Park Life

Work on my project has been put on pause for the last few days while I took in the sights and sounds at T In The Park. Getting back into my work is proving difficult, not least because I'm still quite tired from the weekend.

Here's a list of things to remember if you go to a festival. I personally would do well to remember these:

1. If you pitch your tent beside a perimeter fence, you might benefit from a quieter neighbourhood, but expect every guy within a mile to use the fence as a urinal. Also expect little sleep due to what seems like hundreds of people either jumping the fence or breaking through it, and the fence being replaced on an hourly basis.

2. Expect anything: on Sunday night, after watching Green Day, Fiona and I went back to our tent to find the front door's zip slightly open.

Me: "We didn't leave the tent like that."

I'd been really paranoid for most of last week about thieving, but had calmed down by Friday night, so this was a bit of a surprise. We opened the door fully, to find the inner door fully open.

Me: "We definitely didn't leave it like that."
Fiona: "That's because there's someone in our tent."

Some random guy was passed out in the tent. A shout of "Oi!" didn't get any response, so I started prodding his back. He stirred, looked around a bit, but still didn't seem to have all his wheels turning. I was pretty angry, shouting at him to get out of the tent, while still unsure if he would sooner attack us than give up his new-found bed, though the longer he took to move, the less likely a beating seemed.

Eventually he emerged, wearing only shorts and socks, with one trainer lying nearby and the other missing. By this time we were starting to feel sorry for the guy, since he hadn't touched anything in the tent (except my sleeping bag which he was lying under), and he was so wasted he's probably still today in that campsite, yet to be discovered by his "friends". So I try to work out where his friends might be:

Me: "Where do you stay?"
Random: "Coatbridge"
Me: "No, I mean where is your tent pitched?"

3. When you park your car, try to remember where you've parked it. Look for obvious cars parked nearby, or count rows, or something. We spent 30 minutes walking around a field of cars on Sunday morning. It's just as well we packed up that morning rather than at night, or we'd never have found the car.


Now for a quick review of the bands I saw:

Death From Above 1979: I missed their first song due to the huge queues from getting into the festival area. I could just make out the tunes I know from within what they played - the bass was too loud for and not really geared for an open stage, especially for a band whose sound relies so heavily on bass riffs. Not impressed was I.

Joss Stone: As expected, fairly entertaining, though she did swear a fair bit - I didn't think that was a good idea for someone I'd expect to have a lot of very young fans in the audience.

Audioslave: The best act of the weekend, by quite a distance. They played their own tracks with a lot of enthusiasum, and the covers were well done too. I would never have expected to hear "Spoonman" played, since it wasn't one Soundgarden's biggest hits, but it sounded really good with the Rage backing. They also played "Black Hole Sun" (Chris on his own with an acoustic guitar), a short instrumental version of "Bulls on Parade" followed by "Sleep Now In The Fire" in full, and "Killing In The Name".

The Killers: Seen from a distance but still within a really packed crowd. Basically, the annoying idiots around us made The Killers difficult to enjoy. All main stage acts watched after that were seen from further back to avoid the same happening again.

Foo Fighters: Still on form, thankfully. Dave was on fire for the first two songs especially, and played far more from the first two albums than expected.

Nine Black Alps: Added to the list of those I wanted to see late on, after pointed me in their direction. Their album "Everything Is" is really good, and they can pull off their material on stage with ease.

Eagles Of Death Metal: Just plain fun. They got the whole crowd going with "Stuck In The Metal (Middle) With You". And they had Dave Catching on guitar, though I doubt anyone else cares about that.

QOTSA: A very good show, but not quite of the quality I've seen them produce before. Perhaps suffering from Nick Oliveri's absence onstage, or from Josh singing songs originally recorded with Mark Lanegan on vocals, though Natasha Shneider did a good job on backing vocals and keyboard.

Green Day: Very much a stadium-style show - lots of crowd participation. They only managed about 10 songs in two hours onstage. Still very entertaining, and made some of their recent songs seem less annoying.

Also seen: Jimmy Eat World, The Streets (briefly), The Bravery