Sean's Essential Festival Weblog: Part 1

10AM: I depart London Bridge Station in DiS-punka Peter Whites coffee-scented Lada with Miss.Dis-Emo Miranda and her friend Hannah.
10:05AM: X-fm starts to get annoying playing the same songs.
11:15AM: Pete decides to put on some Bon Jovi. Ears are covered. Some Get Up Kids and At the Drive-In plays for the remainder of the journey.
12:30AM: We arrive in Bristol and begin driving around the one-way system looking for signs to point us towards the Festival.
1:00PM: We give up looking for signs and begin driving out of the city in the hope we’ll spot some band tee’s. Eventually we do. We then miss some park and ride signs. Drive around the one way system. And drive around it again for luck.
2:30PM: Hooray! After walking up’n’up’n’up the hill, fighting with the door staff (“honestly, my name is down there, we’ve just come all the way from London *cough* yah bastids!!” etc) we find ourselves watching Exeter’s finest emo-kidz, Kids Near Water.
2:31PM: “Thanks for coming out to see us today, we’ve been Kids Near Water.” So, shyeah, we missed their entire set. We wander around to see who’s still playing. It starts to become more apparent who isn’t playing i.e. every band I wanted to see - Six by Seven, Reef, Therapy, One Minute Silence.. and what seems to be two stages worth of good bands. There are still bands I’ve seen recently to see, again. Or bands who’re on tour about now to see and oooooh a few bands I’ve not seen for all of 6months! Plus a handful of bands (2, maybe 3) I’ve not yet seen live. Woo. Yeah… look, I am really trying to get into this, can’t you tell? I hate trying, it almost makes it feel like I'm faking it. Hrmmm. Explains why everyone else looks so excited!
2:58PM:I begin to realise there aren’t thousands upon thousands of rock kidz here. Most people seem to be frowning. There are an awful lot of Therapy? tee’s, around. The question mark makes some highly ironic sense. And echoing around the site I can hear ”£3 a beer?” It really is as exciting as it sounds.
3:00PM: After half an hour of waiting, three bands all start at once – this isn’t the first time this happens today, infact, between just about every set of bands there is at least 20mins to sit around doing nothing. Great, huh? We could go buy over-priced food, I spose. We don't. We sit on the grass and talk about hair-metal and how much everyone looks the same here today. We then opt for Alan McGee’s latest signing The BellRays, who sound like a soul band trying to morph into a gutter punk band (the stooges, television, hives, etc). The afro-haired, Tina Turner lookalikee women’s yeah-yeah-wooh-oooh-yeah-feeldapower-yeahing voice starts to get annoying and we head for some Hot Rod Circuits. They blast out some Atari’s spawned, sweet as a bag of pick’n’mix, heartbroken/girls-don’t-love-me geeky slurry our way. I can’t get into all these bands that sound the same. I love the Vandals and used to be mad about Symposium but all these bands sound the same, why not sound like your own band?
3:20PM We wander off to see Gemma Hayes, who treats me to my first good surprise of the day. I'd heard her album and wasn't totally blown away by it but she sounded so perfect for a female singer song writer. She had all the silvery blue you could wish for in a irish folk-inspired alt.indie chick. She had the sexy husk. She had the delicate songs which brush past and tickle those standing-on-end hairs. Only caught 3 songs, but it was great. Must. Check. Her. Out. Soon.

To Be Continued….