As if by prophecy or some space-time
continuum linking one May 27th to the next, the sun always
shines right on me on my birthday. Always. No matter where I am in
the world. That's how I knew in advance I could count on an all-day
musical festival being the ideal outdoor birthday experience party
thinger day-out event. To make things better, May 27th
fell on a weekend and was also the one day a week my best friend had
off work, and a music festival with American alt-rock (my favorite
genre) was being hosted by his alma mater. A perfect coincidence.
So the day I turned 25 (gasp! I’m so
old!) I was already in Colchester (which I will discuss separately in
a later blog), which is Northeast of London, in Essex, staying at my
friend's house for 5 days. That morning the plan was to hike (meaning
drive) to Harfordshire (about an hour away) and then basically rock
out all afternoon to some killer tunage while we baked and turned red
in the hot sun.
Having already roasted myself to a
crisp days before, I figured a bit more skin cancer couldn't hurt and
went for the minimalist look. Plus, I could enhance my oncoming tan
and keep cool in the blistering sun all at once.
We melted in the car on the way. It's
always nice to start the day sweating, clothes nicely dampened before
you even arrive at your destination. And that aspect of the day had
only just begun. When we arrived the fully-English experience known
as “queuing” was in full swing. The line wrapped and wrapped all
around the sidewalks, piling up, on and on. Tons of people. Luckily,
waiting in line is my favorite. Which was great since we got to do
that for 2.5 hours, missing the first acts of the day. And for no
good reason, mostly just so people could slowly make their way past
the security tent at a leisurely pace. I've never seen anything like
it.
Standing in a crowded queue, or a pile
of people in something resembling a line, afforded us the
opportunity, however, to engage with drunken students and youths our
own age. As usual, everyone was stoked to discover an American in
their midst. They were eager to share their opinions of the US and to
rattle off stories of visiting Vegas or NYC, because no one ever
visits anywhere other than those two cities when they travel to the
US. After you've seen those you've seen it all, apparently.
Finally, we passed under the tent, the
one where people were taking their good, old time, holding up 100s of
others behind them for no real reason at all. Off to the left was the
main stage, the other 5 stages were spaced out off to the right. Of
the 40+ bands that played that day we wanted to watch Zebrahead
(which we missed while we stood in line), Say Anything, Motion City
Soundtrack, Funeral for a Friend, Cartel, Forever the Sickest Kids,
and Taking Back Sunday (the headlining act). As you can tell, I was
really only interested in American acts. Unfortunately most of the
bands, as a whole, were playing off new albums that I hadn't
heard...and as we all know, after some of these guys go mainstream
their music starts to suck. Badly. Which was the case for all but
Cartel and FtSK, which still rocked and played old, good stuff along
with newer, good stuff. The others' songs all sounded the same after
a few tracks. Admittedly, we were both a bit disappointed. But hey, it was music & sun & lots of jumping, singing kids all smashed together...and for that, I loved it. Seriously one of my favorite environments, as cheesy as that sounds.
Cartel singing 'Honestly'...awesome some, kind of a lame vid though...
Taking Back Sunday had approx a 2 hour
set, but started off with their new stuff before they got around to
playing their good, older numbers...the ones I knew and could jam
along to. The only one I recognized early on was the song “Faith”
featured on the Transformers soundtrack because it was WAY
overplayed on the radio last summer...so much so that we had a
running joke about it because our favorite station played it twice in
a row at one point. So when it started I had to laugh, reliving
memories with my buddies from Bay.
This is for you, jeffy, though "You might lose your faith in science...":
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