Download festival 2009. Final day. part 3.

Last day of the festival and I’m pretty much over it, which is so not me. It’s been stressful and too much like hard work for my liking. The radio has totally monopolised the whole thing and my feature has proven to be a small nightmare saved only by my cheating and my friend’s willingness to help me cheat. Bless them. Doing a good job and not fucking up was always the main priority of this weekend and I'm determined to not walk away a loser.

I am so all about getting it wrapped up and getting out of there today and so crack on with the job at hand.

Where had I left off yesterday? Ah yes… the blow up guitar signed by Lips from Anvil gets swapped for a necklace, which is also a bottle opener and has written some random “funny” statement on it. Because the group who did this swap were drunk, had a flag, had covered one of their mates in marker pen cocks and were all pretty rowdy and up for pissing about on radio. Score.

Then I find a young girl from Scotland who is celebrating her birthday who swaps the necklace for a dozen sheets of bog roll. She is ecstatic to be on air, and bog roll is gold dust at a festival right?! I am on a winning streak.

I meander on back to the artist area to see how the signed poster is coming along and it’s not. One person has signed it and it has been shoved under a desk, clearly it will not be covered in band names after all. Whatev’s I don’t have time to stop and worry, that will be a winging it situation for later. I have a potential swap in my sights and she is strolling right on over to me. Rita, the late Dimebag Darrell’s missus is about to save my arse the good sport that she is. After explaining my quest to her she agrees to swap my humble bog roll for three Dimebag guitar picks, now we’re getting somewhere.

Imagine everyone’s face when her voice comes on air, fucking genius surprise! After that it’s a straight swap for the poster and off to the Jager tent with my mate to finish up. I nearly cried when he passed me that bottle and I passed him back the “signed” poster. I fell to the ground in mock exhaustion and screamed my head off.

Soon as I can I run back to the radio station and stash the end prize in my bag so that no one knows if I succeeded or not till the end feature. This didn’t get nicked which looking back is a wonder ‘cause my fucking ipod nano did.

I had some time to kill before the end show on Sunday evening after finishing off the recordings for my feature and so managed to catch some bands but alas missed seeing a whole heap of goodness due to running around trying to get my job done.

Sunday was definitely the day for good music. Bands like Trigger the bloodshed, God forbid, Volbeat, Clutch and Karma to burn were all noted down for my viewing pleasure/interest when I first saw the line up. I don’t think I actually saw any of them. I hung with a few of them in the artist area which was pretty rad, but due to work commitments and In part due to the fact I am utter shit at remembering that there are bands playing that I really want to see I missed them all. Twat. I had wanted to see Motley Crew on the Friday and hadn’t even realised I had missed them cause I totally forgot and still didn’t realise till Saturday afternoon when some kids I was interviewing for the feature said they had watched them. See how focused I was on work though eh! Check it!

I can recall hearing buckcherry and Papa roach. Missed Stone gods. Heard Dream Theater, watched some of Journey, had a dance and listened to the rest of the set from the backstage bar while chilling in the sun. And then the darnest thing happened. ZZ Top walked past me. I shit you not I nearly fainted. I nearly peed myself. I saw stars. Mother fucking ZZ Top as I live and breathe. I sat down and spent about 20 minutes craning my head around to where they were being interviewed before forgetting and wandering off somewhere else. Wow.

Needless to say I managed to catch as much as I could of ZZ Top, caught some Whitesnake and some Def Leppard and got drunk, all this before, during and after the final radio slot. The final radio slot came and went where I proved triumphant and unveiled the bottle of Jager and scored major points with my Rita inclusion. Unfortunately we got hurried off the show well before the end due to yet another organizational fuck up and stormed off to get drunk and spend the last couple of hours with our mates and have a dance. The bottle of Jager never got finished cause we were done and dusted and hit the road first chance we could.

We got out of there around 1 am when the traffic had died down as the site was being dismantled and packed up and hit the big Smoke at just gone 4 am. Sleepy, subdued and done for I opted to get a cab from Talita’s to home rather than sleep on the floor and have to face public transport in the rush hour dressed in festival clothing, with mild sunburn, eyes that can’t stay open and disapproving looks from the Suits because I’m radiating booze from every pore.

Fuck that, Suits, don’t hate the player hate the game. While you were eating at some tedious gastro pub before visiting the in-laws and trying to convince your partner to give you head during your once a week set aside sex hour and then musing over the Sunday Times, there was a handful of fields boiling over with out of control fuck up degenerates who rocked their hearts out and lived the dream you are too scared to even contemplate. Coldplay isn’t rock love. Jokes on you!

Download Festival. Donnington. U.K. 2009.Sanitary towels, Blagging and Just a tad more drinking. Part 2

Ahhh Saturday morning. If only I wasn’t waking up in a heat box with a squat rave in my mouth and an African rain dance going on in my head I would be so happy right now. Got my two partners in crime in the beds next to me, Lady Starlight and Talita Twoshoes and today we are live on air at Download festival with our weekend features, mine being ‘Lucy’s swap shop’.

Last night was the fucking shit and today can only be a repeat. So many of my friends were hanging out and getting absolutely trashed, there was dancing and downing shots and bands to watch and all sorts of fun that can only happen at a festival when you can feel free of your normal life and act like a carefree teenager again. I even bumped straight in to my flatmates who had just turned up in some random field area at around 2 in the morning and had a little dance to Notorious BIG’s ‘nasty girl’, sweet!

Of course once we get to the site that morning, everyone is hung over. Also, everyone is super stressed on account of the appalling organisation of the radio station, to the point that I don’t realise till I’m out and about that I don’t actually have an object to swap for my feature. The bar has always been the best solution for any quandary I’ve found and sure enough having hit it with Lady Starlight for a beer, the barman gives me a black marker pen having heard my quest for an object to start my actual quest. Phew! See, drinking in the morning is a great way to start your working day.

So off I trot, soon to realise that when everyone is sober in the early afternoon or indeed hung over, they are not going to swap anything of any interest, once again alcohol will be my saviour since once drunk, most people will swap their own mothers for a blow up air guitar even if they are already holding one.

First thing is first however. I am definitely feeling some hate vibes coming my way. It is at this point that Talita, who has given me a feature on her show gets told by the station boss that he got an angry email from the station manager with regards to my drunken foul-mouthed outburst live on air the night before. She asks me about it and I, having no memory what so ever of said incident, deny the whole thing. Of course it did happen, its on tape. Which is good because still.. ….nothing.

Back out on the field, I am accompanied by the one and only Lady Starlight who is out looking for people to interview for her feature ‘what fashion are you crashing?’ She is having roaring success since there is an abundance of fancy dress and people willing to talk about themselves running amok. I on the other hand have managed to swap a marker pen for a bigger marker pen. The bigger marker pen for a sanitary towel. Back to the bar, this is not going well, how the fuck am I gonna hit my goal by the end of my weekend feature? Guess what? The bar proves winner again!

Lo and behold if I don’t bump in to my mate Martyn from U.K metal band Trigger the bloodshed. Can you guess where I took this? Yep. That sanitary towel got itself a little make over. The boys signed it and added the time, date and stage they could be found performing at that weekend and to top it all off Lady Starlight lent us her scarlet red lipstick to write Trigger the bloodshed with. Win.

I swapped that with some rowdy bunch of over excitable emo kids for a cigarette tin, swapped that for a blow up air guitar backstage with some Norwegian fella who looked like a rabbit in headlights throughout the whole meeting. Got that signed by Lips from Anvil in the artist area and proceeded to get very drunk carrying it around for the next couple of hours wondering to myself “how the fuck am I going to reach my goal”? Again. This time however, I had a stroke of genius. With a little helpful advice from Lady Starlight. The answer? Cheat.

See, at the risk of sounding like an arsehole, I’m pretty lucky to know some people who aren’t quite so much of a loser as me. And they happen to for the most part all be here this weekend. Within a matter of hours I have a massive Download poster promised to me for Sunday signed by as many bands as there are playing. I also have a possible source for the end target. Jager have a tent. A friend of mine used to work with the guy who is running the Jager tent. He reckons that I could get a bottle out of them since it will be recorded and played around the whole festival site. Good advertising and all. Fuck yeah things are looking up.

I can now happily swap pretty gnarly items with the general public in return for funny items without having to worry about the end product. This is going to make much better radio as now I can just pick people who look like they will be great fun on air rather than people with funny accessories that might not mind losing them and are piss dull on air.

And so back to the matter at hand, drinking! Saturday for the most part so far has been utter shit. I’ve been working all day, people have been snapping and shouting, everyone is stressed. My task has been bullshit till I figured out I could just cheat and work on making good snippets of air time instead of worrying about the bloody end item. I haven’t been able to hang out with any of my mates, who I have been bumping in to repeatedly throughout the day, which sucks balls.

Bands. To be fair the line up wasn’t for me on Saturday. All I wanted to see was Marilyn Manson and Slipknot since I had heard they put on a pretty impressive stage show. Oh and I have only recently realised I do actually like Slipknot. There. I’ve said it. I wanted to catch Hatebreed and Down too but knew I would probably get to see a couple of songs from each as I was walking around doing my feature. Which I did, they rocked. Of course. We all got to go and watch Lawnmower deth, which was mega awesome.

One of the unfortunate side affects to being a guest D.J like Talita is that you get given the bum shift of when all the headline acts are on. Even though you have more radio experience and have done Download festival radio for the two previous years in a row. Nice. Professional. So I was proper bummed out, as I knew I would realistically only be able to see a bit of each show.

Turns out I needn’t have worried about this when it comes to Marilyn Manson. He was total gash. I watched all of two songs and happily skipped on back to the radio safe in knowledge I was missing jack shit. Apparently him doing a shit show and making minimal effort is him having a tantrum cause he wasn’t headlining. Allegedly.

Slipknot on the other hand pulled out all the stops. They fucking rocked that festival for all it was worth. My first time seeing them so I have nothing to measure them against but they blew me away as a show. I managed to catch half an hour of the set and shot back to the radio to continue with the show.

Once the show was done and dusted guess what we did? Drank. Shocker. Not much else to tell. We drank, went back to the hotel and crashed.

Wait. Missed a crucial part of Saturday night. I wandered on in to the artist area, completely by accident. Kind of. Was snooping a bit. Pushing my luck if you like. Worked a treat too cause there I am suddenly hanging out with Lips from Anvil, Volbeat , God Forbid, Slipknot ( they walked past me so not really ) Dimebag Darrell’s missus, Rita and a whole bunch of industry peeps. Check me and my bad self out. I was all schmoozing the shizzle out of it.

Bonus of being so tall, people remember you. That includes security, who let me in all over the gaff all weekend cause I managed to blag entrance somewhere important once and industry folk who have no idea who you are but don’t want to admit that since your pretending you have met them a bunch of times. Quite funny, amuses me greatly the fools!

The night ended once again with Talita, Lady Starlight and myself dancing off the site and in to a taxi for our 5 minute walk home. And why not eh, we deserved it.

Download Festival. Donnington. U.K. 2009. Drunk, drunk and drunker still.

We just spotted our first car full of metallers showing us the horns and honking their car horn at us on the motorway. Finally, after months of anticipation, we are about 40 minutes away from the Donnington Download festival site! Screaming and shouting back ‘METALLLL’ we all throw the horns back at them and craziness reigns for the following few minutes.

Some of us have travelled early morning through the London tube strike to get here and one of us has come from as far as New York, America, so as you can imagine, excitement and adrenaline totally overrides travel fatigue as we hit the site that for the next couple of days will play host to the U.K’s most ardent and true followers of Rock and Metal. Oh, and a whole bunch of scenesters and trendsters, Emo’s and Goths, drunks and fuck ups.

First stop is sorting all the passes and getting to the Download radio trailer which is where I will be debuting in a feature throughout the weekend as my new alter ego, ‘Lucy Lawless’, as christened to me by none other than Lady Starlight and Talita Two shoes outside a service station hotel. The feature being ‘Lucy’s swap shop’. In this I will be given a random object by D.J Talita Two shoes at the start of the festival and must swap it as many times needed with the crazy, drunk arse population of Download with the goal of ending up with a bottle of Jager, Jack D or a band member by the end of the festival having recorded every swap for the radio listeners.

Next stop, ahh who am I kidding, I can’t even begin to tell you in a correct time order what happened with the best part of Friday. I do know that Thursday night when we arrived, after sorting out work stuff, we found our hotel for the night, which was allegedly ten minutes away as told to us by the staff the lying bastards. Try five junctions up the bloody motorway. Starlight crashed with jetlag and me and Talita got a taxi to the site and bummed around for a couple of hours bumping in to mates and establishing where everything was.

We hit the village area and try to get as drunk as our mates but are having one of those irritating ‘fighting a losing battle’ type situations where by we just can’t get drunk enough to enjoy all the drunk fuck ups surrounding us. Except for our comrade Rachel’s, pet lesbian. Who is fucking hysterical. I film the girls going through the fun house in a drunken frenzy of wrongness and after some tumbles and spills we resign ourselves to the fact that tomorrow is another day and by god we are not going to remember it for all the booze we will consume!

Friday morning we pack up our stuff and move to a hotel that will be home for the weekend, a last minute cancellation and Talita putting us down on the waiting list some months before has saved our arse from extortionate taxi fares since this place really is a five minute walk from the site.

The whole set up is pretty fucking sweet in fact, the family that run it have got it nailed down to a tee. There’s breakfast, packed lunch, a bar, they got people camping in the garden and you have first choice of getting the same room the following year. We have struck gold. A short walk up the road later and we are officially ready to party. The first radio show isn’t until tomorrow so we have plenty of time to prepare and more importantly get wasted with everyone else.

And so starts the blur and disjointed time line. For most the day and night we are bumming around between the radio station and backstage area. A friend of ours has rented one of the massive tents and bar in the backstage area out for Friday, and this is where most of our motley London crew can be found. It is basically the Crobar in a field.

I can tell you these facts. I got slaughtered. I’m no black out type, but a whole lot of that night is still missing. Apparently I was twirling around dancing to Faith No more. I do remember watching some of Voivod and Backyard Babies. I think that might have been it for my music viewing pleasure however. May have caught some Opeth. That could have been an entirely different festival though.

O.k. Hands up. I made a faux pas. After doing a bar run which included a little opportunistic theft of a Jager bottle on my part, I staggered back to where everyone I was with was chilling, bumping in to Dimebag Darrell’s missus, Rita on the way and dragging her with to down said bottle with ferocious speed. For some reason I was wandering around outside the radio station shortly after this and was called in by my two friends who were currently in the middle of a live broadcast. Unbeknown to them I was proper mash up! Upon swinging the door open and blurting out “ I’ve got the best fuckin’ story for you” they quickly realised their error and swiftly told me to watch my language. I apologise and then proceed to regale them with my thieving ways. At which point they put a song on. Oops. Big deal right? No I don’t think so either. It’s like 1 am at a rock festival, who the fuck cares. The station manager it seems, who was listening and sent a very unhappy email in. There was definitely some Lucy hating going on the next day that’s for sure. Still cannot remember a goddamn fucking thing of it. Ha.

Legacy Festival. Part 3. Carnage!

I am actually going to die. I have been rudely awoken by my co host for the last part of Friday night, who informs me that as I warned, yes I do snore. Oh fuck off love, my head is currently, although invisible to the naked eye, exploding and dribbling brain all over the bed. Which I’m sure I dribbled on too. Definitely having a Mae West moment. I drag myself up, chuck last nights clothes back on, add the aviators and zombie walk to the car which speeds back to the scene of last nights crime. The crime being I drunk fucking Sangria. Bloody Arch Enemy.

I don’t even knock on the motor home door, just fling it open, lob my stuff in and throw myself on a spare bit of cushion and try to get some more sleep, it’s 7 sodding am . Pink Floyd seeping out from the stereo however is not letting this happen so its back to the step and a repeat of yesterdays mantra. Smoke constantly, back loads of water and wait for the guys to wake up.

Ben and I are once again the troopers. We are in agony but traipse to the stall and carry on with the process of opening up. Do you know how hot those stalls get under the tarpaulin when the sun is beating down? Really fucking hot. The Dutch next door to us from another label are finding us hysterical although do bring us coffee and make me smokes. We have a budding friendship and they for sure see us as their little siblings. The morning before one of them had heard the guys outside, got up, showered, walked back to where we are all parked / sleeping and only then looked at his watch and realised to his horror that it was 6.30 am and the guys hadn’t actually been to bed yet. Ha.

Lyoll and Morgan dained us with their presence at gone lunch again and Morgan proceeded to catch up on even more sleep under the merch table which started up a new game for the rest of us combining his leg and the industrial monkey grips used to hold the tarpaulin down. Alas, all fun and games it was not. Try as I might I just could not vom'. And the lord knows I really needed to vom’. In fact I think by Saturday I was the only one who hadn’t. I felt like my body was cheating me.

Ben the poor thing had a mountain of wholesale orders to plough through and it hurt just to look at the pain in his eyes. He looked like one of those dog rescue adverts asking for just 2 pounds a month. Poor little blighter.

Info was working it’s way back to us throughout the day of carnage happening all over the site last night and we seemed to be linked in some way to all of it. Fantastic! Many proud smiles broke on our faces repeatedly as more and more people crept out in to the day all pained and headed to our stall to laugh about it all.

6 pm finally came so I braved it and started tentatively back on the spirits. I know, pat on the back me. For the Queen and Country and all that.

By 8 pm I was drunk again...winner! Saturday night was a blur of further schmoozing, random acts of passing out by lots of people and loads more booze. The music, incidentally..Cough cough also picked up. In fact the whole of Saturday night was not too shabby at all. At some point during the day another British Thrash band had turned up, Eyes of a Traitor and hung with us on the stall for the best part of the day, so we caught a few of their songs, but the real corkers were Bio Hazard followed by Kreator. Both of which fucking smacked it.

The stall seemed to be doing well to as it turns out there is a pattern to people’s buying at these things. First day a bit of shopping. Second day all money on booze. Last day, all money on merch. Sweet. We packed up and dismantled the stall and took ourselves off with all our fellow merch comrades to the backstage beer tent. Which shut. What the fuck? So off we all trot to the motor home and get the last dregs of alcohol, white wine of course and soldiered on until...the bar re opened! Yay! I at this point bowed out with my snoring buddy and left the guys in the rain clutching on their beers jabbering on about god knows what.

Sunday morning, my pockets are full with business cards and Euros and beer tokens. My head isn’t too full of sick but my heart is full of sadness. The festival is over. Everything is being dismantled in the harsh sun. There is litter everywhere and memories of a blinding time scattered all over the place. All the people are leaving looking like they have just left a war zone and we are all quiet as we load up and hit the road back to Blighty.

A 14 hour drive through beautiful Germany, Burger King stop in Holland and looking forward to France in Belgium is ahead of us. End goal Calais and a ferry to take us to Dover. The soundtrack is anything but Thrash and Metal, well maybe just a bit..We fucking love it!

Legacy Festival. Part 2. After the party there's the After party!

Friday morning...eww. Talita has just left our guest house to catch her plane back to the U.K and I’m in a taxi back to the Legacy Festival VIP entrance to dump my stuff at my new digs for the next couple of nights, a motor home with three smelly and hung over sleeping men. Bugger. On the bright side, the day is looking to be a fine one, the sun is beating down which allows me the opportunity of sitting on the step to our motor home chain smoking and downing water with the door open till the guys wake up and get up. Watching the world go by has always been a favourite past time of mine but it has to said it is so much sweeter when it’s backstage at a Metal festival and there’s loads of burly crew stomping back and forth, back and forth.

Ben is the first and only up, and after banging about inside for what feels like forever he is as ready as he’s ever going to be and we venture out on to the site with trepidation to check out the state of the stall. Let me explain... German weather. We wish we had weather like that. I get the feeling they actually have designated seasons rather than grey interspersed with hot grey and some more grey. See, it was hot and sunny when we were there, but properly, not U.K half arsed style. And because of this there were thunderstorms. Proper fucking thunderstorms. Talita and I were woken up by lightening that was so close it seemed to come in to our room that morning. The thunder, though you knew it was coming would still make you jump and freeze up every time it crackled. This was not just a thunder storm; this was a German thunder storm!

The stall had fortunately been swathed in tarpaulin the night before and apart from the two swimming pools on the roof it seemed unharmed. We pushed that off, re-stocked and started selling. A slow morning, by the end of which we had both had a couple of beers ‘hare of the dog’ innit, just to see us through and pick us up. It’s not alcoholism if it’s at a festival don’t you know. In fact it would be rude not to frankly.

Now listen, don’t get the wrong impression. Sitting on our stall like a couple of Nam vets we were not. We were catching joke after joke, watching the world go by, conversing with the other stall holders who I got the impression were completely mystified by us. Everything was just slowed down a touch was all, all a bit steady, no sudden movements.

Lyoll and Morgan joined us looking very bashful at gone lunch, us having allowed this lie in to happen thinking that we were totally adding up guilt points that we could use to our advantage at a later date. Which of course was now. Booze run. See, the day before had been a bank holiday so we were out of fags and out of booze.

60 Euros later and the foragers returned looking dead chuffed with themselves. No bread was bought, no milk. Just copious amounts of cheap liqueur, huge bottles of spirits, mixers, six pack upon six pack of beers and cider and a couple of bags of sweets and tobacco. Ooh Friday night is shaping up to be a good one. I seem to have a pattern already, steadily drink beer till about 6pm to keep the hangover at bay, 6pm comes along and so do the spirits.

Friday night turns out to be quite eventful. At the risk of banging on about the weather too much, it hit us again with full clout at around 10pm that night. The stall literally left the ground and suddenly rain was pelting down and random people were clambering under the shelter of our stall while we desperately hung on to it. Soon enough we pulled the front covers down and a small party transpired right there under our noses. There were guys hanging on to the stall frame, the front covers and a blow up doll?! Everyone was chattering away and laughing in disbelief at the whole shebang and word got to us quickly that the main stage had partly collapsed and the power was gone. At this, half of us crawled out and turned round the corner and just stood there staring. The whole back of the stage had indeed collapsed. Instead there was a stormy night sky being slashed by rain. Fucking awesome to look at when you’re drunk I tell you.

I can’t tell you what happened to the stall after that, I guess it was closed up for the night. See I ended up wandering backstage to see all the madness happening and catch the buzz that was everywhere and ended up bumping in to old time friend Sharlee, bassist from Arch Enemy and Daniel the drummer, who’s birthday it was. Before I knew we were downing sangria and causing mayhem all over the backstage area. They played their set on the main stage much to the surprise of everyone who thought that was gone for good, and I got to watch from the side and feel all better than everyone else which is always nice when you’re shallow like me.

Further drinking and clambering around the site ensued and I managed to get myself an invite to a crew hotel room and so avoid the motor home for one more night. Sweet. What happened to the guys? I can barely recall what happened to me.I will tell you this, vomitting did happen, passing out did happen and making out did happen. We fucking rock!

Legacy magazine 10 yr Anniversary party.

I really did not want to go to Germany. I mean I really didn’t want to go. A party with Germans when I can’t speak German, being a typical Brit. Four days of living from a camper van, while being on my period. A line up consisting of mostly bands I have never heard of. Minimal pay. I so did not want to go. See, on top of that, the week leading up to the trip bought me more and more invitations to some sweet gigs and a few birthday parties that would definitely be rocking. Damn did I not want to go.

Turns out, Germany fucking killed it! Yes that is right, I was sad to leave London but I was even sadder to Leave East Germany and come back, which is weird ‘cause East Germany is pretty much a dump. But you see, find a massive car park with some fields around it in the middle of nowhere and fill it with 5000 crazy European Metal fans, a couple of food stalls and many beer tents, all pulled together by Legacy magazine celebrating 10 years of reporting on metal madness and guess what you get? A fucking no holds barred, drunk 24/7, constant metal of all sorts from all round the world manic fucked up party spanning 3 days and 3 nights hanging with people who out of their heads and crazy for the Metal! Sweet!

I got to travel there in style, me and Talita flew from Luton to Berlin, then walked to the train station where Talita spotted some Metal boys who showed us damsels in distress which tickets to get and took us to the platform we needed and became our travel buddies along with their friends. They practiced their English and we drank Jack Daniels and Coke from cans!

After dumping our stuff and getting our glad rags on at the guest house we would be staying in for the next two nights it was taxi ride and Bam...Legacy party time!

Within three minutes of stepping out from the taxi we were surrounded by men(Women in Metal are scarce..winner! ), a couple of photographers who looked like they were trying to figure out if we were in a band or famous ( we were by the end of the weekend! ) and being grilled by the promoter who was the most fantastic sight you ever could see. She looked the spit of Carrie in Stephen King’s Carrie and was wearing white fishnets, the tightest shortest, high waist jeans shorts and a skid row t-shirt knotted in to a midriff top...in the pissing rain! After getting bored of us she scuttled off like a little weasel leaving us in complete awe at her total wrongness. Wow.

We are met by Bjorn, a journalist from Legacy magazine and good friend of Talita, who spent the rest of the night introducing us to everyone and plying us with booze. We love Bjorn. He is the best ever. Later on that night the Earache Merch crew consisting of Ben, Lyoll and Morgan rolled on in riding their camper van and we all continued getting trashed and mingling our little hearts out. I’m not gonna lie. There was all manner of drunken shenanigans. Vomit, passing out and making out with randoms, you name it, we covered it. The Brits have arrived.

Next day of course...very painful. Still we are soldiers to the cause and battled through the morning and got the stall set up. Oh who am I kidding, me and Talita didn’t hit the site till after lunch on the reasoning that we would have to be up late again this evening doing more schmooze work. Not entirely sure the boys bought it but hey ho. Turns out they had a bloody nightmare time. The spot they were designated was flooded. The power they had paid for not there. Hangovers all over the shop and general exhaustion following the previous day of driving from the U.K to Eastern Germany.

Needless to say the stall got erected eventually and set up adequately and the selling began. As did some god awful Metal bands that continued all day and all sounded exactly the same as the last one. Thursday evening approached, drinks were downed once more and suddenly everything looked a bit more colourful and warm and fuzzy...cannot for the life of think why.

Round two. We only went and did it again. Everyone was back on the sauce, taking turns on the stall which stayed open till midnight when the ticket holders get turfed out and the bands finish. We had definitely made leaps and bound since our arrival with regards to our social networking skills and so always had one person or another dropping by the stall and hanging out with their beverages and stories. By the time Talita and I fell in to the taxi to take us back to the guest house, Bjorn in tow, equally wasted who was staying with the rest of the Legacy Massive in the same place, I was so out of my tree that the whole driving on the other side of the road was proper freaking me the fuck out. Of course I was completely aware that it was just me being wrecked but shit it messed with my head like bad acid. Some knock down ginger later and we locate Bjorn’s room and pass over the responsibility of him to his mates and stagger off upstairs passing out soon as we hit the pillow.

Tomorrow Talita has to get back to the U.K and Take Care of Business, leaving me with three boys, a camper van and Legacy Festival for two more days. Hmmmm...Worrying.

The end of the road...after a load of booze!

Maricn, our Polish driver is a lunatic on the motorway. The fact that we haven’t yet died is a miracle. He drives so close to the tail of Lukas in the van in front carrying BBB that there is now an on going joke that they are gay lovers and Lukas is the taker. This joke is needed simply to alleviate the fear when he is a foot away from the front van whilst going 90 miles an hour. Pleasant driving it does not make!

The van is quiet, we have a short journey to Nottingham and we are all aware that it is the last show. The only sound is all of us munching on apples and even the music choice has changed. We have gone from listening to Megadeath to just leaving the radio on and at this point are listening to The Bee Gees. There is definitely a resigned feel in the air. We even find the venue early. Everything is as it should be which by this point makes me for one feel a bit on edge.

Ali from the Earache HQ meets us at the venue and off we trot to the lions den all excited at what stuff we might be able to nick. The drivers stay behind to wait for the venue to open and begin unloading.

The Earache offices are like a boys bedroom. Metal posters everywhere, loads of computers and paperwork all over the shop. In some rooms the walls are hidden behind boxes and boxes of C.D’s , L.P’s and DVDs. We are all salivating at the mouth. We meet the rest of the Earache massive and after delving in the stockroom and coming out with a classic Municipal Waste T, we head off to Pizza Express across the road for breakfast/lunch/dinner on the boss.

We all eat and drink like we are orphans in an Oliver Twist Metal remake and I do my best to drag the bands back to the venue for set up and sound check which is hard since there are better things to do like drink and go record shopping but eventually everyone is present, except maybe Carlos who after last night is dying slowly and even chucking up twice does not seem to be helping much!

Cauldron have interviews to do so manage to avoid sound check, which I have learnt is the least favourite thing for bands to have to do.  The sound check gets done, the merch stall gets done, this time it is a coffee table and a corner wall and during all of this a lot more drinking is done. Yay Nottingham!

The first two bands play and then Cauldron. I’m at the back on top of a chair to watch since merch sales are not doing so well I can afford to concentrate more on the gig than I’ve otherwise done and watch a blinder of a set all be it with the same poor sound we have come to live with from several of the venues. I think this must be why bands hate doing sound check, what’s the point when the sound man still gets it wrong.

BBB play their usual dynamite set and even Carlos pulls it together on time. I spot Cauldron up at the front just standing there so push my way through and start up a little friendly moshing with them and Talita. One for the road stylee.

Suddenly everyone who came to watch is gone and the merch stall is in boxes and I’m done. My job has come to an end. A combination of copious amounts of booze and genuinely liking these miscreants has made me quite teary when it comes to saying goodbye. The BBB and Polish massives have to set off to Belgium immediately and it’s sad to know that Cauldron and me won’t be leaving with them. On the up side, The Gallows are throwing an after party up the road and the Boss is well up for partying! How fickle of me.

Having dumped our bags and Cauldron’s equipment at the hotel we find ourselves drinking shots from a teapot and drinking round after round of beautiful alcohol before discovering the upstairs dance floor where Lags form The Gallows is chucking out some top tunes. Since Earache are pretty much the only people throwing some shapes he takes all the requests from the Cauldron crew and in no time the vibe is rock eighties wedding reception, complete with mum and dad dancing and even more booze!

Eventually I stagger back to the hotel, Talita is right behind me and too soon i am passed out in a drunken slumber and the party is officially over. Somewhere near Dover there are two highly suspect vans being driven badly by two tired Polish punks and carrying a group of Mexicans and all their instruments. Fuck I wish I was with them! Mind you….