Leeds Festival 2007
After this entry I will actually be more or less caught up with my summer up to this point in terms of travelling etc. Anyway…August always brings one great thing - the bank holiday weekend in which Carling Leeds Festival resides, only this year it looked like it was going to be a complete wash out due to the crap weather of the summer. Luckily the weather ended up being amazing for the entire weekend and the camp site was dry and not muddy (unlike Reading, but that’s more to do with the fact that it is based on a flood plane, next to a river).
Did the standard thing of getting the early permit pass so can get a decent pitch and an extra day of drinking. On arrival of me and Duncan we discovered Duncan couldn’t get in easily as he was working for Oxfam this year but luckily that all got sorted out and during this mix up we met Fintan (aka Fin) who camped with us for the entire weekend. It turned out Fin went to university with one of my old school friends and he was a cool bloke so no hassle there. This first night was spent basically get drunk.
Thursday arrived and with it it bought more drinking. The day was very hot and we spent most the day getting pissed and the night going round being rowdy - well me and Brown went round being rowdy, everyone else kind of went to bed and Fin had to work.
Friday was spent seeing Gym Class Heroes, The Little Ones, Smashing Pumpkins, CSS and The Klaxons. This day was also mainly dedicated to getting drunk as well, are you beginning to see a bit of a trend coming along? I was only really impressed with Gym Class Heroes and The Little Ones; CSS seemed to be missing something, Smashing Pumpkins mainly played new songs and The Klaxons couldn’t get the crowd going.
Saturday would of been spent drinking a lot but I ran out of beer, luckily some of my friends hadn’t so could drink some of theirs. I went to see Gogol Bordello, Interpol, Kings of Leon and Ash. Gogol put on an awesome performance as standard (go see them if you can) and Kings of Leon were great as well. I didn’t really see enough of Interpol or Ash to have an opinion really.
Sunday was spent being mainly sober but having a few beers and seeing The Shins, The Swing Movement, Arcade Fire and Red Hot Chili Peppers. All of these bands were amazing and should all be seen live at some point (although the Chili’s set wasn’t as good as when I’ve seen them previously). I doubt you have heard of The Swing Movement, but they are a local Bradford band who sound rather indie on their recorded tracks (myspace (standard)) but live they are pretty rocking - I like Jigsaw the most.
During my time at Leeds my friend brown (who has ginger hair) got really drunk and got a mohawk hair cut; we tied up some random and he got tea-bagged; tried to have 3-legged race with 8 of us tied together; went on the carpet of doom (ground sheet held between group of guys which is then used to fling someone into the air); a friend drank his own piss; started lots of fires; took shits in cups; pissed on everything in site; stole and created the stealth tent.
All in all a very good Leeds Fest, if only the line up was better though as the camp site was what pulled it all through.
The Fratellis - 25/10/2006
I went to see The Fratellis at Northumbria Student Union as part of the NME Rock n Roll tour on 25/10/2006. Other bands playing where The Maccubees, The Dykeenies and The Horrors. The Horrors seemed to consist of an indie band with some guy shouting down the microphone, didn’t really enjoy so went and chilled in the bar instead because the music was literally hurting my ears.
The Dykeenies appeared to be quite good as where The Maccubees but they are both rather indie bands and I am not a massive fan of indie music. I listen to bits of it but not lots, just people like Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party and The Fratellis. Below are some photos of The Dykeenies and The Maccubees.
The Fratellies came on and put on a pretty good show. The start of their set was not very good but it seemed to improve from about a third of the way through until the end. One of the problems I didn’t like about the show was that the crowd get singing along to Chelsea Dagger and gave the impression this was the only Fratellis song they knew which kind of pissed me off a bit. Another thing which was a bit of a pain was that the band finished their encore with a cover of Goldfrapp’s Ooh LaLa which was good but surely they should of finished their show with one of their own songs?
Anyway below are some photos and a video of “For The Girl” by The Fratellis.
For The Girl - The Fratellis
The Datsuns
What can I say? It was pretty awesome. They were playing at the Cockpit in Leeds which is probably the smallest gig venue I have ever been to. It is also the hottest and the loudest (never experienced ear ringing so bad that has lasted as long anywhere else). The warm up act, don’t even know their names, where what I would call shit. It’s not that they were bad, it’s that it was just shouting. I thought of them as a bad version of Death From Above 1979 (and they’re not amazing live).
The venue wasn’t sold out and so was not very packed but it was not that bad. Crowd where liking the music from The Datsuns but didn’t seem to want to rock out like me and a few friends. Due to this there was only about 3-4 rows of people going crazy and the rest of it was just people nodding their head. What ya gonna do?
Set was awesome, one of my friends even got asked what song they should play next which was sweet. We basically just rocked out and had a great time. Merchandise wasn’t too price (£10 a t-shirt which is what the tauts usually charge) and vibe was good.
I don’t really have an idea of the set but I took several photos on my phone which I think are pretty good (3.2 megapixel camera baby yeah)
Carling Weekend Festival: Leeds
I could of written this before now but I have been busy at work as you do after festival so I feel pretty fucked at the moment. You guys should feel very luck as this post is going to include numerous photos (most of them rubbish quality but there you go). So the adventure begins.
It all started with the prepartion for the big day of leaving. This prepartion basically involved making the camp flag and also “obtaining” suitable transport to move the beer from the car to the place where were going to camp. Me and Zach created the flag and it can be seen below.
This flag was a work of genius (in our opinion, my mum was not overally impressed) but it was not enough- we needed more damnit. Anyway Zach went off to Rosie’s and Duncan came over and we proceeded to go to Tesco to obtain a trolley. Now when “obtaining” a trolley there are several factors that should be considered. If you have to pay for the trolley is an important factor, another being how big the trolley is and what the wheel base is like. We discovered that Tesco has the best trolleys so we got one and proceeded to modify it.
Now all the basics had been covered. The purchasing of food and this year cider (Strongbow is the way forward, not only is it strong it tastes quite nice warm) so everything was ready - I had even packed so now it was time to have a good nights rest and get ready to go.
Both me and Duncan were driving this year. I only had to take Zach but Duncan had Fred and Steve (the legend) in his car so naturally he had more stuff. Unfortunately I don’t have a roof rack so Duncan had to put the trolley on his car as well as his and everyone he was taking stuff.
I would just like to point out just how low his car is sitting, didn’t seem to bother him anyway. So this was the start of the Leeds Fest experience and off we went. I had to follow Duncan and his crazy driving where we (or more like I) only nearly crashed a few times.
We arrived at the car park in one piece, after having some fun with novelty horn signs to discover that the gates had not yet been open and there was a huge queue which we were pretty near the back of.
When this sort of thing happens there is only one thing to do - get the chairs out and start drinking. Fred pointed out at this point that only in Britain would you find a nice orderly queue to a gate, in every other country he said that everyone would be pushing to get in. After this commented we decided to be European and to cut more or less the whole queue and be the first into the campsite and it worked like a charm (mainly because we used Bert to ram people out of the way).
The important thing at Leeds Fest to guarantee a good time is get a good camping spot. For us this means travelling to the Yellow Valley campsite which tends to be craziest of places to camp so naturally you are going to have the most fun!! Only slight downer was that we were parked nowhere near Yellow Valley so we had a bit of a treck on our hands but it was well worth it when we finally made it.
The tents went up rather quickly and everything as thrown in. We also had to set up Amar’s tent as he was not arriving until the next day due to work commitments. He just so happened to have the biggest tent and no sooner as we had put it up it started to piss it down so we all got into it and started to drink.
When the rain stopped, we all went to check out our tents and surprise surprise mine had leaked and there was a nice puddle at the bottom of it- oh the joys (wet sleeping bag is not nice). Didn’t really care at this point but Zach managed to blag a tent off Rosie (the bird) so we would at least have somewhere to sleep which was dry from the thursday onwards.
Anyway, as the rain started to ease off the true legendary ginger that is Brown shows up and announces he has a marquee. Marquee is quite a loose discription I would say, basically he had the biggest ground sheet (something stupid like 60 square foot) and proceeded to put it up using big metal poles. There were three great things about this “marquee”, firstly it gave us all somewhere to chill when it was raining on that first night, saved us a big camping space as no one would want to camp by it and thirdly we now had our own toilet!!
The marjority of the evening was spent drinking and meeting randoms (including the neighbours) like this guy.
Fred kicked a few fires over and got caught by security but luckily the secuirty were all racist and just dismissed what the black security guy was saying about Fred. Steve also fell over in Cosy Camper and me and Zach found Duncan passed out in Amar’s tent, we presumed he was dead and left him.
Not a nice sleep (wet sleeping bags) so got ended up getting up at like 6am which was a ball breaker, Zach didn’t seem to like it anyway.
Had to do a bit of cooking to warmed up. I have forgotten to include a photo of the campsite but this is it basically- rather good we thought.
Now I would like to tell you one of the genius things about these festivals. They have second hand stalls which sell really random clothing and it all tends to be pretty cheap. Duncan bought this leather sheep jacket thing on the wednesday and on thursday it was decided that hats would be a good investment, to look cool and to stay warm at night when running round causing havoc. Hats were therefore bought.
Pretty pimping ey? Most of the rest of this day was spent drinking. We also decided to “test” Bert out. This testing was basically trying to let the organisers let Brown use Bert on the skate ramps, they refused so instead Brown went down the big hill at Orange camp. This won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t been to Leeds but lets just say it is BIG and no one made any video evidence as no one could watch as we all thought he would die. Anyway the end result was Bert being confiscated by security. I do have a video of the test run we did but that wasn’t really on a hill but it might give you an idea of why security took Bert away from us.
Another activity that happened on thursday was raw meat throwing. There is something satisfying about throwing raw meat and Duncan took great pleasure in throwing a couple of burgers.
I cannot actually remember much of this day except lots of people turned up and I got strangled by Sarah when she attempted to drunken hug me. I think in the evening the 5-a-side football pitch was destroyed as festivallers decided it should be more like 50 a-side which was funny. Some Duracell tent raving might of also been conducted.
Rolls on friday. Good sleep got up at about 10 (I would consider this an abnormality for me at Leeds as I am a pretty light sleeper). Anyway can’t really remember much of this day except that the bands started!! Also, Brown’s friend Stu turned up which resulted in some funny things happening but more on this later. First band I saw was iForward, Russia! who were very good and from the area. Proper crazy, here is a photo from the performance.
After this, we returned to camp before heading off again to watch GLC (Goldie Lookin Chain). If you are not aware of GLC then you should be, get some of their albums right away. They seem to be at Leeds Fest every year and each year they move further and further down the bill/stages. Funny as ever, I have some photo action to share with you people and I will upload the videos I made of their performance as well because I am nice like that.
On returning from GLC we found several of our camp in the piss tent which had been modified by Stu and they were all stoned (or just VERY chilled out). I have never seen people this stoned before (except for the following days as these people seemed to take it to a new level everyday, if they were in fact stoned). This is all down to somebody’s home grown, no drug dealing going on on our camp.
Rolled on the evening of friday at Leeds Fest. I had wanted to go to see Placebo but it seemed far too much effort, slightly gutted now but I will live with the fact I didn’t see them. Instead me and Zach went to the dance tent for a bit to see some random DJ before going to watch The Kooks. Everyone was complaining about the crush but we got to the front and there was loads of room - we were dancing about and everything. Their set was pretty shit as security came on part way through and shouted at everyone so they slowed it down a bit. I took quite a few photos of this performance.
After The Kooks, me and Zach went to get Duncan and Legend before proceeding to the dance tent to watch 2 Many DJs. Was absolutely raving in there and had a right laugh dancing too some tunes (I would like to point out that I was not on anything all weekend and at this moment in time I was barely drunk). Didn’t stay for all of the set but a far bit of it but it was probably one of my highlights of the weekend.
On returning to camp we discovered that the piss tent had been destroyed and the culprits had left a Japanese flag - damn Japs!!! (only joking, please don’t sue me). Rest of the night was spent drinking and meeting random people.
Unfortunately my phone was out of battery on the saturday so there is no photos of this day which as a bit of a shame. First band I saw were the Pigeon Detectives who were really good. Not really sure what happened between this time and Gorgol Bordello but I think we went round having a laugh; stealing nuts, coat hangers, abusing vegans - you know the usual. The problem was when we went to see Gorgol Bordello the NME Radio 1 Stage was behind and it was actually the Guillemots playing. They were alright but we didn’t pay much attention.
Gorgol Bordello were amazing though, really crazy pits and stuff. All their fans were mental and they put a right show in. Really enjoyed myself and was real sweaty afterwards. Again another highlight of my weekend.
I went to see Little Man Tate and bumped into Chris Moyles were was watching the band with who I presume were his girlfriend then some younger relations of his. LMT were alright, from Sheffield and seem to be a bit of a rip off of the Arctic Monkeys except their lyrics aren’t exactly amazing and they tend to be a bit more rocky. Was still a bit of a laugh and was quite a good show.
In the evening we went to watch Kaiser Chiefs which everyone slowly bailed out of, as they were no good. They would probably of been alright but no one could be bothered going to rock out so we stayed fairly far back and just took it in. As I was walking back to the campsite Dizzee Rascal was playing (I had forgotten he was on at Leeds) so went to check him. He was pretty good, couldn’t understand much of what he was saying but I enjoyed myself at least. Had a good time listening to the rap but didn’t stay for long.
Went to see a bit of Primal Scream later on that night as well, they were pretty good but a few of the songs sounded quite similar and it got a bit tedious so we left before any of the “big” songs came on. We did however dance around a guy passed out on the floor and do the hokey kokey which was quite fun. We also walked past a man doing naughty things with a woman outside the NME Radio 1 tent which was quite funny.
I got up on sunday to find that some of our neighbours had gone a bit crazy with their marquee thing and had put tents and stuff on top of it.
We also got a visit from the security staff. They wanted to take the piss tent away as they thought it was going to be burnt at night because of the riots Leeds is renouned for. No one wanted to touch it though as it was covered in piss so it ended up staying. If you wanted to know, this is what our campsite looked like on the sunday morning.
Today was spent packing up Rosie’s tent as we did not want it get destroyed and generally mess around as we had no one to go see until quite late in the afternoon. A lot of raw meat was thrown as well as other things. Duncan had hit a neighbour in the face with a sausage already which they weren’t too happy with but we also had got someone with some pasta salad and we threw more or less anything in our campsite.
Another comical even that happened was that we have a rule called “move your feet lose your seat” where if you get up you lose your seat. Now our friend Dave was being a cock and would walk round with a chair so he didn’t lose his seat (not that it was his chair or anything) so Fred tried to pull him off it which resulted in the chair being broken. He still refused to get off it, so me and Fred picked up the chair with him in it and threw him onto the piss tent. Dave was now covered in piss - we all thought it was funny anyway that he was covered in 5 day old piss of about 300 festivalers.
Some of us got a bit of this after a while and we went to see what we thought would be Be Your Own Pet for the simple fact that they are supposed to be crazy but it ended up being The Automatic. Turns out they have more than one good song and the show was good. Especially since we started loads of pits (even though not many people were up for it as they were quite young).
I then ran to watch DPT (Dirty Pretty Things) on the main stage and this is where I was planning on staying for the rest of the day. I had to say I was not too impressed with their set, it didn’t seem that good but I stayed and watched anyway. It wasn’t the worst performance of the weekend by far, it just wasn’t the best.
The crowd got a bit bored inbetween acts and a human pyramid was attempted. Unfortunately I was not quick enough with the camera so I only managed to capture it when it was all falling a part but felt I should share this with you anyway.
Feeder came on after DPT and I was randomly joined by Brown and Zach (yes we managed to bump into eachother at the main stage which is quite an accomplishment). I have seen them once before so knew they were good and that it was going to be pretty mental. My hopes were not dimished - it was absolutely crazy and I have never had such a laugh. Didn’t really dare going in their pits though as a load of people were just hitting eachother which was just a bit too crazy for my liking. There is also a photo of me and Brown near the end of the set - we look sweaty to say the least. The hat I am wearing is not mine I would like to point out, I had stolen it off of some random and thought it was quite funny to wear.
A lot of the crowd left after Feeder. I don’t think people were too keen on seeing The Streets but I knew they put on a good show and work the crowed well so stuck around. Mike Skinner had everyone jumping in time, flags swaying in time and got everyone to sit down and jump up at the same time. He also got everyone to take their shirts off and have them swinging around their heads which was a laugh. The Streets were also really good live musically, I would say it was another highlight of the weekend.
Now the crowd started to push and it became very compact/clostraphobic. This was because the Arctic Monkeys were due on. When they did come on the crowd went crazy but it was not the most pleasant of experiences because it was so tightly packed and crowd surfers were being beaten which is a bit uncalled for. They played a good set but didn’t really seem to work the crowd and just relied on the songs to do this. I had seen them the year before at Leeds in the Carling tent and had preferred that performance to this one - mainly because it had been filled with original fans rather than tagger ons who only know the new songs and none of the demos.
The heavens opened at this point and it became very wet. Around this time I realised just how hungry and called I was. I attempted to hang around for as much of the Muse set as a I could but I gave up after an hour and ran to the car to put dry clothes on and to warm up. I returned to the campsite with people being rather wet and Duncan and Smithy had been round robbing places.
I went back to the car with Zach and on our return everyone had disappeared. So we walked around a bit and followed people carrying gazeebos and stuff before settling down to people sliding down the hills in the mud. I had a video of the “bucket of doom”. You cannot really make our what is going on but you can get a rough idea of what is going on.
After this we decided to call it a day and to end our Leeds Fest experience. It took us a long time to get out of the car park as some car had broken down and a woman was having an epileptic fit. I think I was too tired to be driving as I drove onto a roundabout at one point and almost crashed into a car at the traffic lights but we made it home safely and that was the end of Leeds Fest 2006.
The last thing I would like to add is that Fred has made a video of our Leeds Fest experience. It mainly contains footage of the last day and I am only featured on it throwing sausages but it is still a funny video.
I would like to point out that I have been working on this entry on and off for about a week so if it appears or is disjointed I apologise but it better be the best entry ever written, ever!!
Red Hot Chili Peppers Live 6/7/2006
Right so where to start? Red Hot Chili Peppers gig, I should not need to say anymore after that as you can all guess how amazing it was but I will start at the beginning as I am bored and I am a bit boring like that. Got let off work early and was busy getting ready for gig when Pedder turns up early. Start cruising to Sheffield (we are also with Audrey, the crazy French lady) and it’s all looking good- don’t really hit any traffic until close to Sheffield. I had fun staring at some old man for ages to try and make him feel uncomfortable and we also kept driving past this car which always had people drinking Stella in it so we cracked open some Fosters.
Got to Sheffield and arrived in time to see most of Ben Harper’s set. He is a right mini Jimi Hendrix on the old slide guitar and most of his set was just some jamming and improvisation which was awesome. I did not actually get to watch most of it though as I was too busy pushing through the crowd to get as close to the front as possible- I have to say I did a pretty good job. We latched on to a train with a guy shouting “I’ve got to get to the front, my mum’s dying” but that didn’t get very far.
Chili’s came on and it was awesome. They were so much better compared to the last time I saw them almost 2 years ago (which was incidentally my first gig ever). I stayed at the front for ages but Pedder and Audrey bailed quite early. I then hear a shout and Zach comes ramming into me- that was awesome. We went crazy and went crowd surfing before going to look for Brear and Liz during some of the quiet songs. I believe when the Chili’s played Wet Sand that they incorporated the intro of Over The Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin into this song, but this is just something I believe and don’t know if it is true.
Got back to the front just as the quiet songs finished and they started playing By The Way. We went mental, some serious skanking went down (started a skank circle) before a pit opened up and everyone went mental, it was fucking awesome then the Chili’s buggered off stage.
They came back on and played Under The Bridge- they didn’t do that good a job at it but it was still awesome. Then final song, Give It Away, came on and some more skanking was done and some serious moshing/rocking out was done until the song kinda changed into a sort of trance version with serious base and everyone started dancing like crazy mother fuckers before going back to rocking out.
So all in all an awesome gig and please for the love of God go see them live (and make sure you’re standing) as it is truly an amazing experience. The set that they played was as follows.
Intro Jam
Can’t Stop
Dani California
Scar Tissue
Charlie
Otherside
Jam
21st Century
Parallel Universe
Snow ((Hey Oh))
Me And My Friends
Wet Sand
London Calling (The Clash) / Right On Time
Don’t Forget Me
Being Boiled (Human League) - John Solo
I Could Have Lied
Tell Me Baby
Californication
By The Way
Under The Bridge
Give It Away
Outro Jam
I forget to mention that I was called disgusting by some posh bird when trying to get back to the front of the gig because I was so sweaty. What do you expect? I am in a black Chili’s top (got it at the last gig) and it’s a really sunny day and I have been rocking out and having a good time, I say psssh to her. That is all, thank you (like photos at the bottom? I will let you guess which one’s I took). X
The Butterfly take 2
I went to see The Butterfly again on thursday, the only reason this post is late because it is bank holiday weekend which means a lot of drinking. Anyway I was supposed to be going with Brown, Starkey and Emma but Starkey bailed out and then Brown forgot and was filing a lock off his shed when I phoned him so it was just me and Emma.
We go there for about 8 thinking that’s when it is all going to start and stuff- we were wrong. I think it must of all been a bit behind hand because I don’t think it was even doors until 8:30. Saw Bulletproof and he informs me that they are playing last. I would like to point out that I am very tired at this point and have driven in some I can’t even drink.
Turns out they’re not playing until 10:15 but they actually start playing at 10:40 and we couldn’t stay for the whole set so only got to see 2 songs.
I see Bulletproof just before they are due to start and he is in vest and shorts so I thought it was going be quite a funny gig. Anyway the band go away; the drummer returning, sitting down and putting army paint on his face before removing his tap to reveal a face painted on his stomach. He starts playing and the rest of the band enter. The second guitarist is in a 3 piece suit and a ski mask; the bassist has a bandage over his face so he cannot see anything and Bulletproof enters with a batman suit on.
Everyone went mental it was great. The pub they were playing at was a student pub and all the band are students so it was all crazy but everyone was relaxed which led to it being a really good performance even though we all only saw 2 songs.
Go check this band out, they are really good (photos to follow).
The Butterfly
A certain student teacher at my school known as Mr Carter (aka Bullet Proof) is in a band called The Butterfly. This band won a competition called BYT (Bright Young Things) and furthermore got to play in a gig for BYT 2006 as they are one of the new promising bands coming out of Leeds. Knowing this I went to see them live with a load of friends except the friends didn’t turn up except Browny who turned up late as he had forgotten to move his clock forward an hour.
Anyway the band were really good live and produced a great performance. I think you should all visit their myspace and also their website thebutterfly.co.uk
I will leave you with a couple of photos taken from the gig.
Jack Johnson
I just realised that I haven’t actually updated this with a bit of a review about the Jack Johnson gig I went to see on the 24/2/2006 at the MEN Arena Manchester. We arrived at the venue slightly later than planned because of problems parking and the first support band were already playing. The band turned out to be ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra). These guys where amazing and I am planning on buying their album. They were really into their music and looked like they were enjoying themselves. At one point they were even joined on stage by the man himself Jack Johnson.
After ALO had left there was a slight gap whilst stage crew set up for Matt Costa. He was not playing with his band and was just doing an accoustic set with some other bloke. His music was ok but I was not a massive fan but I am again tempted to buy his album just to investigate more as I may end up liking him a lot.
Jack Johnson finally came on and blew me and my friends away. It was a great atmosphere and the music was excellent. Jack had his band plus the lead singer from ALO playing with him (Zach Gill). Now Zach Gill probably made the concert for me as he is a really good pianist and was also dancing all the way through the set.
I managed to take quite a number of photos which can be seen at http://photobucket.com/albums/a216/tommckee/Jack%20Johnson/. Jack Johnson played a 2 hour set which was quite a nice surprise. The set consisted of the following songs.
1. Never Know
2. Taylor
3. Gone
4. Posters
5. Banana Pancakes
6. Do You Remember
7. Flake.
8. Sitting Waiting Wishing
9. Symbol In My Driveway
10.Staple It Together
11.Constellations
12.Breakdown - With Dan Lebowitz
13.Rodeo Clowns - With Dan Lebowitz
14.Tommorow Morning
15.Bubble Toes
16.Wasting Time
17.Belle
18.Mudfootball
19.The Horizon Has Been Defeated - which he merged into…
20.My Doorbell - then back to the horizon has been defeated…
21.Badfish and Boss DJ
22.Inaudible Melodies
23.Good People
Went away and came back by himself for solo accoustic performance
24.No Other Way
25.Times Like These
26.The News
27.Fall Line and Sunshine - With Matt Costa
28.Better Together
I have to say that this was one of the best concerts I have ever been to and really enjoyed myself and would love to see him live again. It was also aided by the fact there was 7 of us who went and we all had a really good time together.
I managed to make to video all of “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” and also “Mudfootball” but these videos are to big to be uploaded at the moment but I do have a snippet of Jack Johnsons performance of “Breakdown” which can be seen below. I hope you all enjoy it.
Foo Fighters
I have not done an update for quite sometime so I feel that I should do this. I am going to split the update up so it isn’t all one massive entry but trust me it will be well worth reading. This entry is quite blatently on the Foo Fighters gig I went to on the 14th December 2005. I had to rush from rowing with Browny and get changed, pick up the food tickets and camera and then run for the train. Browny managed to lose the tickets the one time I gave them to him so it was all good. Met Zach at Leeds train station and got on the train (which was now delayed by 15 minutes).
We arrived at the change and realised we had missed our connection so carried on to Manchester Picadilly. Once arriving we decided to get a tram to go Manchester Victoria where the MEN Arena is situated. However we could not be bothered waiting the 7.5 minutes for the tram to arrive so we walked there. The area in which Manchester Victoria is situated turned out to be rather seedy but luckily nothing bad happened. Arrived at the arena and bought myself a beer- £4 and it was a shit beer on top of that (Carlsberg in a plastic bottle).
Got our tickets checked and given an arm band- we were now in the standing area. The next thing now pissed me off- draught beer for £3 a pint!! I was annoyed. But I settled down and watched EoDM (Eagles of Death Metal) who were alright but nothing special, kinda old. We were also slowly moving our way to the front waiting for Futureheads to come on.
The Futureheads came on and we were watching them quite happily. Next thing I know Browny has done a run to the front knocking everyone out the way and was pulling me and Zach behind him. No one seemed to happy about this but we didn’t care. The Futureheads were not that good (they were better at Leeds Fest) which was a bit disappointing but then again I hadn’t gone to the gig to see Futureheads.
We waited and waited and waited. However we were entertained by these stage crew members who were climbing up to do the lighting as they were all midgets. Then suddenly it goes dark and the Foo Fighters come on. The place errupts and everyone goes mental. I stayed at the front for nearly the whole gig. I was crushed and you can’t make out any of my photos but I did get to touch Dave Grohl.
I moved back after a while to find that a pit had just opened up and I find Browny in the middle of it with a sign saying “Beer £3″ which had a flashing light on and he had blatently stolen from one of the beer dispensor people. Dave Grohl shouts out suddenly “They’re still selling beer for £3? I’ll take 2″- that was awesome. Anyway me and Brown continued to get battered in the pit which went absolutely psychotic for the closing number- One by One.
The setlist for this amazing gig was as follows:
- In Your Honour
- No Way Back
- My Hero
- Best of You
- Up in Arms
- Learn to Fly
- Times Like These
- The One
- Stacked Actors- my favourite Foo Fighters song and it just so happened that Dave ran through the crowd to this podium and then had a guitar duel with Chris. On the way back Taylor did a drum solo
- Big Me
- Breakout
- Generator
- Have it All
- Everlong- dedicated to Futureheads
- Monkey Wrench
- This is a Call- dedicated to a kid who is better at guitar then Dave
- Cold Day in the Sun
- Jam playing the start of Smoke on the Water among other songs
- All My Life
Well I have to say that this is one of the best gigs of my life however I preferred the setlist they played at Leeds Fest but this is only because they played “For All the Cows” and that is one of my favourite Foo Fighters songs.
Ordinary Boys- what can I say
What a gig what a gig, I don’t know where to start. Well I’ve had a spair ticket for it for ages and I sold it to Hammy in the end a tenner but oh well it was cash for alcohol on the night. Just after selling the ticket Brown turned up and we went to do some extreme ironing in the rain before the gig. Went to burley park and green holme mills. We climbed up the old burnt out factory to do some extreme ironing at which point Brown proceeded to drop the ironing board and smash it (Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo). I will have to fix it tomorrow.
On the train into Leeds we bumped into Emma- well I say bumped she actually came looking for us and blew off her mates. Rosie is “ill” (hahahaha watever- more like didn’t want to go and ballsed out). Anyway said goodbye to her and met up with Pedder. We then proceeded to the Leeds Met Student Union. Us “over 18’s” got special bands so we could buy drinks whilst Hammy didn’t (hahahahahahaha). They were selling the “Ordinary Boys Cocktail” (otherwise known as the “Kaiser Cocktail”) at £1 a go so we decided to get a load of them but first needed some pints. Some bar staff were selling these shots of this random drink in a test tube so we bought some of them and downed them. Brown says “I feel fine” then proceeds to projectile vomit into his pint glass with surprisingly good accuracy. Drank for a few hours then went to see Ordinary Boys.
Now the Ordinary Boys, they were fucking awesome. Me and Pedder worked our way to the front with Brown joining us after sometime. I stayed there for the whole gig and absolutely loved it. They got the crowd going and even did a Ramones cover!!!! When we were all shouting “YORKSHIRE” the lead singer got confused and thought we were shouting “YOUR SHIT”. Which he didn’t seem to like to much. Anyway gig was awesome, got my dodgy knock off t-shirt got drunk.
Found a random “Cleaning in Progress” sign on the way back to the train station but then also bumped into Jill, Jess and Jo. That was quite funny- Jill seemed to think it was hilarious that I was drunk (which I wasn’t- merely high on adrenaline). Forgot to mention that Brown and Pedder bought risslas from a tramp (yes an actual tramp) for 50p- these are the lengths drug addicts go to to get their daily fix even though it was for a spliff.
At the train station some hobo style cleaner confiscated my sign saying that it was theres and that I shouldn’t remove them. Told him it was from outside Subway but he didn’t believe me- oh well shit happens. Brown also discovered that both his lenses from his glasses had popped out and so proceeded to wear the frames of his glasses and pretended to him.
Classic line of the night was from the train driver who said down the speaker system “We will be calling at Guisely, Menston, Burley-in-Wharfedale, Ben Rhydding and this service terminates at Ilkley. For all you people who bought a ticket thankyou and for those who didn’t- this trip is for free”.
Fucking awesome night.
