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MUDPOCALYPSE!

11:58 / 12.07.04

Music festivals, eh? When they're good, they're great. The sun is shining, you're with friends and surrounded by thousands of like-minded, happy, attractive, smiling fans, watching your favourite band play an epoch-defining set...

But when they're bad, they're awful. It's raining, you've lost your friends somewhere in a crowd of surly drug casualties who are intent on elbowing you into renal failure and the band onstage are careering into their nineteenth awful minutes of a blues-rock version of the Sesame Street theme...

Everyone that's been to a festival has stories from both extremes. This weekend at T in the Park, I saw the Pixies blast through a set I've been waiting to see since I was fifteen years old, PJ Harvey effortlessly dominate the main stage (and rekindle the crush on her I've had for the better part of a decade) AND Jake Shears' cock. This is all good.

However, I also saw the guy behind me on the bus journey there get a Buckfast bottle smashed over his head by a bunch of neds, and then waited by the side of the road waiting for the police and ambulance services to arrive, picking broken glass out of my hair with shaking hands. This is not good (although obviously much worse for that poor guy than it was for me).

So, Barbelith, tell me: what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you at a festival?

19:19 / 12.07.04

Well i was at glastenbury (sp) (pet hate people refering to it as "Glasto") in the dance tent, when i started freaking out, to many naughty chemicals, i was too hot and seemed to think that my legs might split like rotting wood if i didnt stop dancing, well i seek refuge in the cinima field and am strangly comforted by the giant ants (it was the film antz, i wasnt that bad), alls well and good my heart rate returns to normal and im enjoying my self again. When i come back round theres another film on, so start to watch it.

it that bloody john malkvich film

fucked me right up, i still twitch if somone suggests they put it on

22:29 / 12.07.04

i was led unwittingly into a tent where Gong were playing. just as i was coming up on some bad ketamine...

prog jazz: dont do it kids......

08:05 / 13.07.04

Lest this turn into a "my favourite trip" thread...

One year at Glastonbury ('93?) I was backstage and somehow managed to find a sofa. I and a friend dragged it to the BBC outside broadcast unit (this was well before the TV cameras started descending on Glasto (sorry Puck) and we just sat and watched Andy Kershaw broadcasting (there was a little window in the truck) followed by Annie Nightingale.

For some reason we kept applauding and whistling at the DJs, which they thought was funny at first but eventually got rather annoyed by.

Annie Nightingale came out of the wagon some time later accompanied by a chap who I, in my addled state, was sure was A Famous Pop Star.

We congratulated Annie on her show and I told the Famous Pop Star I'd really enjoyed his set.

"I haven't been on yet?" he said.

"Oh," I said, puzzled. "I'm sure I've seen you. What time are you on, then?"

Pause. "Who do you think I am, exactly?"

"You're Jarvis Cocker."

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"No, honestly, I'm not."

Me (aggressively): "Yes you fucking are."

Annie Nightingale: "He's not, really. He's my husband."

Paus. "You're married to Jarvis Cocker?"

Exit the Nightingales stage left, pursued by a bear.

Another time (possibly '94) I and another journalist friend were again backstage. The sun was beating down and, again in a delicate state, we took refuge under Dreadzone's tour bus. Lying on our backs we could see a scene playing out in front of us.

"Do you think this is important?" I asked my friend.

"From a journalistic point of view?" he answered. "Like, a big story?"

We watched again for a bit from under the tour bus.

"Probably," he said. "Should we do anything?"

"Nah," I said.

So we carried on watching Robbie Williams getting off his face with Oasis. Two days later he left Take That and it was all over the papers.

17:29 / 13.07.04

White riot- that must have been the same year, my mate tripping his nuts off dissapears for a few hours, when i get back home and develop my camrea that he "borrowed" i end up with 17 pictures of Gong, mostly of a old man wearing a tin-foil suit playing a guitar.

seems like a tropical fish to me, indeed