You know how sometimes the first sentence or paragraph of a story get people interested in something? Well this could be the case here, because T in the Park was probably the best experience I've ever had in such a long time! There was so much for everyone to do; and over the 4 days I was there a hell of a lot happened! From doing a late night show when completely hammered, to cockblocking a friend (supposedly), to watching your favourite acts perform, to generally having fun and getting smashed!! Anyway, I'll start from Friday, a very good place to start.
Friday: Setting off, Setting Up and Setting Down
I'm going to be honest and say I was kinda nervous about the whole trip. The fact that I've never been to a big festival before scared me a little, but I knew that I was with my crew - who have been there 2x before - and so the worry went away as the time was drawing near. I was meeting my crewmate Sam in town to go meet Maule, so he could take Sam, Tiger, Stevie and I to TITP.
After going to the meeting point (Tesco on Argyle St) for 2pm we had to wait about 40 minutes for Maule to turn up, then left another 30 minutes later (took 20 minutes to get all our shit in his car, then 10 minutes for resources aka booze!!
The trip to TITP was still funny as fuck, just all the random shit we all came out with was mental - Stevie always on about girls which made everything else we said after just something we wanted to remember!! On the way there we had to stop at TEESHIRTNATION. Maule had commercial Flyin' Jalapenos teeshirts to sell to get the crew name out there, in actual fact he sold quite a few which was dope! They look amazing too, I bought one myself and plan to get my name printed on it soon ;).
When we got to TITP we had to get our bands and our tents and such set up. It was a little wait for the band and was quite a trek getting to the spot that Kat and WongK had set up. It was the 2nd time I'd ever set up a tent, was a challenge but one I could defeat! :P. Stevie was mentioning that if we kept a tight circle of tents it means no one else will put a tent in the middle of us and ruin our social circle...so we moved our shit around accordingly and it proved effective!
The point of us being there in the first place was that we had shows to do in the Healthy T tent, 5 shows in total. In preparation for the shows we came up with quite a few routines, an order for each show and colours to wear for each show...so we looked different for a few but yet colour coordinated for the bigger shows!
It came to our first show, which was a freestyle, and I was a lil' nervous. I didn't want to fuck up cause I wanted to do the crew really proud, but then thoughts like this go through people's minds all the time when something like a show comes up.
The set up for the first show was a lil' strange, we had to wait a while for the last show to clean up...obviously they hadn't cleaned up everything which made it a lil' harder for us to dance...but it wasn't actually that hard when it came down to doing the job, we had hardboard to lay down - only problem was the stage was slightly slanted. But before the show started we had to arrange an order for this show (which was a freestyle), so Maule said "Pick a number between 1-12"...i picked 4, right after Sam...shit! That meant that for every blow up I could do Sam could do it better...no blow ups for me :(.
Then the first show came about, and I was hyped! I couldn't wait to go out and dance, didn't matter if I messed up in bits (which i definitely did in every show), I'd just have so much fun out there. And I did! I had a hell of a lot of fun that show, everyone kicked ass!
Since we were "staff", it meant that we got to get food from the staff catering service at breakfast lunch and dinner. After quickly rushing to get dinner after our show, we proceeded to relax and see what food they had. The food the catering staff had the whole 3 days was pretty good actually!! Was warm, filled you up, mixed choice, you couldn't go wrong with it! But walking through the event at night was really exciting; everywhere was lit up, everyone was having fun and you couldn't help but feel good from the experience. That night Jordan won a pink snake; we heard a bit of Artic Monkeys and Ke$ha and generally having fun drinking and such back up at the campsite.
That night myself and Sam had to share a 2 man tent, and boy it was a struggle! I only got about 2 hours sleep that night, if that! Didn't matter how much people were joking about it, it really was difficult to get any sleep in there. Ended waking up at 6am to get some food, water and orange juice from a local BP garage thinking that there is no way I'll be going back to sleep. I got back about 6:50am and suddenly went to sleep.
Saturday: Pushing the Boundaries
After not the best of sleep, I woke up at about 9:15am and headed for breakfast shortly after. A rehearsal was scheduled for 11am at the spot so that no one would be on the stage getting set up, so an early breakfast was on the agenda! Not everyone turned up to breakfast on time cause they turned up late, which meant rehearsals were later too...ended up getting about 10 minutes of rehearsal just for positioning and such.
There was a lot I wanted to do that day, a lot that I wanted to see too - House of Pain was a biggie for me! I also wanted to see how much I could get done that day so I could get the most out of TITP...instead of just dancing then doing nothing. :( Obviously my purpose there was different from what most other people's purpose was; everyone else had paid their £200 (roughly) to set up camp and get shitfaced but we paid nothing to do shows and get shitfaced! :P
Anyway, it came to our second show at TITP and this was the first of them that had a structure to it. Well, I say structure but there is always going to be something that doesn't go right...but why get stroppy and say the show went shit if something doesn't go right? I don't mean someone fell or crashed, i mean if an order is broke...how are they meant to know what order we have? It's not a program to a charity festival, it's a show! But anyway the show went on, and I thought that we were all better than the first show. We had a few routines here and there, which was pretty cool to be a part of! The crowds during the day weren't as hyped as the crowds at night, probably because the crowds at night have had more to drink and enjoy it more haha.
It was after the show that I REALLY wanted to go see House of Pain. Sam, Tiger, Nico and I were back at the campsite trying to figure out what way we should go to the NME stage to see them, but it took longer than we wanted to because we went a really long way round (a way that we thought was really short). We thought that we could get into a few places with our passes, but we were terribly wrong. We ended up jogging along a main road for 5 minutes to realise that we had to jog some more to get into the park again...by that time Nico's out of it, "Fuck this, I'm guna go back to camp!".
What a mistake he made, we made it to House of Pain with about 15 minutes to spare...and the atmosphere was electric! In actual fact we started rocking out in our wellies, Tiger trying to do footwork as always, I wouldn't be surprised if people did dance to House of Pain 'cause it was fucking awesome! Then Jump Around dropped, and everyone screamed in excitement...as did I! Throughout the song I felt really hyped and literally jumped around for the whole song!! I LOVE HIP HOP! It was the first act that I had actually wanted to go see, sure there were other acts that I saw before them that were OK (Ke$ha and Artic Monkeys) but HOP were mental! I'm really happy I got to see them, it's something I can cross off my bucket list.
That afternoon was a beautiful day, the sun was literally beaming down and it put me in a great mood. When we were walking from the NME stage (where HOP were playing) to our campsite we just took it easy, it was a Saturday and we had much more time to do whatever we wanted...all we need to do was turn up at dinner for some time before our shows. It's funny walking through the park, and seeing people of all ages getting wasted - you end up talking to anyone because no one gives a shit about anything there! It was one of the first times I ever felt like I was at a festival, just seeing all the people doing their own shit just having fun, guess that's what it's all about!
In the evening I wanted to see Slash but I lost my crew mates, so I had to watch most of Slash on my own - before I headed for dinner. And lemme tell you, that guy can still play! It was great to see him shredding, and when he played Sweet Child O' Mine and Paradise City...well put it this way it was EPIC! Everyone went nuts, well who wouldn't - it's a classic. But I went off to dinner by myself, 1. cause I didn't have anything else to do and 2. I was hungry! When I finished dinner that's when everyone else came, least I had a reason to stay you know?
The show we did was a blue show, and was our best show yet! Why? It had a better structure and better routines! If I'm correct there haven't been many routines in previous TITP performances from 2009-2010, but regardless of if there were or wern't I thought this show was great!! I felt that as the shows went on my solos got better; maybe I was relaxing into it I'm not sure.
It was after the show we all went to go see Beyoncé, and since we're "staff" we got to go through some special doors to be near the front. When Beyoncé came out, I was amazed! I had never seen a celebrity, with as much status as her, in the flesh like that before...it was electrifying! Getting to see her dance and play some of her most famous songs was mental, I can finally die happy and say I saw Beyoncé haha.
That night was pretty cool too! Jordan, Tiger, Sam and I went on a wee wonder through the festival at 11pm. We somehow lost Jordan and so me, Sam and Tiger just did our own thing. The rides there are too expensive but I still went on one of em...forgot how much fun they were. We were there until the main area closed, and proceeded to make our own way back to the campsite...until we passed a massive tent that had a lot of noise coming from it. Not knowing what was in it we asked one of the security guards that were guarding the back entrance what was in there. It was the main campsite bar - open from 12-2am. I use the "We are the Flyin' Jalapenos, we are dancers that are doing shows in the Healthy T tent to promote health and fitness", and we somehow managed to get in! Honestly, that sentence is a bunch of bullshit, I didn't think it would ever work!
We made it in anyway to find that it was just a bunch of random fanny's bouncing about not knowing WTF's going on. Somehow we had started a cypher, that lasted about 15 minutes, and it was honestly one of the strangest cyphers i've ever been a part of; throwing yourself about in wellies in the dry mud was strange as hell but fun! I tried to see if we could dance on stage but obviously the bouncers just don't trust anyone these days! So after cutting about there we just headed back to the tents, drank some more, set up Sam's tent that Nico had happily given to him as a spare, and went to sleep!
Sunday: The Final Shows and the Fun that came after!
It was the last day of shows, and I was relived it was all coming to an end! It's been great doing the shows, but you do feel great once the shows are over.
Unfortunately I don't remember much of Sunday, but I can tell y'all what happened with the shows and after the last show:
The first show we did that day was the Puma show. Basically someone hooked up with Puma and managed to send us gear from their new range all the way from London!! The only confusion was miscommunication with getting the gear from Maule's car and then to the show, I was fairly relaxed about all this but a few people wern't...but Davie helped calm me down even more - thanks dude! The result of that show wasn't as good as it could have been, because a few of us (including me) messed up at a few points and the show as a whole wasn't as strong as the blue show. Overall we tried to do a repeat of the blue show in the Puma gear and it didn't work out as well as we'd all hope it would - nonetheless I still found it fun, I didn't dwell on that show.
The last show was a total freestyle, come dressed in what you think is fresh and everyone just went out whenever they felt like doing so...obviously Stevie did help bring some variety to the show by putting together a little order, since he knows what moves we can all do and so he sorted us out accordingly. That show went great!! I thought it was our most hyped show of them all, my solos were much better that time and everyone else did really well too! As a gift to the crew we got a few crates of Tennents given to us and started drinking once we had finished our show, with Maule and myself declaring "LET'S GET FUCKIN' STEAMIN'!!!!" Even then the vibe at Healthy T was much better as we had stayed around to groove and pull a girl or 2 - well a few of us pulled anyway. Dinner was much more relaxed and happy that night, probably cause the relief was there and we could all properly relax and enjoy ourselves.
Walking back from the tent we saw the Foo Fighters, and a hell of a lot of muddy people! It had been raining pretty badly that day and just made the grass all muddy! People were sliding belly first in the mud, and it made Tiger curious to why people even did this...mate it's Scotland, shit happens here.
And the drinking still carried on going back to the tent, and at the tent. It was also decided that a lot of us would kick about the whole festival (main area and others), and see what kinda shit we end up getting into. I brought my bag with me, which had about 11 cans of Tennents and 2 bottles of Miller (for Sam), so we wouldn't need to buy any alcohol there...it's too expensive! Walking through the campsite singing "Ye canny throw yer granny off a bus" and "We'll be coming!" was one of the best parts of the trip! That wasn't the only place we sang that though, whenever someone mentioned "Oh ye canny" Michael would come out with some operatic "throw yer granny...off a bus!", it was one of the funniest things I'd seen!
We were told we could go perform on that stage in the main campsite bar, only to go and be rejected for no reason at all! We're then chilling outside the Cabaret tent to find that one of the staff recognised us, and asked if we wanted to do a show in there since a group had to pull out. We warned the people that were were pretty f*cking hammered but would still do the show, and it turned out to be amazing!! From past knowledge of the cabaret tent it would never fill up, it'd only get to about half full for a few acts...this time it was different...we packed out the whole tent! But after Michael could hardly stand for himself, it was kinda funny really - but at the same time it was kinda worrying too. After feeding him we all went back to the tent and just got even more hammered than normal! Oh what a night it was, I have never seen Tiger that wrecked ever.
Monday: Packing Up and Leaving
Not much to say at this bit, we all woke up later than normal, went scavenging. Tiger found 60 cans of beer, me and Stevie managed to get a 10 man tent and I went home early with Michael. I was originally going to go with Maule but I thought since Michael was leaving already I could go with him - was really nice of him to take me home too. I later found out that Maule got his car stuck in the mud and didn't get home until about midnight.
__
What can I say? I had the best time here!
One thing that I was a lil' annoyed at was that I did quite a bit of promotion for our shows, telling all the people I knew that were going to T in the Park to come see our show - I gave times and everything. So after all the promotion I did guess how many people I knew came to see us dance? Two...two people that I didn't even tell! Oh well, not that it has affected anything.
Hopefully we'll get the gig again next year, and we will be much better prepared for it. Roll on 2012!! ;)
*Signing Out*
0 comments:
Post a Comment