The Glory Of A Low Budget Festival

On the Sunday just gone, I had arranged to go for a ride with my brother Dan and his girlfriend Aimee. The weather was slightly overcast which as Tom Jones would say, is not unusual. But we didn't let that stop us and we made plans of where to go. My bro suggested a festival that was happening relatively nearby, where we could go watch some bands and have a few drinks. A couple of years back my brothers band had played the same festival and at the time he said it was really good, so it seemed like a good idea. Here's a little map of our route, it starts from the local train station not far from my brothers house (I obviously don't want to give away his address). Unfortunately when it came time to set off, Aimee wasn't feeling to great, so she decided to stay at home leaving my bro and me to brave the harsh beast that was a local music festival.

The festival itself was in and around the grounds of a pub called The Roaches Lock. The Roaches is right on the side of a canal so the tents and stages were spread out along the banks. They had a stage in the car park (a topic of great interest) as well as a tent with a makeshift bar. Just slightly further on they had a few burger vans where some hippies had seen it as a perfect place to set up some tents selling spiced tea. I thought this was an interesting image, the people in the tents were probably no more than 25, only a few years older than me, and by their standards in seemed, they were living the hippie lifestyle. Maybe I'm stereotyping, but if you saw them you wouldn't believe they were proper hippies for a second. I wanted to walk up to them and quiz them on hippie-history. I bet if you asked one of them when the summer of love was, they'd probably say "Last year when I went to Magaluf". Just because you wear dirty, shaggy clothing and bandannas of various colours of the spectrum doesn't qualify you to sell spiced tea and give advice on all the "far out" comings and goings of the world. I'm also going to assume that a handful of them were Vegetarian, only because of stereotyping of course. Now don't get me wrong, if you enjoy eating animals that's fine, a lot of people do, but IF you do, don't put your tent, directly next to a f***in burger van. Baffling.

Even further on that there was a dance tent (Weird) with what looked like two 8 year olds pilled off their heads, raving their backs out to some mental trance. Just next to that was a makeshift stage in a white marquee where the 15 strong crowd stood at the entrance to it, instead of actually inside it, I bet that was a confidence booster for the band. The last was an acoustic tent, this seemed to have drawn the biggest crowd, I think that's because half the people there knew each other and only came to see one band play.

What really made me laugh though, was their so called "Main Stage". As I said earlier its a topic of great interest, bearing in mind that the phrase "Main Stage" itself brings up thoughts of huge festivals, like Glastonbury or The Carling Leeds/Reading Festivals that are famous for having enormous stages. Hundreds of thousands of people stood with their eyes fixed on the same ginormous structure, cheering and screaming for one band. Mozfest... It wasn't quite like that, here's a picture of the main stage at Mozfest...



Get your tickets for next year, judging by the crowds for the "Main Stage", they will be selling like hot cakes.

Thanks always for reading

Take it EZ

LW

So Little To Do, So Much Time

The time has come to pick up where I left off. Before I finished university I was blogging quite a lot, I had tons to rant about and the stuff I whined about always seemed to be important to me. Most things are the same accept I no longer have to worry about essays and deadlines. At this point in my life, I'm searching for a job, broke, but I have a strange amount of time on my hands that I haven't felt in a long time. This abundance of free time has so far been put to good use, spending time with family, riding my bike as much as I physically can, building 2 sets of massive wardrobes from IKEA, taking my driving theory test (I passed by the way, no applause please) and general tom-foolery. But so far I havnt written a blog post, so I'm being pro-active in my laziness and writing one now.

Can I start by confessing that Twitter is officially taking over my life. I love the simplicity of it, I like that I can read exactly what my friends and my favourite celebrities are doing at any given time. I don't usually buy into the whole celebrity culture, I hate gossip magazines and the f***'n retards who sell their stories for some quick cash deserve exactly what they get. They sell em' then months down the line complain that the press are invading their privacy and won't leave them alone. YOU DID IT TO YOUR F***ING SELF! Anyway I prefer to see my Twitter experience leaning towards empathy instead of a psycho stalker type celeb hunter, who lusts after their every breath. I love being able to see what Travis Barker, Mark Hoppus, Lance Armstrong and many others are doing because I have respected them for a long time, and worshiped the ground they walk on (In the case of Travis Barker), so being able to look into their personal lives, instead of what you read on poorly written blogs they leave on their websites is a crazy thing to experience. Mostly though I'm embracing it as kind of a portable venting tool. What I mean by that is, I have an iPhone and I can pretty much access Twitter everywhere I go, I used to have to remember stuff I was pissed off about then blog it all later, but now if I witness something annoying or extraordinary I can immediately let everybody (a limited number of followers) know about it.

Other than that I have nothing to report at this time. Gotta go and sort through all my stuff and decide what needs throwing away and what doesn't. I far too much crap.

I'll leave you with a video from Youtube. It's one of my favourite bands of the moment playing live in their rehearsal room. Just an amazing band. Enjoy

Thanks always for reading

Take it EZ

LW