And before we knew it Day Three was upon us. At this point
people are traditionally running out of steam. My feet and toes hurt due to standing
upright in a poor choice of footwear for days and my kidneys hurt, having been
punched a bit hard by £4.50 bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale. But you have to
power on.
I was determined to see more than the previous day.
“The sky is blue, the sun is out and I’m going to fucking
kill myself,” Spunk Volcano of …and the Eruptions yelled from the outdoor stage.
Good start.
Spunk Volcano is in Dirtbox Disco, as are two other members
of the band, and is apparently the chief songwriter. I was expecting more of
the same as the Eruptions songs are just leftovers from Dirtbox. I was
pleasantly surprised and actually think they are the better of the two bands. The
songs were all a lot faster and tinged with 80s nostalgia. There was a Raleigh
Chopper on stage for some reason. And had Mr Volcano read my write-up of Day
Two? Because there was an homage to Discharge that followed the recipe I described
there. We’re all on to them.
Next were Darlington’s In Evil Hour. I’ve said before that
they get better every time I see them and this is still true. Six times I’ve
seen them they surely can’t improve when I see them next time? It’s practically
impossible.
The crowd had thinned out a bit, which is a shame for a band
that has been compared to Rise Against and described by a bloke I overheard
yesterday as “not bad”. He crowd sang along and the shoppers of Blackpool who were
walking past all got a real treat.
Almost as important as music is food and it was time to take
a break with a couple of friends and go to the West Coast Rock Cafe for a quick
burger. For the first time in my life I bought a sandwich that cost over a
tenner (it did contain a full steak though) and I washed it down with a couple
of ice-cold Doom Bars. We went on to another pub for a pint and thought it was
then time to return to the Winter Gardens .Somehow we’d ended up in a time
vortex and it was suddenly 7 o’clock.
At least it meant I witnessed a very bizarre incident in the
street from the safety of the pub.
A man was leaning against a building across the road, looking
at his phone. Nothing odd about that. On the pavement in front of him was a
large cushion about three feet in diameter that looked like a donut, complete
with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. Nothing really odd about that either as
I was sitting in a pub where there was a stag in an old fashioned prisoner
outfit and a hen brandishing a huge inflatable penis.
A police car suddenly screeched across the pavement and two officers
got out and started talking to him. Possibly they were attracted by the large
donut? Some girls who looked like they hadn’t had time to get a proper tan so
had instead painted themselves with some kind of thick varnish decided to intervene.
There was a small crowd in the pub watching by now and there was a good deal of
speculation about what was happening. The conversation over the road appeared
heated
More police arrived and then an ambulance. The self-tanning
varnishers wandered off, clearly bored by now. Four police officers were
talking to the man who was now sitting on the donut cushion. Maybe he had
piles? After a few minutes the man – and
his donut – were put into the ambulance which took almost fifteen minutes to
drive away. We may never know what happened, but perhaps this surpassed seeing
Keith Morris and Stephen Egerton outside the Pound Bakery as being the weirdest
moment of the weekend.
Back to the festival and I was playing catch up. It was time
to take in as many snippets of as many bands in the least time possible.
Here goes.
The Crack: not memorable in any way, but I saw two and a
half songs.
Jilted John: not my cup of tea and no, I didn’t hear that song.
Psychords: an all-girl group that I’d heard were really
shouty. In reality they were a bit Ramones-esque and not angsty in any way. “Can
I please have a little bit more drums in my monitor if it’s not too much
trouble? Thanks.”
Old Firm Casuals: Rancid guitarist fronts Rancid-sounding
band. Yet another of about 50 side projects members of that band have formed
that sound exactly like Rancid.
Hardskin: “This song is about working. Something the people
of Blackpool will know fuck all about.” The word “oi” was used probably about
19,000 times in the first song.
Flat Back Four: Great songs and possibly the best bass
player of the weekend. His hand was a constant blur up and down the fretboard.
Louise Distras: I saw about thirty seconds of her acoustic set,
but it’s the full band show on Day Four I’m most interested in. She was at the
new band stage before she performed just watching and I had a conversation with
her about charging phones. Mingling with famous people again.
After going to the shop for a much needed soft drink,
witnessing really loud Ennio Morricone music being randomly played in the
street and having a conversation about bookshops with a couple who were either
Irish or Swiss, it was time for GBH.
GBH were great, as you would expect. Unless they aren’t your
thing, in which case you would say they were loud, shouty and vulgar. Like I said, great.
They rattled through an hour of greatest hits and then I got
out of there before The Damned came on. They were rolling out Dave Vanian’s red
carpet as I left.
One more day to go…
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