I came back from Pakistan early for the festivals and I have to say it was worth it! V was fun - the Stereophonics rocked my world with a barrage of coolness and old songs while the Verve provided numerous anthems to sing along too while I was covered in piss thrown through the crowd.
But Reading was where the action was really at. It was easily one of the best festivals I have ever been too, and so different to any other festival experience. For Reading you see, I was part of the Campsite Assistance Team (CAT), which meant in return for working 3 eight hour shifts I got a free ticket. I even managed to wangle it so I was not working for any headline acts. The deal was too good to be true.
Rage
So as a CAT I had the responsibility on my first shift of helping people put up their tents and joining in with the general excitement about the festival. It soon became clear that people were excited about one thing in particular…RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!
I don't think I have ever been to a festival and seen as much excitement and hype about one band. To me that indicated one thing though, it would be packed. Dan and I made our way to the front for Queens of the Stone Age, the band before Rage, and we literally could not move. As soon as the music started the crowd collapsed with me going to ground fearing for my life.
Realising that this would be no way to enjoy Rage against the machine, I retreated 10 yards backwards!
Feeling like I had enough space to atleast clap when Rage came on, I thought my positioning would be fine.
However as soon as they hit bombtrack, people stormed forward to mosh and I was crushed once more. This time it was utter carnage though. People were screaming 'get me out of here' and 'I can't breath' and after 4 songs I found myself scaling the golden circle barrier along with hundreds of others!
It wasn't ideal, but very Rage esque I thought. Despite all of this Rage were rocking and well worth the hype…they were easily one of the best bands that I have seen.
Beer Cans - A recipe for happiness
My second shift was 8am til 4pm on the Saturday, and to be honest this was the one that I feared the most. However just after starting, someone pointed to me that for collecting one bag of crushed beer cans I could earn myself 3 beer tokens!
This to me was a no-brainer. My job was to walk around the campsite, giving assistance. The campsite was covered in empty beer cans. As long as my pride didn’t get in the way I could easily collect a few beer cans, get a few tokens, and have a very merry afternoon.
And that is exactly what I did. I walked off that shift with tokens for 18 free beers in my pocket, and what is more each bag took less than 10 minutes to fill! I could hardly contain my happiness.
I spent the afternoon in between the beer can bar, drinking as much beer as possible and chatting to the other drunken folk and watching the Editors, Bloc Party and the Killers.
The final night
The consequence of getting every festival evening off, was that I was scheduled for 12am to 8pm Monday morning. Reading and Leeds tradition indicates that this is ‘wreck the place’ night! Although secretly, part of me was quite please because at least it would go quickly.
Well tradition lived up to its name on this occasion. For the next 8 hours, a number of situations arose that just defied all that I could have expected, the majority of which it has to be said happened in the best of spirits. Some though were a bit over the top.
I think I first realized it wouldn’t be the average night when we were told,
‘Be careful there is a riot organized here for 1am’
‘oh how do you know that?’
‘Well there are signs up everywhere.’ – Literally people had put signs up advertising a riot.
Come 1am there were hundreds of people by the toilet blocks ‘angry mob, angry mob’. Soon they had the metal bins upside down and were banging them with sticks to the rhythm of their chants. The bin banging went on continuously for the next 5 hours, as did the chants and fires of the angry mob. The only thing is they weren’t that angry.
It was more like a good spirited angry mob, even when they chased 4 police meat wagons off the site! I had never seen that before, and I doubt I ever will again.
The angry mob were far from the only astounding sight though.
On my first round the campsite I saw a crowd gathering at the mud sodden ground near the water tap. What I saw when I got there was bare back mud wrestling only ending when someone was pinned for three.
Further round and we found a guy passed out on the side of the campsite road. On waking him up, we made him take us to his tent. He took us to a 2 man tent, assured us it was his and entered only to hear,
“Get the fuck out of my tent”
Feeling slightly frustrated with his games, we took him on to a 6 man tent and again he assured us this was the one.
“Get the fuck out of my tent”
Thankfully the scene drew the attention of his friends nearby and they took him to the safety of his own tent. I can only imagine how long that would have gone on for if they hadn’t have seen us.
There was also the more moronic behavior of ripping power cables out of the generator and then using them as a rope swing, and of course the burning of tents while people were still in them, that was taking it a little far. I even caught someone stealing things to burn from the recycle area.
Amongst all of this chaos there was even a man wandering the campsite with one bare foot looking for a left shoe as he had lost his earlier that day.
Anyway like I said, the majority of the rioting, although not to be approved of, was just friendly banter! What a weekend though, I’ve been laughing ever since… I can’t remember having that much fun in months.
But Reading was where the action was really at. It was easily one of the best festivals I have ever been too, and so different to any other festival experience. For Reading you see, I was part of the Campsite Assistance Team (CAT), which meant in return for working 3 eight hour shifts I got a free ticket. I even managed to wangle it so I was not working for any headline acts. The deal was too good to be true.
Rage
So as a CAT I had the responsibility on my first shift of helping people put up their tents and joining in with the general excitement about the festival. It soon became clear that people were excited about one thing in particular…RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!
I don't think I have ever been to a festival and seen as much excitement and hype about one band. To me that indicated one thing though, it would be packed. Dan and I made our way to the front for Queens of the Stone Age, the band before Rage, and we literally could not move. As soon as the music started the crowd collapsed with me going to ground fearing for my life.
Realising that this would be no way to enjoy Rage against the machine, I retreated 10 yards backwards!
Feeling like I had enough space to atleast clap when Rage came on, I thought my positioning would be fine.
However as soon as they hit bombtrack, people stormed forward to mosh and I was crushed once more. This time it was utter carnage though. People were screaming 'get me out of here' and 'I can't breath' and after 4 songs I found myself scaling the golden circle barrier along with hundreds of others!
It wasn't ideal, but very Rage esque I thought. Despite all of this Rage were rocking and well worth the hype…they were easily one of the best bands that I have seen.
Beer Cans - A recipe for happiness
My second shift was 8am til 4pm on the Saturday, and to be honest this was the one that I feared the most. However just after starting, someone pointed to me that for collecting one bag of crushed beer cans I could earn myself 3 beer tokens!
This to me was a no-brainer. My job was to walk around the campsite, giving assistance. The campsite was covered in empty beer cans. As long as my pride didn’t get in the way I could easily collect a few beer cans, get a few tokens, and have a very merry afternoon.
And that is exactly what I did. I walked off that shift with tokens for 18 free beers in my pocket, and what is more each bag took less than 10 minutes to fill! I could hardly contain my happiness.
I spent the afternoon in between the beer can bar, drinking as much beer as possible and chatting to the other drunken folk and watching the Editors, Bloc Party and the Killers.
The final night
The consequence of getting every festival evening off, was that I was scheduled for 12am to 8pm Monday morning. Reading and Leeds tradition indicates that this is ‘wreck the place’ night! Although secretly, part of me was quite please because at least it would go quickly.
Well tradition lived up to its name on this occasion. For the next 8 hours, a number of situations arose that just defied all that I could have expected, the majority of which it has to be said happened in the best of spirits. Some though were a bit over the top.
I think I first realized it wouldn’t be the average night when we were told,
‘Be careful there is a riot organized here for 1am’
‘oh how do you know that?’
‘Well there are signs up everywhere.’ – Literally people had put signs up advertising a riot.
Come 1am there were hundreds of people by the toilet blocks ‘angry mob, angry mob’. Soon they had the metal bins upside down and were banging them with sticks to the rhythm of their chants. The bin banging went on continuously for the next 5 hours, as did the chants and fires of the angry mob. The only thing is they weren’t that angry.
It was more like a good spirited angry mob, even when they chased 4 police meat wagons off the site! I had never seen that before, and I doubt I ever will again.
The angry mob were far from the only astounding sight though.
On my first round the campsite I saw a crowd gathering at the mud sodden ground near the water tap. What I saw when I got there was bare back mud wrestling only ending when someone was pinned for three.
Further round and we found a guy passed out on the side of the campsite road. On waking him up, we made him take us to his tent. He took us to a 2 man tent, assured us it was his and entered only to hear,
“Get the fuck out of my tent”
Feeling slightly frustrated with his games, we took him on to a 6 man tent and again he assured us this was the one.
“Get the fuck out of my tent”
Thankfully the scene drew the attention of his friends nearby and they took him to the safety of his own tent. I can only imagine how long that would have gone on for if they hadn’t have seen us.
There was also the more moronic behavior of ripping power cables out of the generator and then using them as a rope swing, and of course the burning of tents while people were still in them, that was taking it a little far. I even caught someone stealing things to burn from the recycle area.
Amongst all of this chaos there was even a man wandering the campsite with one bare foot looking for a left shoe as he had lost his earlier that day.
Anyway like I said, the majority of the rioting, although not to be approved of, was just friendly banter! What a weekend though, I’ve been laughing ever since… I can’t remember having that much fun in months.
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