Hey, overdue post here, last weekend I was invited by my good friend Will to the Rhythms of the World festival in his own backyard, Hitchin. Now due to the way the trains work, if I was to solo the trip, it would mean travelling into the centre of London, going via the Underground to another hub in London, and then back out and northwards to Hitchin. Will offered to pick me up (and drop me off) at Milton Keynes Central, one of the main stops towards London. This was very advantageous as it cut the journey effectively in half so I was all in favour. The festival fell on the weekend of the 14th July, so the (revised) plan was to head down on Saturday morn and return back on the Monday, just before Will went off to work.
Trains were fine, and after a bit of traffic getting out of Milton Keynes, Will getting slightly annoyed at the sheer volume of the number of roundabouts, we were on our way to the festival and the alcoholic oblivion beyond :D. Will stressed getting the earlier train to allow for more drinking, and well we arrived in Hitchin with about half an hour before the festival officially started LOL. We went via his sister's flat, currently unoccupied, to fill up cooler bags with beverages and then we were on our way.
First stop was off to see a band on one of the main stages that was promised to be in the same mould as Enter Shakiri. Unfortunately that was not so, the band that actually turned up produced nothing greater than watered-down 3 minute emo songs. A promised highlight (thanks Will) was their completely unexperimental cover of the dance hit "Castles in the Sky", which when the rest of the band kicked in created nothing more than shapeless noise - nice one guys, you were so good, I can't even remember the name of your band.
Next stop was the other main stage for the Chris Phillips Band which many held in high regard, the band forming after the split of former local band Ardent Kicks, and Tom, one of Will's mates, was brother to the Chris from which the band drew their name. By this time a bit of a crowd was forming, and front man Chris milked it for all it was worth, and the set was genuinely enjoyable - their stuff being quite folksy thanks to Chris' acoustic, but also some electronic and synth elements included to deepen the sound. One for the future here hopes, the guys were extremely good, very tight - Dan the drummer is held in exceptionally high regard for his skills although the set didn't allow the freedom for him to show off, plus speaking with Chris later that night was pretty cool, a stand up guy - I wish you guys the best. As I mentioned to Chris in the little chat I had with him, the band coped very well the technical difficulties that struck Dan's kit a couple of times throughout the set. Rather than feigning excuses and mass shrugging, it was inspiring to see Chris take the initiative, and get the crowd involved. That involved the classic sing-along and clapping with the instruments dropped out. Another bit of fun was the Mexican wave that was sent back through the crowd which actually made it back to the front a couple of times, which was quite smart.
With the early highlight of the day already over, it seemed appropriate to take a breath (and get more beer) so we headed over to the acoustic stage to chill out (if memory serves me correctly, it gets a bit hazy from here on in, thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol that we were drinking). The absolute name escapes me but next highlight was an Orchestra that did classical covers of modern songs - it couldn't fail to be entertaining so we all set about being there. Some food later and we headed back to the first main stage in what was already an impressive crowd but the sound seemed screwed up. There didn't seem to be any amplification going on, so it was very hard to hear them over the general hubbub of the crowd. It was a shame as they promised to be very good, so we took our leave - I can't remember if we went back to the acoustic stage or perhaps even the George for the first time.
Next performance we couldn't miss was the Easy Star All Stars (I think that's what they were called, where is my programme?..), and we didn't miss them. This goup were responsible for remixing popular albums like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Radiohead's OK Computer in a reggae inspired fashion. Properly liquored up the crowd were really starting to enjoy it, lots of people dancing, our substantial group as well and even I showed off some of my moves towards the end.
It was after those guys that I met one of the Irish girls (I want to say her name was Fiona oh dear :s), and in my merriness I got her to say lots of things, practically anything that came into my head, starting with all the cliches like "Top of the morning to ya laddie!" I'm afraid I got quite smitten pretty quickly, and that is quite worrying that I can get like that after such a short space of time. It actually got me thinking about certain voices, or perhaps accents can, just on their own, be very hot. I actually thought of Koel, particularly one of the times when I went up to Cov to see everyone and she left this incredibly long answer phone message, but it was cool to listen to her voice a couple of times hehe. Anyways, back to the festival...
Later on in the day, we were back in the George (I'm pretty sure) for the performance of another person that Tom plus others knew (it seemed Tom knew the majority of Hitchin) and his band at the back of the beer garden. They were fine without being particularly exciting but it was at this point that I discovered that, upon reflection, quite naturally, that they had a Ceilidh (look up spelling) on in the town hall. I tried to persuade at least one person including this girl I've never met, who it turned out to be the girlfriend of the guy whose band we were watching LOL. A little disappointed that noone would join me for a ceilidh, I decided to go check it out on my own, and hoped that I would find another odd person over who would be my partner (for those not in the know, Ceilidh's are dances that generally operate in groups of 2 or 4). Hanging about on the fringes didn't seem to help much, and I didn't feel bold enough to ask a stranger to dance, so after what was a probably short time, I headed back dejected that it didn't work out *mimes sad expression with fingers on face*.
The final act we had to see on day 1 was this very large, latin-inspired percussive act which amongst its lineup had one of Will's friends, Dave's dad. They were also a lot of fun and with that sealing the end of the day, we promptly headed over to the George and the other pubs closeby. Some more drinks later, and a trip to the loo and I lost people, which was very scary, I was thinking oh crap oh crap oh crap, I actually left this one pub and then joined the queue to get back in just in case I missed some ppl despite me having a big look. Fortunately, Will randomly turned up so it was all good. We went inside the pub and played some fuseball which I lost after taking a promising early lead - shame.
We returned back to Will's pretty knackered and pretty much went straight to bed. The next day was going to be more of the same, but we chilled for a lot of the waking day playing Call of duty 2 and Forza 2 on Will's 360. We went down at about 8 to have the rest of the group attack us for not being more prompt and not getting into town at 12 like they all did. The pub had a hardcore chiller set up outside cooling some beer cans which could be ours for just a £1 each -bonus! We got some of those and then got into the live drum 'n' bass that was on at the end of the beer garden. Enjoying that as much as it's physically possible we thought it was best to leave and headed over to Club 85, the "indie stage" but in fact a club - the clue's in the title. We were off to the see the last act of the festival, the Eagles I believe was what they were called. Yeah, they were pretty cool, had essentially a young lineup, with this older guy doing a lot of spoken word which was pretty cool. They also had a fair few guests come up on stage including a 2nd drummer which Will met at the bar just before, and a woman singer to do a song. We then met back up with the group to finish off the beer supplies which were a little low on the ground.
The next day I only just made the train, the timing being very tight. It is very strange that I am always tired and/or hungover when making these commutes back to Wem, why is that? Overall a pretty good weekend, spent a lot of money, and got a bit sunburnt on my neck, but it was a lot of fun.
Here's pencilling in the weekend for next year.
