leeds festival

whilst we're a little late on this and it may not be totally relevant now, here is our (my) review of what i saw at leeds. despite the initially crap weather and slipknot pulling out, we had a pretty sweet weekend.

arriving on the wednesday to get the spot we get every year we were greeted with rain. rain so hard that evas tent flooded so badly that she had to go home and come back again! thursday was no different with mud being consistently churned up and wellingtons becoming an absolute neccessity. i went to see grammatics play the dance to the radio stage on the thursday night. they, of course, totally rocked it but had to cut their set short quite considerably due to the pidgeon detectives (eurrggh) secret set running over. booze ensued and thursday night quickly became friday morning.

friday saw the remaining members of the tomassi party contigent arrive. having sorted out a guest ticket at the last minute, joe n found himself in the haven of guestcamping; a flat, grassy paradise compared to the battle of the somme-esque vibes of blue valley. jealous in the very least! a huge oversight in the colour of wristbands meant that you could simply turn yr brown weekend wristband inside out and it would be black: the same colour as the guestbands. upon realising this i took advantage of it all weekend, only being stopped on a few occasions. this meant we got to see more of the youthmovies boys and spend some time with lovvers. festivals are really fun for catching up with other bands.

in terms of blagging into 'restricted' areas i totally won. i managed to also get into the arena crew campsite, which you needed a photo laminate for, using the above trick and the distraction of my partner in crime whilst i climbed over a fence. if anyone from festival republic reads this, please dont let it put you off booking us next year! i was drunk and it seemed like an amazing idea at the time.

onto music, which is what this post should probably be about...
highlights of the weekend for me:
friendly fires
late of the pier
youthmovies
digitalism
simian mobile disco
yeasayer
these new puritans
wild beasts
los campesinos!

all the above bands totally killed it. i would go into detail but alcohol consumed there and the time which has passed has impaired my memory of what exactly happened. i just remember all of them being especially good fun.

i managed to get a guestpass for the sunday and thinking that the traditional sunday night trouble would kick off, i moved my tent to the guest area where i thought it would be safer. in a massive stroke of irony, after being out, i returned to find my tent and all my stuff had completely disappeared. after searching for half an hour, i found my tent on its side with the contents of my bag emptied inside. fortunately, only my sleeping bag had been stolen which i settled for but found really trivial. bastards!

so yeah, good weekend!
props to the penistone set, youthmovies, lovvers, tom warner, alice thomas, matt and katie, everyone that wore our shirts (we saw you!), thomas sadler, jack, william bowerman and moody of course.

see you there next year hopefully.
james