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End of the Road FestivalThe words "Hey ho, lets go" hung on the box office in massive 3d letters, lit up from behind and greeted everyone on arrival at the gates of The End of the Road festival. |
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Writing by Daniel Shaw
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So, this is it,I Harp to myself. Once more. The circus begins. The bastard war of attrition between chemically enhanced brainwaves and angry, cursing internal organs. In three days, my lungs will hate me, my bowels will hate me, and God knows the Portaloo mirror will hate my face. With relative ease, and then disappointment,I put up my tent. "They sold me down the river!!"I wail. I'd been warned in Millets that the tent would leak if subjected to 1500ml of rain etc. I just wanted a tent which stood up, which it did, if only for an hour at a time. It’s easy to forget that the modern quadrangle tent shape is far more stable than the vintage green two sided tents, the kind of which lay quivering in the breeze before me when I stood back, laughing, at how tent manufacturers expect two people to fit in a tent that small. You must always subtract one person from the tent capacity indicators, and work from there. I'm here with Jonny Rogers, who for the duration will appear modelling an effeminate fur coat, spray on jeans and winkle pickers combo, tied together with a battered but still suitably ostentatious straw hat. He surprises everyone by successfully negotiating the erection of his tent without too many complaints like "I haven’t the practical application skills.." and "YOU do it then.." In addition to Rogers, the reliable Matt Witt, with a big tent, Shaggy Pitcher and his big tent, and James Scrivens who, fresh from a recent Buddhist retreat, spends most of the festival in silence. Cracking open a warm beer each, we began to undertake the exciting task of planning our Friday's live music selection. What happened next I'm not really sure. As Matt was to remark "..we drank lots of cider and then it was Monday", which is bang on the money. |
Sometime through Friday afternoon or evening, a light spitting in the air, Micah P Hinson takes the stage and asks the audience if anybody owns two dogs of similar approximate size, and if so, do they engage in mutual oral sex, and then something about "getting your junk licked". I glance behind and see Robin Ince stood with his beer and hand in pocket, looking fatherly, and wonder whether he'll ever say anything as amusing. Hinson has a gravitas, and still maintains an admirable enthusiasm for onstage banter, despite being on every festival line up I've ever seen. Hinson closes with a touching tribute to his fiancé who sits at some kind of red keyboard onstage, declaring everyday to have been full with happiness since she agreed to spend the rest of her life with him, which he follows with his most ear bleeding, throat wrecking scream in beginning his final song, by far the loudest of the set, and the irony was wholly intentional. It prompted me to take another trip to the bar, which I think led me to within spotting distance of some dearly departed comrades. Shaggy was wearing a hoodie which he'd tied as tightly as he could, which along with his sunglasses and beard, concealed every single square inch of skin on his body, barring his nose. We were always able to identify a smile however, at the thought of going back to the Somerset Cider Bus for a steaming hot pint. Richard Hawley declared on Sunday "I want to thank the lovely girls over at the Somerset Cider Bus for getting me really fucked up last night" to the agreement of the crowd, and bemusement of his children sat stage side. The Cider Bus was a party in itself, but one which I sadly avoided for most of the weekend, probably due to increasing brain damage and the constant reverie. Most of our post Garden Stage jiving was to be found within the Bimble Inn, and on Friday night sometime approaching midnight, the party grabbed me by the balls. |
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I spent about 45 minutes at the bar, smiling manically behind Ray Bans and brown velvet jacket at the pepped up, flambouyantly dressed bar staff, drunk as me, sweating but happy, serving to exhaustion. I'm finally distracted enough to lean into the bar for a drink and the barman waves his negative wave signal hands and says "I'M DONE,I'M GONE, NO........NOPE...." and on, until he's sliding up to the back of the bar, drinking from a spirit bottle in wonder at it all, as on come The Ronettes, some how I get ciders and squeeze to the stage front,I ask Matt's pull to dance and she says yes,I get onstage with the DJs and take Susie's hand and herself, we dance onstage for an hour smoking and watching the dancing heads like waves until the DJs say "can you get down please",I retain enough wit to say "I AM GETTING DOWN", hop off the stage, Shaggy needs some air, "just jump over the rope!"I hear myself, "its easy!"I hear again, and throw one leg high, into the air on the edge of the dance floor, right foot approaches rope at speed, for a moment the boot heel rests peacefully on the rope, and then everything suddenly happens very very sloooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..................then STOP.
Most of the mud on my back ended up on the clothes of others, as I swept through the mess of crystal clear revellers with the blurry feet. Friday bled into Saturday. |
It must have been nearly 5pm when Shaggy and I felt strong enough to stand, and wraith our way to the noise. Soon, the healing properties of Bon Iver's high harmonies came floating through to us as we approached the Garden Stage, with plenty a vacant victim of the night before standing to drink the blood of Christ and peer through glazed eyes. It was times like this that the real beauty of the festival became most prevalent, not a frown in the house, not a jot of conflict, and no-one shouting absolute swill like I knew I was doing the night before. It wouldn't necessarily last, but the point was, respects could be paid, and stock taken. You can at least kid yourself of some true kinship with every head in the audience, or at worst feel an unknown and unrequited love for all of them. The existence of these little moments is what saves our souls. Its called joy, and is best tasted without the overhanging shitstorm of impending drug induced imbalance. By the late evening, priorities had gone awry again, and the immeasurable tranquillity of the afternoon was to be tarnished, or tempered perhaps, by that very shitstorm.
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