This weekend I’m doing something I don’t usually do: I’m going to a festival. Last time I went to a festival was to Stonehenge and it was rubbish. I was 18. I’d just done A Levels. I hitched there and met my mate Phil and listened to a band called Here & Now, who seemed to be the worst bits of Hawkwind and Gong joined together. There was another band we listened to as well, Alternative TV. It was sunny so we sat on the ground and wondered if you’d actually die if you ate anything being cooked there. We’d brought some cider so we drank that and fell sort of asleep for a bit. I woke up staring into a naked woman I’d never met before who wanted to trade an orange for cigarette papers. The snag was I didn’t have any cigarette papers.
We talked to people called things like Maggot who didn’t seem to have quite as many teeth as they ought to and whose conversational abilities appeared limited. We didn’t know or particularly care if that was a temporary thing or not.
We didn’t want to eat anything there, didn’t see where you could get a drink and when we did we didn’t like plastic beakers to drink out of (yeah, like ecological, man) and generally didn’t know what to do there so we went home.
We weren’t the world’s best festie goers. But we didn’t buy cheap tents then leave them there either, which seems to be the ‘alternative’ thing to do these days. Right on. One planet. Don’t spend it all at once.
But anyway. I’m going back to a festival, Petta Fiesta. I’m hoping its going to be different, because I’m on stage with Jan Pulsford, doing a set at 10:30 Saturday night. Just like last time I will be mostly sober, because I’m driving back afterwards. Contrary to my life plans my car doesn’t seem to be noticeably better than the one I wasn’t able to borrow to get to Stonehenge.
If you can’t get to Petta you can hear That Sound, something I might do as part of a set here on Soundcloud. Enjoy.
neither of us
