Moon shot
Last Sunday, as we made our way from the car park on the third day of Latitude to see The Waterboys, my friend and I realised we were playing a high-stakes game. The festival had been enjoyable enough so far, and although there’d been lots of rain on Friday night and most of Saturday the site hadn’t turned into a total mudbath. (The thing about a quagmire like the 2007 Glastonbury is once you’ve been through it and come out the other side, any festival conditions seem pretty tame in comparison. Our generation never had a Great War or a 'Nam. This will have to do.)
Naturally it helps when you get to stay in a big house just outside Ipswich rather than on a soggy campsite. Overnighting elsewhere is a double-edged sword though, and not just because of the hair-raising mudslide that was the drive to the day car park. Festivals aren’t just about watching some bands/comedy/etc on the main stages - they’re about the vibes, maaan. Nothing quite beats the thrill of catching something unexpected on the late-night walk back to your tent - cf Guilty Pleasures at the aforementioned 2007 Glastonbury, where we joined hundreds of hardy souls in dancing to Lionel Richie in our raincoats and wellies. We never recaptured the same feeling when GP became just another part of our precision-planned itinerary in subsequent years.
So anyway, yeah... The Waterboys. We saw them in 2007 too. Sunday lunchtime, Pyramid Stage, in pissing rain under gunmetal skies. Whole of the Moon had been the highlight of our in-car playlist on the drive down, both of us simultaneously re-discovering how great it was. What a song to cheer us up on a miserable day! This was going to be awesome!
They didn’t play it.
Worse, they’d played more than one set at that year’s festival, and with depressing predictability we found the Youtube evidence later on. They’d played it, just not for us. They owed us big time.
But what if you build something up to such a degree only for it not to happen? If they didn’t play it, it would be no exaggeration to say that my whole festival would be ruined. So what if I’d seen some good comedy. It’s nothing I couldn’t see back in London, in a building with comfy seats rather than a sweaty great tent. Sure, The National delivered the songs as they sound on the tin and singer Matt Berninger tried manfully to overcome their obvious lack of rock star charisma by marching through the crowd, but they’re never going to be genuine headliner material. Suede would be on later, but their Brixton gig the other month would be nigh-on impossible to top. The Cribs suffered from awful sound, a couple of other bands had been decent enough... Being honest, nothing life-changing was going to happen.
And so the whole weekend could be boiled down to one equation: No Whole of the Moon = No Point Being Here.
You’d think given the above that I’d have wanted them to open the set with it, thus saving us the agony of suspense. You’d be dead wrong. Nerves had built to such a pitch, I was expecting, nay wanting it to be the final song. We’d gone through a whole set praying for it once, and were crushed. The ultimate adreneline rush would be the same events repeated, but this time with the payoff of those magical piano bars sparking into life right at the death.
They played it in the middle of the set. It was fun. We high-fived. Then, four and a bit minutes later, it was over. What happens when your expectations are met, but not quite in the exact way you wanted them to be? Such are the strange disappointments of life.
Still, they ended with Fisherman’s Blues, which is another great tune isn’t it? If they don’t play it next time I see them... etc.
Naturally it helps when you get to stay in a big house just outside Ipswich rather than on a soggy campsite. Overnighting elsewhere is a double-edged sword though, and not just because of the hair-raising mudslide that was the drive to the day car park. Festivals aren’t just about watching some bands/comedy/etc on the main stages - they’re about the vibes, maaan. Nothing quite beats the thrill of catching something unexpected on the late-night walk back to your tent - cf Guilty Pleasures at the aforementioned 2007 Glastonbury, where we joined hundreds of hardy souls in dancing to Lionel Richie in our raincoats and wellies. We never recaptured the same feeling when GP became just another part of our precision-planned itinerary in subsequent years.
So anyway, yeah... The Waterboys. We saw them in 2007 too. Sunday lunchtime, Pyramid Stage, in pissing rain under gunmetal skies. Whole of the Moon had been the highlight of our in-car playlist on the drive down, both of us simultaneously re-discovering how great it was. What a song to cheer us up on a miserable day! This was going to be awesome!
They didn’t play it.
Worse, they’d played more than one set at that year’s festival, and with depressing predictability we found the Youtube evidence later on. They’d played it, just not for us. They owed us big time.
But what if you build something up to such a degree only for it not to happen? If they didn’t play it, it would be no exaggeration to say that my whole festival would be ruined. So what if I’d seen some good comedy. It’s nothing I couldn’t see back in London, in a building with comfy seats rather than a sweaty great tent. Sure, The National delivered the songs as they sound on the tin and singer Matt Berninger tried manfully to overcome their obvious lack of rock star charisma by marching through the crowd, but they’re never going to be genuine headliner material. Suede would be on later, but their Brixton gig the other month would be nigh-on impossible to top. The Cribs suffered from awful sound, a couple of other bands had been decent enough... Being honest, nothing life-changing was going to happen.
And so the whole weekend could be boiled down to one equation: No Whole of the Moon = No Point Being Here.
You’d think given the above that I’d have wanted them to open the set with it, thus saving us the agony of suspense. You’d be dead wrong. Nerves had built to such a pitch, I was expecting, nay wanting it to be the final song. We’d gone through a whole set praying for it once, and were crushed. The ultimate adreneline rush would be the same events repeated, but this time with the payoff of those magical piano bars sparking into life right at the death.
They played it in the middle of the set. It was fun. We high-fived. Then, four and a bit minutes later, it was over. What happens when your expectations are met, but not quite in the exact way you wanted them to be? Such are the strange disappointments of life.
Still, they ended with Fisherman’s Blues, which is another great tune isn’t it? If they don’t play it next time I see them... etc.
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