Monday 12 July 2010

With Full Force festival. Eastern Germany. Part 2. Sales and sun

I am being roasted alive. Sweat is tickling my skin as it runs down my face and the sides of my body on to the floor of my tent. I cannot even bare to lie there and trick myself in to pretending to still be asleep for another minute. My tent flap is open, I must have opened it when the sun first rose and started slow baking me in a bid to breathe. There is barely a breeze even with the rape gate. I clamber out and locate the only shady area near, the side of our next door neighbours truck.

Ben told me of the rape gate last night at some point during our drunken ramblings when we were discussing this morning. That’s what it’s called when you leave your tent open at night apparently. We reckon we are safe though because our tents are pitched in a closed off area, and frankly, I don’t think even potential rapists wouldn’t bother in this heat. We had also decided that we would not have time for lake shenanigans today, the stand needs finishing. It can definitely be done on the next few mornings though since we will clearly be woken at 8.30am by the ferocious sun and the site doesn’t open till noon. Ourselves and the rest of the trader fam’ all agree that this will be the plan. Fuckin’ A!

But not yet fuckin A, oh no not yet. No, right now are very much bad times. I wake Ben up, who has also blown caution to the non existent wind and rape gated his tent, and then climb in under the tarpaulin to wake Kim, who is sleeping in the stand having not bought a tent the silly. We ‘wash’ with wet wipes, and curse the school boy error of buying dozens of litre bottles of sparkling fucking water which is both disgusting and not thirst quenching while guzzling it down anyway out of pure survival need. I have to take breaks between getting ready. Hair done, break to de-sweat. Make up done, break to de-sweat. Changed, break to de-sweat. As the sun continues to cook us, we quietly focus and finish the stand. No one talks much, we are just trying to get the job done and done well.

The site opens and the gen-pop (Ben’s amazing abbreviation for general population which we laughed at for ages, what a twat!) come tearing in. Oh no wait, no they don’t at all. They are all in the lake! Yes it becomes apparent that due to the heat, no one actually comes in the main stage area with its lack of shade until just before the first band starts. Very wise. And good for us because now we can relax a minute and put the finishing touches to the stand which looks super rad with all the Earache and Earache band t-shirts hung up, and rows upon rows of mouth watering C.DS’s and Vinyl. Our next door neighbours on one side are all sorted. Very posh with their fans and matching outfits. Wankers.

Sales start before the main stage area is open to the gen-pop with two Americans, the vocalist from Job For A Cowboy and the guitarist from The Faceless, who picks up some Cult Of Luna. Seemed like nice boys. We payed attention to their sets because they bought of us and they did a fucking sterling job, which is impressive when they were first on and had to play in that heat. Kirk Windstein and the hot brunette whose name I can’t recall from Crowbar come over and we chew the cud. I saw these guys at Hellfest last week so we talk about what we have been up to and the heat. They are used to it in New Orleans, but we all agree that sunburnt tops of feet suck balls massively, and with that they bowl off backstage.

Kim makes us lunch, we drink and chat to customers, talking about Earache bands past and present, haggling prices and practicing German and English. Before we know it the day is drawing to a close and we have done brilliantly! This is good, obviously. This festival is a first for us to have a stand at and it is crucial that we make Earache a profit so that it does not become a waste of time, effort and money. We tidy up the stand and close it down.

Then what? Jeez who knows, the rest of the weekend has eclipsed the relatively mundane Friday night. None of the bands were particularly interesting, and we got drunk and passed out relatively early. Well I say that, but we did find a skate park area where skaters were performing behind a fence for us drunks at about 2am and continued to sit on the grass whooping and heckling while guzzling booze for a couple of hours. I planned with Luke from one of the other record labels with a merch stand that whoever wakes first should come wake the rest of us and we can all go down to the lake for a couple of hours. Janet, who was with yet another label and is German, told us we were mental and not to go in lakes in Eastern Germany because they are all polluted. I died inside a bit. We watched Marduk but by then I was finished and sloped off when no one was watching back to my tent, washed my filthy flip flopped feet with wipes and crashed hard, dreaming of skaters on sand dunes, lakes and tumours growing out of my sides from polluted lakes.

Apparently Luke knocked for us. Didn’t hear a thing though and now he is all smug and freshened from his swim in the lake with Max and I am all sweaty and cranky and tired from being so hot in that tent of mine. On the upside, Ben, Kim and me feel happy that we can use Luke and Max as experiments and that if they are o.k. by the end of the day, then we will do the lake tomorrow. I’m not so much fussed at this point about the potential of the having future babies with five heads bit but rather that I don’t want the shits when I’m living in the middle of a field and the nearest non porta-loo is like a ten minute walk away. Fuck that.

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