Festival!
The festival was the Hydro Connect music festival in Inverary - thanks to my dad knowing Alex Kapranos' father, my sister and I got day tickets to the Sunday of the festival to see Franz Ferdinand play. With less than a week's notice, I somehow managed to wangle Monday morning off from work - big props to my manager for giving me that, given that Monday was Launch Day for our work project!
We headed up to Inverary on Saturday and stayed the night at a friend's house in Ardrishaig - Dad had bought himself a ticket to the festival as well, then both my parents were heading directly to Mull for a holiday. Sunday morning dawned grey and drizzly, so we donned our waterproofs and wellies - I'd heard about The Mud in advance, and had picked up a pair on Saturday morning - and headed to the festival, stopping only for tea, scones and new-puppy-admiring at my mum's friend's place in Inverary. Mum stayed there, while we continued on.
Once we hit the festival, we got completely lost - Connect is a pretty small festival, but with half-foot-deep mud (and sometimes water) almost everywhere, walking about was slow going and getting from one stage to another took ages.
We ended up stumbling upon the new bands stage, where we listened to Foy Vance, who was rather awesome - he looked a bit lonely up on stage with just a guitar, a mic and a laptop and micro keyboard on a small table, but with each song he sang or played a phrase, looped it, sang another, looped that, drummed on his guitar a bit, looped that... until he had an entire (large!) band's worth of sound blasting out of the speakers. I've seen people use live looping before, but never with that number of parts or such smooth and effortless technique. The highlight was a killer reggae-inspired version of Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall, with the crowd singing along.
After he finished, we fought our way through the mud, trying to find the main stage. We got there just in time to see the end of the Levellers's set, and bumped into some friends in the crowd. At that point, the ground around the main stage was surprisingly still fairly intact, so we decided to stay there rather than delve back into the mud of the festival grounds.
That turned out to be a good decision - the next band up was Elbow, who performed a great live version of Grounds For Divorce, but who otherwise turned out to be very different to what I expected: more lush arrangements and slow contemplative songs than the hard-drinking alt rock that I'd assumed would be their style. Elbow were followed by Goldfrapp, who were fairly good but didn't really engage the crowd much or deviate from the published versions of their songs.
My sister and I made a break from the main stage while the next set was being setup - while the rain had stopped after Foy Vance's set, we were still cold and damp and in need of refreshment. We stumbled around for a bit before coming on the most perfect stall ever: an old, tiny, bright yellow van with the words "tea and toast" on a large sign, which provided us with a cup of steaming lemon ginger tea and a banana and chocolate toastie - heaven. The food at the festival was unexpectedly fine considering the setting - we passed one bar selling Loch Fyne oysters and champagne amidst the sea of mud.
Next act up was Sigur Rós. I'd heard of them, and had meant to pick up a CD or two for several years, but I'd never actually heard their music. It had been described to me as 'mellow Icelandic ambient dreamy stuff', so I'd naturally assumed that their set would be ... well, quiet. It certainly started off as such, but I was quickly disabused of that notion when a three-piece brass band trooped on stage wearing See You Jimmy hats and the string trio who had been providing ambient string sounds put down their instruments and took out marching drums. By the end of the set, after several ten-minute build-ups from single notes to ferocious wall of sound, a lot of instrument swapping, a mini barrage of confetti cannons and some complete bow destruction, I was utterly hooked. My only qualm is that if even I bought their albums, I don't know if anything could match up to standing twenty feet away from the band surrounded by ridiculously high wattage speakers.
The sun had been setting while we watched Sigur Rós, and by the time they finished it was night-time proper. I wandered off to pick up a quick hot-dog for dinner and experienced my very first festival toilet queue. The mud at night was interesting - unable to see where my feet were landing, I ended up working on the principle that if I scrambled fast enough I wouldn't fall over. I managed not to end up in the ranks of those festival-goers who had clearly decided that since they were going to get muddy anyway, they might as well go the full hog and dive right in, getting covered from head to toe in thick brown sludge. A couple of them seemed to have lost footwear to the sucking mud at some point, too, hopping around in encrusted socks.
I got back to the main stage just in time to see Franz Ferdinand come onstage. I'd never been much of a fan, but as I realised later, that was probably because the only time I'd heard their songs had been on a tinny radio playing through the wall from my sister's room. Live was a completely different experience - not only did the songs sound a hell of a lot better through huge speakers, but Alex Kapranos had all the 60s rock star moves down pat, strutting around the stage emanating cool. If I were a teenage girl I would have been swooning. I think Sigur Rós were still the highlight of my day, but Franz Ferdinand came pretty damn close.
We slept overnight in Ardrishaig, giving me an opportunity to rest my aching bones before getting up early the next morning and embarking on the long drive home. I drove my sister back to Glasgow, a pleasant drive around Loch Fyne during which she shuffled through an extensive collection of mix CDs, introducing me to the 3 Daft Monkeys as well as several other bands.
Once I'd dropped her off, it was over to Falkirk to say hi to Nate, drop off Mum's car, pick up my own car, limp noisily over to the local garage to get both rear wheel bearings replaced (one of which had been replaced only a few months before - the garage replaced that one for free, promising to Have Words with the supplier), walk back to the flat, pick up Mum's car again and drive to Edinburgh for work. That's a total of 160 miles and four hours' travel before even starting my workday... a workday consisting of launching a brand new website, staying til 9pm to handle teething problems, and then taking over primary tech support for a week. Whoo!
Despite the chaos and the craziness of sorting out travel plans for four people going to three different destinations in two cars with one week's notice, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. This was my very first festival experience, and it was awesome to have the chance drop into my lap to do something which I normally wouldn't consider doing. I might even consider doing it again - hopefully at a drier festival next time, however!
We headed up to Inverary on Saturday and stayed the night at a friend's house in Ardrishaig - Dad had bought himself a ticket to the festival as well, then both my parents were heading directly to Mull for a holiday. Sunday morning dawned grey and drizzly, so we donned our waterproofs and wellies - I'd heard about The Mud in advance, and had picked up a pair on Saturday morning - and headed to the festival, stopping only for tea, scones and new-puppy-admiring at my mum's friend's place in Inverary. Mum stayed there, while we continued on.
Once we hit the festival, we got completely lost - Connect is a pretty small festival, but with half-foot-deep mud (and sometimes water) almost everywhere, walking about was slow going and getting from one stage to another took ages.
We ended up stumbling upon the new bands stage, where we listened to Foy Vance, who was rather awesome - he looked a bit lonely up on stage with just a guitar, a mic and a laptop and micro keyboard on a small table, but with each song he sang or played a phrase, looped it, sang another, looped that, drummed on his guitar a bit, looped that... until he had an entire (large!) band's worth of sound blasting out of the speakers. I've seen people use live looping before, but never with that number of parts or such smooth and effortless technique. The highlight was a killer reggae-inspired version of Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall, with the crowd singing along.
After he finished, we fought our way through the mud, trying to find the main stage. We got there just in time to see the end of the Levellers's set, and bumped into some friends in the crowd. At that point, the ground around the main stage was surprisingly still fairly intact, so we decided to stay there rather than delve back into the mud of the festival grounds.
That turned out to be a good decision - the next band up was Elbow, who performed a great live version of Grounds For Divorce, but who otherwise turned out to be very different to what I expected: more lush arrangements and slow contemplative songs than the hard-drinking alt rock that I'd assumed would be their style. Elbow were followed by Goldfrapp, who were fairly good but didn't really engage the crowd much or deviate from the published versions of their songs.
My sister and I made a break from the main stage while the next set was being setup - while the rain had stopped after Foy Vance's set, we were still cold and damp and in need of refreshment. We stumbled around for a bit before coming on the most perfect stall ever: an old, tiny, bright yellow van with the words "tea and toast" on a large sign, which provided us with a cup of steaming lemon ginger tea and a banana and chocolate toastie - heaven. The food at the festival was unexpectedly fine considering the setting - we passed one bar selling Loch Fyne oysters and champagne amidst the sea of mud.
Next act up was Sigur Rós. I'd heard of them, and had meant to pick up a CD or two for several years, but I'd never actually heard their music. It had been described to me as 'mellow Icelandic ambient dreamy stuff', so I'd naturally assumed that their set would be ... well, quiet. It certainly started off as such, but I was quickly disabused of that notion when a three-piece brass band trooped on stage wearing See You Jimmy hats and the string trio who had been providing ambient string sounds put down their instruments and took out marching drums. By the end of the set, after several ten-minute build-ups from single notes to ferocious wall of sound, a lot of instrument swapping, a mini barrage of confetti cannons and some complete bow destruction, I was utterly hooked. My only qualm is that if even I bought their albums, I don't know if anything could match up to standing twenty feet away from the band surrounded by ridiculously high wattage speakers.
The sun had been setting while we watched Sigur Rós, and by the time they finished it was night-time proper. I wandered off to pick up a quick hot-dog for dinner and experienced my very first festival toilet queue. The mud at night was interesting - unable to see where my feet were landing, I ended up working on the principle that if I scrambled fast enough I wouldn't fall over. I managed not to end up in the ranks of those festival-goers who had clearly decided that since they were going to get muddy anyway, they might as well go the full hog and dive right in, getting covered from head to toe in thick brown sludge. A couple of them seemed to have lost footwear to the sucking mud at some point, too, hopping around in encrusted socks.
I got back to the main stage just in time to see Franz Ferdinand come onstage. I'd never been much of a fan, but as I realised later, that was probably because the only time I'd heard their songs had been on a tinny radio playing through the wall from my sister's room. Live was a completely different experience - not only did the songs sound a hell of a lot better through huge speakers, but Alex Kapranos had all the 60s rock star moves down pat, strutting around the stage emanating cool. If I were a teenage girl I would have been swooning. I think Sigur Rós were still the highlight of my day, but Franz Ferdinand came pretty damn close.
We slept overnight in Ardrishaig, giving me an opportunity to rest my aching bones before getting up early the next morning and embarking on the long drive home. I drove my sister back to Glasgow, a pleasant drive around Loch Fyne during which she shuffled through an extensive collection of mix CDs, introducing me to the 3 Daft Monkeys as well as several other bands.
Once I'd dropped her off, it was over to Falkirk to say hi to Nate, drop off Mum's car, pick up my own car, limp noisily over to the local garage to get both rear wheel bearings replaced (one of which had been replaced only a few months before - the garage replaced that one for free, promising to Have Words with the supplier), walk back to the flat, pick up Mum's car again and drive to Edinburgh for work. That's a total of 160 miles and four hours' travel before even starting my workday... a workday consisting of launching a brand new website, staying til 9pm to handle teething problems, and then taking over primary tech support for a week. Whoo!
Despite the chaos and the craziness of sorting out travel plans for four people going to three different destinations in two cars with one week's notice, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. This was my very first festival experience, and it was awesome to have the chance drop into my lap to do something which I normally wouldn't consider doing. I might even consider doing it again - hopefully at a drier festival next time, however!