Brakes' Summer Fest Round Up

After the adventures of Istanbul I was granted a couple of weeks off, not expecting to regroup with the band until the wonderful truck fest on the 21st July. Id arranged to meet a Canadian friend in London who, travelling in Europe for the first time, was keen to see what musical delights the nation had to offer, and where better than truck? So on the 20th of July we were sat poised in a house in Hackney, ready to leave for Paddington and get the train to Didcot Parkway from where a bus would take us to the site. As many of you will know it wasn't to be. We were halfway out the door when I got a text from my manager. The site was flooded and several phone calls later it was confirmed: - Truck was cancelled! I had to sit back down and rationalise this information. The festival had become such a part of normal life over the last 5 years, a seasonal certainty. I felt mostly bad for my friend, I'd built it up so much and he'd heard a lot about it from a mutual friend of ours who id taken there many times before. The other sting in this situation was that another friend was planning to have his stag do at truck. Something had to be re-scheduled, so the next day we set off for a weekend at a country retreat just north of Monmouth and forgot all about it. I know what you're thinking. Isn't that where the floods were? Well yes but it turned out we were just west enough and up a hill enough to be out of the danger zone. The river Wye did look dangerously full though.

     A week later we were booked to play the awfully nice Ben and Jerry's festival on Clapham common. It was a familiar line-up. Not at all dissimilar from the Kent festival we'd played just before Turkey. Not sure if I mentioned that one, it was fairly uneventful. We pulled up as the first band was on. A few thousand adults and children were spread out liberally in the sun eating ice cream. I spent most of the day looking at the planes flying low overhead and drinking cider. We had a good one despite having not played together for at least 3 weeks. The Feeling headlined and blew the power twice. You'd expect a band of their demure to not take a power failure too well but they battled through and kept their chins up.

     Just under a week later Eamon and I took an early flight to Germany and met up with the others in Cologne. ESP had been doing some French and Swiss festivals in the time between and tonight both bands were booked to play the Blue Shell club. The stage was small, it was hot and obviously smoking was still permitted indoors in this part of Germany. First band on were The Nightingales, a Fall-esque art punk Brummy band whose first single had come out on Rough Trade over 20 years ago. Singer Robert was a stocky drunk in a black suit, his words slurred brilliantly as he talked to us backstage. "It's so refreshing to meet a young pop band who aren't cunts" he said. We took that as a compliment of the highest form. The gig was good despite not having room to swing a cat, and it sounded pretty tight too. Sometimes not playing together for a really long time makes you enjoy it more and try harder.

     That night we slept in a really creepy hotel. The staircase seemed to go on upwards forever and when we got to the top we found our room was a four-bed dorm with no TV and just a sink in the corner. It was quaint but the beds were comfy and the breakfast in the morning was a typically satisfying German affair of bread, ham, cheese and coffee.

     The next morning we set off for Haldern where again both bands were booked to perform. Our ex-pat chums from Incendiary magazine had told us many great things about this festival on a pig farm. Mostly that it's muddy and everyone gets horrifically drunk. Luckily for us it was a glorious day, not a splash of mud in sight. I was pleased to find that we were playing in the famous Spiegel tent, a regular feature at the Brighton festival but surprisingly somewhere that I'd never had the chance to play in before. We were on relatively early but there was still a good crowd gathered to watch us. We had a great show, it was stiflingly hot but it sounded good for us and the audience were moshing enthusiastically. We'd been given a caravan as our dressing room complete with a couple of bunks so after the show (and a spot of Frisbee) I took the opportunity to have a nap.

I awoke to the sound of The View finishing their set and then headed out to see what was going on around the site. Caught a bit of The Magic Numbers then got down the front to see Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines. The band fronted by Jason Pierce with a string section, keyboardist and trio of gospel singers had blown me away a few weeks back in Glasgow but somehow it didn't work here. It was dark, everyone was talking and there were a few sound troubles. It was a shame.

     ESP weren't on till the early hours so there was a lot of time to kill. I watched some of The Maccabees drank some more beer and then eventually watched ESP who were great. After the show we gathered around a campfire with those Magic Numbers and got merrily sozzled. I managed to insult some French Canadians by assuming they were German but in my defence their English speaking accent wasn't an accent I'd ever heard before. They were nice guys though and I think they forgave me.

     The next morning I was up and in the hotel restaurant just in time to catch breakfast. There was no rest for the ESP gang who had to drive off for another gig in Berlin. They still had work to do promoting the new album across Europe. I realised that the mass of water I'd noticed as I drunkenly fell into the hotel the previous night was actually the Rhine. German and Dutch cargo barges chugged slowly up the water whilst the occasional weekend speed boater whizzed past. It was another hot day and unfortunately Eamon and I had nothing to do until our 8pm flight. I went back up to the room where Eamon was slumbering. Eventually he woke up and we pondered upon what the hell we should do with all this time. Go to Düsseldorf? No, too far. Go to the cinema? What cinema? We were stranded, we didn't really know where we were and we had a lot of time to kill. Eamon was hungry so we found a restaurant a short walk down the river that soon filled with upper middle class Germans on weekend family outings. Eamon had a steak and I had mineral water. The meal seemed to waste quite a bit of time. After that we went back to the hotel and drank a few beers. The runner turned up a few hours later and we bought him a coffee. These people deserve a medal, they spend their entire weekend driving back and forth from airports, hotels and the festival site and usually don't get paid or get to see any music. On the way to the airport he told us how Mike Scott of the Waterboys had spat phlegm onto his dashboard. Charming!

     After another two weeks that included going to a wedding, rehearsing with my other band and generally bumbling around Brighton, Brakes hit London town. Beatific Visions was released as a download single and to celebrate/warm up for Reading we did two gigs in the capital. First show was at Ginglik; an old underground toilet on Sheppard's Bush Green and the first event for club night East London is a Vampire. It was Eamon's birthday so after sound-check we went for a curry. Fellow Brightonian support band Doll and the Kicks got proceedings going back at the club and we returned halfway through their set. It was a Monday night and the crowd were subdued. We took the stage and it started well despite sounding horrific on stage. I'd noticed during the support band that the lighting engineer was being somewhat overly creative with his tools and was making the stage look more like a giant fruit machine. I asked our tour manager to politely ask him to calm it down a bit but he was having none of it. Not only that but he was dropping all lights at the end of every song leaving us blind and unable to ready ourselves for the next song. This was incredibly annoying and after a while we all started shouting at him. The gig sort of fell apart from there onwards. We struggled through it. Afterwards we all quickly went our separate ways and tried to forget about it.

     The next day we were booked to play the legendary Water Rats in Kings Cross. Brakes hadn't played here before and I was thoroughly looking forward to it. After sound-check I went for dinner and then returned to find the venue filling up fast. By the time we were due to take the stage it was rammed and I had to push my way through the audience to get up there. The gig went brilliantly; we blasted through the set, sweating profusely all the way. We totally redeemed ourselves from the night before. Eventually we left the stage but the audience weren't going to let us get away without doing an encore. We went back on and did Spring Chicken and then Jackson. About a third of the way through the song the large wine stained Scottish BSP fan better known as Bill decided he wanted his time in the limelight and began to climb up on stage on Tom's side. He'd been down my side for most of the gig and had been bashing my pedals with his crutches. He was on crutches because he was 3 weeks away from a hip replacement, which made what happened next even worse. As he heaved himself up he started carelessly treading all over Tom's pedal board. Tom put an arm out to stop him from damaging his gear any more. Unfortunately this just made Bill spring back in the opposite direction, he tripped over the monitor and went headfirst off the stage and eventually landed in a quivering lump on the floor. We stopped the song, Eamon jumped down to make sure he was ok and luckily he was still alive and conscious. A few minutes later we got the song back up and all was forgotten. It was a tense moment for a minute there, I sort of expected everyone to walk out in disgust but talking to people afterwards it turned out everyone thought it was hilarious. Tom apologised to Bill and it seemed like he didn't even remember. He'd had a good night and that was the main thing.

     Later that week we did a few radio sessions to promote the single. Edith Bowman had been kind enough to give us her support again and had made us single of the week on her daytime Radio 1 show. As a show of thanks we all went to the Reading festival a day earlier to broadcast a live acoustic rendition of the song on her show. There were lots of people back there in the 'VIP' area, I'm not sure how many of them actually deserved to be there but with Reading being so close to London it was like an industry cattle market. One good thing about these enormous festivals is that you bump into people who you wouldn't necessarily see in day-to-day life. Especially other bands, it's hard to maintain a social life when you're always on tour. So none of us needed any encouragement to celebrate and the cider flowed liberally as the night drew in.

     The next day I felt terrible and we had a gig to do. We had the second slot on the Radio 1 stage after Dogs and before The Noisettes. It was a scorching day and I took refuge from the heat in the shade of Dinosaur Jr's massive tour bus. Dogs had a faithful audience who bounced and sang along faithfully despite it being so early in the day. We took the stage and the sound was all over the shop. Maybe I was hung-over but it never quite sounded right for me. I was distracted and made loads of mistakes but apparently it sounded good and the crowd enjoyed it.

     I spent the rest of the day basking in the heat of the sun and drinking more cider. Caught a bit of Metronomy, saw some of The Shins and of course rocked out to Dinosaur Jr who were a delight. We were staying in Wakefiled that night to make sure we were near the Leeds site for the next day so at about 10pm we set off into the night and up the M1. We pulled into the Wakefield M1 Travelodge sometime in the wee hours and got out heads down.

     I was glad I hadn't got stinking drunk the night before when I woke and I actually felt pretty good for day two of the Carling weekender. We pulled onto the Leeds site just after 10am and got familiarised with the area. The Leeds site is a lot more interesting than the Reading site. It has hills and a lake. It was another nice day but thankfully not as hot as down in the Thames valley. The gig that day was much better than the day before and we left the stage feeling good. We grabbed some delicious lunch in the artist catering tent and then got back on the road for the long drive down to Brighton.

     Come the next Saturday we were hurtling down the M4 on route for the Macs festival near Carmarthen south Wales. I didn't know what to expect from this event but when we got there it soon transpired that we were playing in a large cow shed with a half pipe erected at one end. Yes, this was a skateboarding event and we were the entertainment. To make matters worse the headliner of our stage was none other than that feisty young pup Plan B. There was hardly anyone at this festival but at least the PA and stage setup was fairly high end. The band before us, The Guns, played their brand of emo rawk to about 50 people and a few skateboarders. Things didn't look great but by the time we got on a few more people had gathered and we got stuck into our set. It started well; we played cautiously but solidly and started to have some fun. We had a few fans there and a couple of mash heads were dancing along. Somewhere towards the end Eamon had a lapse of sanity and made a derogatory remark towards Plan B. He would later regret this and as we left the stage Mr B was waiting side stage with a big fucking buzzy bee in his bonnet. They didn't exactly have a fight but an incident did occur involving Eamon being air born for a few seconds and the perpetrator being dragged off kicking and screaming in the opposite direction by security guards who had been waiting all day for something like that to happen. We got packed up and left as soon as we could. Some said Plan B deserved it, others said that breeding hate and negativity is useless. Either way, Eamon regretted his words and hopefully no further animosity will come of it. We drove to a Travelodge just outside Cardiff and got some sleep for a few hours.

     In the morning we left the hotel at 6am and drove to Cardiff airport where we were booked onto a flight for Jersey. We were headed for the Jersey Live festival, which was now in its 5^th year. Jersey looked beautiful from the air as we came in to land, all dramatic cliffs and sandy beaches. We were driven from the airport to our hotel: - The Metropolis Hotel that seemed to cater mainly for the later in life. It wasn't dissimilar from Fawlty Towers.

    After a few hours of doing nothing we got driven up into the countryside in the middle of the island to the festival site. We were on quite early so there was only a scattering of people in the audience. Most people were lounging in the sunshine drinking beer which is probably what I'd have been doing had I been attending.

We had a good gig and afterwards we hung about for a bit and watched a few of the other bands. Had to check out SFA who delivered their usual ultra relaxed performance of hits from their almost 12 year career. At the end of Receptacle for the Respectable the three members of the band with guitars did their usual party trick of crossing necks to form some sort of triumphant rock trident. Then the P.A went down and their show was temporarily halted. I went backstage to shelter form the sun and by the time I'd got back the problem had been solved and they were back on stage.

     The next morning the local radio reported that it was the guitar neck crossing that had blown the P.A. The same station also told us that the festival (which featured musical genres such as funk rock, punk rock and pop funk) had gone ahead smoothly and there had only been 12 arrests. There seemed to be this attitude on the island that a music festival would breed violence and disorder. Plus the local police were really taking the piss and had made the organisers pay an astronomical fee for their protection; otherwise they wouldn't have let it gone ahead. There were police and security everywhere at this thing. I think I only saw 2 coppers at Glastonbury. Luckily for us one of the backstage guards kindly kept us well informed any time he saw the sniffer dogs come by.

     I made a quick exit and went back to the hotel to slumber in front of the telly. The next morning I woke early, unable to lie in from going to bed too early. Around lunch time Joe and I went to the airport to get our flight to Gatwick. The others were getting a later flight to Cardiff to pick up the van and seeing as I was going back to Glasgow I was let off this task. Unfortunately the process of connecting at Gatwick was eventually to go against my favour and when I reached Glasgow I found that British Airways had lost my bass. It's still lost and apparently no-one knows where it is. I'm assuming it's been sent to the wrong airport, probably in another country. If anyone sees it please let me know.