BACKSTAGE BLOGGER

BACKSTAGE BLOGGER: LEEDS FESTIVAL
I’ve spent several weekends this summer living out of a tent, eating shit food and holding my breath when taking a shit so I didn’t think I’d be that phased by the Leeds festival.

The site was not the “quagmire” described by local news, it was just a bit muddy. But the barest amount of mud is enough to send British festival crowds bonkers. People were forking out loads for overpriced wellies. Others were throwing themselves into the mud and rolling around, forgetting the fact they had another 3 days in that shit.

Penned in the VIP area were most of the Hollyoaks cast, even that wasteman who got Sasha hooked on smack. It was pretty boring back there so I went off to see some bands.

The music was pretty amazing on the first day. The Whip found that if you repeat a line enough times to a crowd of boozed-up Yorkshiremen you’ll get most of them chanting it back.

Holy Fuck turned up, smashed through a set of knob-twiddling mayhem, and just walked off like they’d been on a shopping trip to ASDA.

MGMT went down well with the attending army of Skins-aping GCSE kids.

I then stood through The Last Shadow Puppets who sounded OK, but the plush red curtain and orchestral ensemble was a bit much.

Cribs were the best band of the festival for me. Being at one of their gigs in Yorkshire is crazy, especially when it’s in Leeds, especially when Johnny Marr is on guitar, and especially when the singer starts the show by jumping headfirst into some bloke’s boot.

My low point came with Rage Against The Machine. They sounded very quiet and in the hush I quickly remembered how annoying their fans can be. People rapping in fake American accents make me feel sick and I was surrounded by 50,000 of them.

There were loads of kids doing their bit for the environment by collecting those cardboard beer cups. They got 10p a cup and some of them had shitloads. This little dude had a system worked out like a corner kid from The Wire. He reckoned he was going to earn about £75 for the full weekend. Good hustle.

LANRE

BACKSTAGE BLOGGER – GLOBAL GATHERING

The setting was like a location from Mad Max. A giant dust bowl with knackered helicopters and old planes strewn all over the place. At any moment I expected some leather-clad weirdo to jump out screaming at me to give him some petrol.  Instead I was greeted by police sniffer dogs and overzealous workers who frisked the shit out of me. When they’d finished they just winked and said “make sure you drink lots of water”, like the whole thing was a private joke that everyone was in on.

Imagine a massive two-day rave with 55,000 people, 250 acts, and 25 arenas. Yeah. Every other person seemed to have bought a T-shirt that had “CUNT” scrawled over the front of it, which, to give them their dues, was pretty observant and honest. But it didn’t do much to endear them or make you want to look them in the eye.

It was like a local village fayre gone mad. Everyone bought some horns and glow sticks and then hit the bumper cars and the waltzers. Some people were so wasted that they thought going on a bungee rope, run by people wearing tracky bottoms and no tops was a good idea.

My compadre Pete showed up on the second day. He brought his camera and tried to capture the mood. He’s travelling to Russia on a train in a couple of months. I think Global Gathering was a good grounding in how to deal with mashed up people who can’t really speak English, because we bumped into a few. The sound of happy hardcore was ever present. The MCs gave shout-outs to all the crews: Walthamstow, Barnet, Barnsley, even Coventry got a “hold tight”.

One good thing about the festival was the food. Not because it was nice, but because it seemed like the vendors didn’t even try to make it sound appetizing. There were stalls selling “Rare breed burgers” (whatever they are), “Proper hot dogs” (as opposed to fake ones), and the least appealing was the Caribbean food stall. They could only be arsed to scribble their sign onto some cardboard using some crayons. The best place was Yam the Cassava, which sold cheap creole food. I got addicted to the fritters which were only ¬£1.50 and tasted like sunshine.

On the first night things were pretty bless. Kanye was popping out all the hits and people seemed calm and tranquil. Things started to go wrong when Kanye left the stage. It was then that the hard house started to seep out of every tent. For 36 hours straight all I heard was 135 bpm. It’s officially the most retarded music ever. It was that bad I was nearly crying with joy when Mark Ronson came on stage, even though he is one of the most irritating humans alive. Roisin Murphy was amazing and played a disco set (which was surprisingly decent). Etienne De Crecy played his set from inside a huge Rubik’s Cube, probably the safest place at the festival.

I don’t know if I learned anything at Global Gathering. All I know is if I hear another hard house “banger”, I’m going fritter my own face.

LANRE

BACKSTAGE BLOGGER – LATITUDE FESTIVAL

Latitude 2008

From Lanre, our trusty Backstage Blogger:

The Latitude festival is a liberal left-wing getaway like no other. Music, comedy, film, literature and poetry are all there. Every possible cultural itch is scratched.

But it’s not quite the Guardian-reading utopia it should be, because as soon as the organisers splashed Interpol and Franz Ferdinand over the flyers they were guaranteed to attract about 10,000 tossers.

The crowd turned out to be fairly mixed and was mostly made up of eco-families, students, standard young drunken morons, old folk and yuppies.

After about two minutes of being there some guy handed me a flyer. It was for the Guillemots who were playing part of the score to Eraserhead in the Film & Music arena. That is about as confused as it gets. Who thought that was a good idea? That’s like getting Ion Dissonance to do the score for the Lion King.

After making my way into the arena past the “Secret Wood” (woooo) and “Art Space” (yippee), I saw the Go Team! on the main stage. They were bouncing about, forcing everyone to do the most uncoordinated dancing you’re likely to see. I felt bad for the dads who kind of had to do it or face looking like a spoilsport in front of their kids.

The art space had some interesting/sixth form art project style stuff going on. My favourite was ‘Compulsery [sic] Moustache World’.

There was so much going on in the afternoon it hard to know which way to look. Everyone was swarming around the comedy tent for Bill Bailey and people were desperately trying to get an eyeful of Irvine Welsh and Hanif Kureshi.

There were the usual incredibly shit stalls dotted all around. There was one selling Spiritual Doorbells. I made the mistake of setting one of them off. They sounded exactly like this high-pitched whining music my mate Aftab used to play when we were on the way to the toilet factory to do a 12-hour shift. Bad times.

I bumped into my homeboy Emeka who was working at the festival. He’s going to try become a stand-up comic although he’s not too sure how his Nigerian parents are going to take it. The first time I saw him he was wearing some Nazi-style boots, then the next day he appeared only wearing a pair of odd socks. I didn’t see him again after that. He was the only other remotely ethnic person I saw all weekend. That’s if you don’t include all the white people with dreadlocks.

What happened to The Mars Volta? I remember when people used to go to their shows and scream their heads off. Now they’re this prog supergroup who sound more and more like Fela Kuti everyday. They put on a decent show, but you can only take so much prog before your ears try to run off without you. I then went to see Sigur Ros who were amazing.

Joanna Newsom started the final day and sprinkled sunshine  over everyone for about an hour. These New Puritans played later on but this crowd were just not angry/alienated enough to  get into them.

Those Dancing Days and Esser were on form and the Black Lips completely destroyed the Sunrise Arena. It’s weird seeing 14-year-old middle class kids singing: “Bad Kids product of no dad kids/ living life on the skids/ kids like you and me” when their dads are stood about three feet away making sure they don’t get into any trouble.

All in all, Latitude was actually pretty good. I just hope Emeka got his boots back.

BACKSTAGE BLOGGER – THE 02 WIRELESS FESTIVAL

So a couple of weeks ago Vice and Tuborg Lager teamed up to launch a competition to find a Backstage Blogger. The prize was thus: one person would be tasked to attend a bunch of big music festivals this summer and then blog about it. From the hundreds of potential candidates, we picked Lanre, a young writer from Bradford.  We armed him with the necessary tools (tent, beer, food, camera, dictaphone and backstage passes) and let him loose. Here’s his report from the recent O2 Wireless Festival‚Ķ

Thursday
After all the hoo-ha about Jay-Z at Glastonbury it was good to be at a festival where at least 50% of the people actually wanted to see him. The organisers made it pretty clear that this wasn’t going to be a Brit Pop sing-a-long by booking the Cool Kids, Wiley, the sometimes unbelievably frightening Saul Williams, and Lethal Bizzle.

Speaking of Lethal B, I ran into the long-forgotten More Fire MC Ozzie B backstage. He told me all about his new mixtape, which he said was going to be “big” and that he might try his hand at some “funky and niche” tunes. God knows how that will sound.

The bass player from Hard-Fi was loitering about as well. He told me how much he liked The Jam and The Bill while lapping up the free beer. Things got a bit tense when I mentioned I was from Vice. “Oh no! Our management have got beef with you guys!” After that I turned on the charm offensive and said we should bury the hatchet with some more Tuborg (did I mention Tuborg paid for all this?).

From left: Black Kids, Lethal B and Ozzie B.

Kele from Bloc Party, who’s still mad at Vice, wasn’t having any of it and snubbed me when I asked him for a photo. I didn’t make the same mistake with Jack Pe√±ate. I just mumbled some northern phrases at him and then grabbed a pic while he was trying to decode what I’d just said (which probably explains his expression).

On the main stage Roisin Murphy battled through a monsoon and then Hot Chip made the sun come out with their electro pop ditties. Mark Ronson managed to get Lily Allen and Wiley on the same stage to ramble through a version of “Wearing my Rolex” which was actually pretty good.

From left: Lightspeed Champion, some dude from Hard-Fi, and  Jack Pe√±ate.

After that Jay-Z got everyone throwing their arms about and dancing like they were in a Hype Williams video. There is something really unnerving about watching middle-aged women grinding to “Can I Get a…” and “Girls, Girls, Girls”. 

Friday
Morrissey fans are a strange breed. They have some decent T-shirts though. This guy in the white tee decided to stand to attention while I took his photo, which was a bit odd.

Men in Morrissey T-shirts.

I bumped into Lightspeed Champion who was pretty excited to be on the same bill as Morrissey and had managed to get hold of Jay-Z’s set list from Thursday night. “I saw “American Boy” on the set list and thought it was Estelle’s!” he said. Imagine how happy he was when he found out it was Hova’s and not Estelle’s? That’s like picking up a piece of chewing gum and it turning into a ¬£50 note.

Beck played a greatest hits set while looking like a cross between Evan Dando and a member of a really bad WWE tag team. While I was watching Beck I made the mistake of making eye contact with this guy in the stripy top. He introduced himself as “MC Belligerent To Women” from the So Solid. I told him my cousin was Megaman and that I used to play five-a-side with Romeo.  He then told everyone in a five mile radius he teaches music to deaf children and that it’s a “piece of piss” before he wandered off cackling.

I’d been listening to “Bona Drag” all week in preparation for Morrissey and he didn’t disappoint. At one point he launched into a tirade about eating meat and how it was like “putting death in your body”, which made me think about becoming a vegetarian for about a second. 

Unlike Jay-Z the night before, the crowd weren’t middle-aged housewives. This time it was their husbands turn to boogie, grease back their hair and throw flowers at Mozza. 

Morrissey finished with “How Soon Is now?”, which was pretty emotional. Some guy behind me was pissed because he didn’t play “There is a light”. When I tried to talk to him about it he started crying uncontrollably. Bless.

LANRE

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