ve got no idea how they did it but it was awesome. I also ended up getting quite a lot of people wet when I asked the security to get me some water which was fun. Drunk some, put some on my hair and headbanged, then just threw the cup behind me. Some people ddn’t like it :P. So after getting my mind rocked out for a second time I went back to the acoustic tent to meet up with Zar. Then we went over to the last concert of the fetival which was Massive Attack.
Since Massive Attack are one of my favourite bands this is what I was most looking forward to and I was NOT dissapointed. We managed to get to the front via side penetration since it was outside. They opened with Teardrop and went on to play for around an hour and a half, it was also night-time which only added to the effect they had, it was so blue and hypnotic, I also had a woman side-grinding me for half the show since Zar managed to insult me and make a fool of me in the middle of this crowd and I proceeded to ignore her so she talked to another guy instead. Apart from that though, it’s easily my other most memorable part of the festival.
After Massive Attack we realised we still had quite a bit of money left over so we thought fuck the free food (Which consisted of only hot dogs, burger and pasta) and decided to gte chinese instead which was cool. Went back to the marquee near the tent, she seemed to become really cold to me so I thought fuck it. Went back to the tent and decided to try and sleep. She came into the tent, said she was invited by some guys to have some drinks and just left which pissed me off a little. I didn’t manage to get to sleep until 5 AM thanks to the fucktards again, then she woke me up again at 7 AM which is when she finaly came back from the drinks which turned out to be alot of other stuff. So I went back to sleep since I didn’t feel like taking out my worry and frustration out on her and we woke up again at 10 AM next morning.
She had a shower then we packed our shit and left for the shuttle bus back to the station. We spent around 45 minutes walking through mud since it was raining that morning only to find the queue for the shuttle bus. That took TWO HOURS to get through. TWO FUCKING HOURS to go 3 miles to the train station. We would have been better off walking it, but there was no way I was walking that far with all the shit we were carrying. Luckily the queue was made easier by some funny guys in front of us though, and I ended up buying a festival T-shirt for £2. So then we managed to get to the station and home again.
So, in conclusion this is THE best time I’ve had in my life, first ever concert and it rocked my mind. The bad thing is, since it’s my first, I’ll be comparing all future concerts to this and they’ll most likely seem shit in comparison. Next time though, I’m definately taking someone different. Most definately.