Having a Festival in the middle of a natural disaster was never going to be easy. I've just got back from 5 days in the rain at the UK's premier electronic dance music festival, The Glade. This one was a good one, as I got to see it from all angles, as a punter, cringing behind a curtain whilst coming up like a bastard on MDMA, as a Steward, being the interface between the Medics and the Welfare Tent, witnessing a sort of self inflicted Bedlam, and finally, as an Artist, playing the Breaksday tent at 11 PM on Friday night.
I got there on Wednesday, and received my Fluro orange 'Tabard' from Oxfam, scourge of check out girls UK wide, and purveyor of magical powers over slightly lost punters. It had started raining by this point, so all I could rightly do was don my Trademark 'Un-waterproof' Waterproofs and get involved with my first shift.
You could say the Kids are more than alright as Ketamine seemed to be the drug of choice for this messy generation. It perhaps doesn't have the cohesive force that E's and speed did when I was a raver, but for an observer, it's disassociate qualities provide far more amusement than massage trains and bongo playing. The star of the show for me, was a dapper young gentleman in a deerstalker, expounding on the Hound of the Baskervilles. At one point, things got ugly as I tried to escort him to the casualty department, he briefly and definitively squashed the arguments between us by pulling a spring onion on me, like a New Rave Jesse James, all I could do is laugh as he threw it at my head.
By the time I left my shift at 8 o Clock in the morning, it was still raining, infact, it had been raining steadily for 24 hours, and we were in the middle of the biggest downpour seen in 50 years, all of this record breaking gumbo meant that essentially, my tent was now under water, and not fit for the realm of sleepers, all I could no was wearily drag myself to the staff Oxfam tent, order a Guinness and a 'very good' fry up.
14 hours later, and still very much on the case, I met up with my homeboys Jason and Robby, producers with Slyde, and victims of Gingsters meat pie poisoning as they'd spent 8 hours driving from London to Reading. As The Festivals schedule was all to cock on account of Krafty Kuts helicopter being unable to land, we found ourselves in essentially the prime slot of the night, in front of 1500 hollering breaks heads.
To detract people from my total annihilation on booze, I decided to take a wee mud bath before getting up on stage. As the boys whipped up the crowd with there plump and Juicy attitude, I skelked on the the Stage like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocalypse now. Hopefully, I did the business, it certainly seemed that way, as a lot of the crowd were flicking the V at me and calling me wanker. In fact, the 'raw' nature of my work was illustrated beautifully afterwards on the dance floor, when a nice young Geordie shook my hand and said, 'How man, how the fuck did ye manage to get on that stage, could you give us a leg up like.'
Oh well, it was all the business, and a first gig of 1500 certainly sets the bar nice and high.
All that was left for me now was to try and enjoy the festival, I hit the N20 and larger trail with some Bristol Urbanites, a great value bunch, who had just completed some quality work as Stewards by preventing a water tanker toppling of the top of the hill, and wiping out a row of tents like so many poly-teflene skittles...
All told, it was a stomper, and the attitude of the crowd, still having it in the middle of a flood, bought a proud tear to my eye.
Bring on next year.
but were you there? Did you see a 4 foot nothing girl face down in the mud with some cunts knee in her back? Did any your friends get taken to the woods and worked over with extendible batons and who'll probably be pissing blood for a month? Do you still think I'm an idiot for getting upset about this?
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