Re:The word from the tents
30 July 2010 02:01
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Finally got around to it.
Everyone has had a go so I’ll add my version of events to the mix too. Hold on to your hats I’m about to rattle off what I can remember of this year’s Latitude - I should probably be turning my mind to more pressing matters (like my post-Download report from May that I still haven’t written), but hey ho, whatever. And I’ll do this now because I’m of to the Big Chill in the morning (and then immediately home to Warszawa) so I think this is the best time to say whatever I’ll say now.
So, not exactly the ‘Word from the tents’, because a) I wasn’t in a tent, and b) I wasn’t there to see the festival. But for those of you who may be interested here is my brief view of my weekend. And apologies for being more than a few days late (or a week… or 2), I stayed on in Suffolk last week to show my lovely girlfriend the delights of my former home area – you know, nice fish & chips in Aldeburgh, slow cycle rides through sleepy villages, nuclear power station on the beach at Sizewell, galleries selling tat, etc. etc.
This year my Latitude started on Thursday morning (excluding briefly dropping into site on Wednesday morning to throw my gear into my cabin and get my documentation ‘n’ stuff). Instead of mooching around the Woods on Wednesday carefully placing butt bins and looking for every last remaining possible piece of barbed-wire that needed removing I spent it in Southwold showing a cute Pole what an English seaside town can look like (if all the houses cost 0.5 million and every second shop is an upscale boutique. Anyway, a good day was had by all - we were joined by a friend who escaped Henham park for a while late in the afternoon – friends in Southwold were greeted, Adnams was drunk, and the Nelson was visited. Sorted.
And so to the festival, I won’t bore anyone with all the exciting issues I had to deal with – if only because I’d prefer to be discreet about such things – so lets talk about the music. I didn’t see any! Ok, not quite true, I saw snippets, all in the Woods of course, and all on the Sunrise - which I really do believe is the best festival stage I’ve seen at any festival ever (with The Park stage at Glasto being a close second (one for Annie there)). I didn’t see much, I simply don’t get time, and usually it doesn’t bother me, but this time there were some bands that I wanted to try to see, if only for a while. So I did attempt to try to watch as much of the Archie Bronson Outfit as I could manage because they were the one band on at the Sunrise that I really would like to see: and I now want to see them again at one of their own gigs. My Woods co-manager was also interested, so we can say from a safety angle it was the most closely ‘monitored’ set by any band on the Sunrise all weekend. I was there with my girlfriend and my brother – she thought it was “noisier” than on record, and I was surprised that he seemed to like it (for someone with his ‘taste’ in music). They were great, I didn’t see it all but I love every second of it, I love their sound. They had a good look too (not sure what you’d call what they were wearing, but I discovered a spare one on the back of the Sunrise, considered trying it on, but of course I’m far too professional for that. Ahem). I didn’t see the full set, because it’s just too hard to relax for me, so I had to keep running all around the Sunrise area, checking out any potential problems, and radioing my ‘people’ in the Woods for updates, then returning to the arms of my Pole. They started playing one of my favourite songs of theirs when someone called me on my radio with a message that sounded like “something’s burning in the Woods!”. So I ran. Literally ran. Fast (which later got the comment from my girlfriend; “For someone out of shape you look surprisingly good when you run”, ah praise indeed, it must be true love). It turned out the message was misheard due to the Archie noise, it was in fact “someone’s burying something in the Woods”. So we investigated what some drunken festival-goer had buried next to a tree, leaving his t-shirt on a branch as a marker, and we found a almost finished (glass) bottle of single malt whiskey that he obviously didn’t want to be confiscated so had chosen to stash it. Unfortunately ‘no glass’ means no glass so the whiskey and the bottle were both disposed of appropriately, and this might seem cruel, but we moved his t-shirt to a slightly different but nearby tree and made a pile of soil to look like something was buried there. It was a shame we couldn’t hang around to see the look on the dude’s face when he came back for a swig, I’m sure it would’ve been a scene of priceless confusion. Afterwards it occurred to me that I should’ve decanted his whiskey into a plastic bottle and reburied it in it’s original location, along with a note saying “Decanted courtesy of Latitude Festival. Enjoy your weekend. Cheers!”. But obviously the idea to twist his melons came first, man. Anyhoo, Archie Bronson Outfit – good stuff.
I wanted to see ‘The Pains of Being BlaBla BlaBla’. I’ve always resisted them purely because a certain friends likes them and I generally hate his taste in music and deride him for it mercilessly, but I heard a live radio broadcast of their appearance at a Polish festival and I liked it enough to want to see them. I saw them, but I can’t remember anything else other than I spotted Maddix in the crowd! I was watching the band when I suddenly thought “I bet Maddix is here”, so I looked for him and found him straight away, I wanted to say hi but I didn’t want to interrupt his gig experienced so I decided to wait until after it was over – first taking a pap-style photo of him! – but then I got distracted with work and missed my chance completely, which actually incredibly annoyed me all night. The Pains sounded ok, and thankfully the girl who I believe can’t sing had her mike nicely low in the mix. I would see them again given the chance.
Heard a fraction of a song by The Hundred in the Hands and I liked it, I liked her voice, and it was a nice overall sound, slightly sparse, which I like. But it’s hard to tell what they’re like from just from incidentally catching drift of a few bars of a song. I’ve listened to them a bit since and I think I like it, I described it to someone as “a bit like The XX, with a better singer”. Also saw a few songs by O Children. Now, aren’t they odd… but I will be checking out the album. I’d never heard of them at all until 2 days before the festival when my girlfriend and my (other) brother were going through YouTube checking out a few last minute acts, the moment O Children came on my brother and I (two old semi-goths from when goths were goths, i.e. when Bauhaus and the Sisters of Mercy were Titans of blackness) looked at each other with shocked and delighted glee. O Children sound like The Mission!... and The Sisters, a bit of Bauhaus, and slightly Joy Division-y… sooo 80s goth it’s almost funny. Anyway they sounded ok, I do want to hear more. Odd stage presence though.
I have no other musical highlight, that was it, oh, apart from two other brief musical interludes. On whatever night The National were playing I was walking/rushing past the back of the Word Arena - nothing glam, I just needed to run to the radio office to get a fresh battery for my walkie-talkie while I had the chance in-between any Woods-related shenanigans - they sounded really good, they’re not a band I’ve listened to much but hearing them for a few moments then I really wished I was in the Word tent watching them, I loved the sounds I could hear. And I do remember thinking to myself “I bet half the forum is in there”, that made me smile to myself. On another night, Saturday I guess, I walked from the Woods area down to the (faraway) Faraway Forest, because I was keeping a bit of a eye on that area too, when I got as far as the Children’s Area it seems I was directly inline with the sound from the Obelisk because I could hear Belle And Sebastian clearly, and they had just started ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’… perfect timing. That’s one song by them that I love, it’s been my tune of choice for the last few weeks, been listening to it on repeat, so I stopped for a few moments to listen to is, and at exactly that moment I got a text from my girlfriend say “Belle and Sebastian are the best thing ever!”. She really enjoyed their set, it was the best thing at the festival for her (aside from her boyfriend looking cute and masterful in his tabard I’m sure). I would’ve loved to have seen Nigel Kennedy, by all accounts of my friends/family/girlfriend who saw him he was good fun - entertaining, amusing, witty, foul-mouthed, a bit of a lad, trying to crack-on to lay-dees, and playing some great music. Apparently he gave all his musicians nicknames in Polish, which I think only one person in the crowd actually understood - yep, my missus - I’m told they were very funny (one involved “big big sausage sausage”).
I don’t think I have any anecdotes to share, at least non that I can remember right now. I stood next to The Pains Etc if that’s relevant? (didn’t notice until someone pointed it out). And at one point in the weekend I was at the Sunrise when a young girl came out of the staff Portaloo, a young, very petit girl in short shorts and a trackie top, I was wondering what exactly she was doing there - maybe she got lost looking for the kids area? – turned out to be (I Blame) Coco Sumner.
I didn’t see Mumford’s and Sons, but I did witness the entire audience stream across the bridge and apparently leave the festival immediately after their set (no doubt rushing off to buy banjos and waistcoats). Not sure what all that was about. Incidentally, on the journey from Suffolk to ‘up north’ last week I was forced to listen to the Mumford’s CD in the car. Twice. And my, isn’t it pure sh*te. It’s also quite a bit ‘Trumpton’ in places, a few of the intros make me think we’re about to get stories of Windy Miller read by Brain Cant… but instead we get songs by a different sort of cant.
I had several random chats with several random people, which I always enjoy, of course I especially had a few chats with tipsy folks in the Woods late at night. Got chatting to one young (& drunk) guy and his two female friends about various pointless points, he was describing every bad thing as ‘gay’, which is a use of that word that annoys me deeply, so as a person of a slightly queer persuasion I challenged him on it, and told him exactly why it annoys me, which confused him a lot because I’d already mentioned to him that I have a girlfriend. He was quite a quizzical young chap, with many question about quite detailed aspects of sexuality, mine in particular, I was actually very candid with my answers, while at the same time messing with his mind a bit, which was fun. I left him bemused and speechless. I had another entertaining chat one night at 03.30 with a women looking for her lost Blackberry, just her and I alone in that part of the woods looking through the wood’s dusty floor for a expensive piece of plastic. She was a tad tipsy but very intelligent and charming, I was totally sober and surprisingly relaxed for someone who’d been walking around those woods for 13 hot & sweaty hours. Our chat was quite wide-ranging and (too) sensible for that time in the morning, including some finer details of festival work, she somehow got the impression that I might now a bit about what I was talking about – I think if she was totally un-tipsy I would’ve bored her to tears - she decided that the most important piece of information on her phone was ‘remember to go to the Bird’s Eye frozen peas meeting on Friday’ so she gave up looking for it and wandered off into the night. Lovely chat, and a nice person to meet, it left me with a smile. I do like that about my job.
And so to the most important business. I met 4 forum members! (but one was The Riddler so he doesn’t count!). Actually 5 if you count Annie I suppose – I saw her several times throughout the weekend and I think every time we spoke only about the forum! Many names came up in our conversation, Grouchy, Nico, Red Mary, Nigey, Sleeping Ninja, Maddix, the Russian dude and others… but I won’t tell you what was said *wink here*. On Thursday 3 fellas approached me asking for “someone called Roger, have you seen him?”. I had. And I knew instantly they were forum people. It was Rob, Dave and Simon (3 lads, about 43 forum names). We only had a brief chat, they were obviously keen to see around the site, and the Riddler fella was really keen to get a move on (he was drunk, bless him), plus I was a bit on edge, still waiting for festival things to settle down into a groove, so I wasn’t that relaxed (which I did pre-warn y’all about). ‘Rob is a …’ looked very familiar, I even asked him if we’d met because I was sure we had, he claimed not, saying he hadn’t been to Latitude before nor to Leeds for a while, but he really did look familiar to me, bit odd that. They were all nice guys, normal, seemingly very well-adjusted (considering some of the stuff they come out with on here). They congratulated me on being voted ‘Best Newcomer’, which was nice. But I didn’t get a free can of anything, which was less nice. One of them, Dave I think, came back to try to get into the Woods for Mr Jones (luckily we had just reopened at that point, so I let him in).
I really wished I’d met more of you, that would’ve made my weekend. I had even made a note of what t-shirts people said they’d be wearing during each day of the festival so I could look out for you! (remember those posts pre-festival? I wonder how many people kept to their t-shirt agenda?). Did anyone try very hard to find me? - Ben? Nico? Grouchy? In the words of Delia, where were ya!? – although I do know you had 1000 other fabulous things to attract your attention, so no worries. On Monday morning a friend (my Woods co-manager) told me that 4 people had approached him looking for me. Forum people I know! He didn’t tell me this at the time! I don’t know if it was 4 people all at once or 4 separate people, but either way I was well disappointed to have missed the chance to meet some fellow forum members.
That’s all I can think of right now. So here endeth my talk.