If you missed Part One, start with that here




Why are these people staring at me? I know them, the one on the left, with the nose ring and the hoodie- that’s Sam Evans. I lived with him for three years. Why doesn’t he recognise me? The one on the right is Andy Balack, I roomed with him in the first year, I know his fiancée Becky, I know he hates the council and I even know he likes 2 sugars in his tea. I am stood 6 inches from them and still they are staring blankly at me? In fact why am I not talking to them? I’m just staring with a cold, blank gormless pallor desperately trying to summon some sort of sense out of my befuddled brain.
 
The noise in Alcatraz is like being suffocated by a pillow of cement. I first entered about an hour ago, wanting to dance to repetitive beats while the sweat streaked from my skin but now it feels like the music is coming through marshmallows and my eyes are twitching to the four corners.
 
Still I haven’t moved an inch, why isn’t Chris talking to them? Hang on, I’m fucking Chris, that’s me there staring at Sam. Stood next to my own physical self, I notice my eyes are dead and my mouth hanging loose on its chin. The lights behind them blur into a pale red mist. This is not good.  Shaking my eyes to focus, suddenly noise floods in like water from a bust pipe; screams, bells, bleeps and whistles rattle against my ear drum.
 
Next thing I’m spinning towards the side of the dance floor.
 
‘Barrett, what the fuck are you doing?’
 
Its Dave, his hand clamped to my shoulder dragging me to an alcove, scatted around us are big crimson cushions each with their own individual casualty, some seminally in the deepest of conversations, some just hanging on for dear life. I scramble for an explanation to give to Dave. By this point my mind is flipping in its skin, confusion pumping through every vein and the two people who moments ago I thought were my oldest friends are now complete strangers.
 
Dave is shaking my shoulder for signs of sustained life.

‘No it wasn’t them you freak, you don’t know them, they just asked me if you were okay. They’ve never seen you before in your life.  You scared me, what the fuck happened….?’
 
I had been at Standon Calling for roughly 40 hours- what had happened up to now had merely been stray hands on trembling knees but this had now turned into a rough Butcher Fuck of severed emotions and mental anguish.  
    

Even before I got here, many a time have I complimented Standon on the impeccability of the way it handles and presents itself.  Its line-up, whilst being shorn of a few crowd-pleasers in amongst them on the edge, is perfect for its intended audience.  It’s marketing, pushing the Murder On The Standon Express theme to the fore on all its flyers and literature, sets it apart from every Tom, Dick and V and gives it a focal point for pre-festival chatter.  Even the garble about it originally starting as a party in curator Alex Trenchard's back garden with 25 mates blah blah blah, gives it a warm, fuzzly inclusive feel (on the Saturday sitting with a bunch of unknowns blowing up enough balloons to cart the Main Stage off to Baghdad, they all suddenly hush next to the pool and whisper conspiratorially, as though I’m in on a secret that only those at Standon are in on and the rest of the world can just fuck off , that ‘he’s there.  That’s him.’ ‘Who?’  ‘Hiiiiim.... [daggers]...Alex.’)

So, please, tell me how in the name of all that is pure and not so pure, have this abomination I am currently watching won the Road to Standon festival?   How have the laughably titled We Used To Make Things, of all the bands that entered the competition-many of whom were actually pretty good- won the right to play the hallowed Main Stage?  Road to Standon was a competition that started in May, and consisted of various heats where unsigned bands were whittled down to a chosen few who faced off in a winner takes all contest  on the Thursday for the right to play on the Friday afternoon.  I went to one of these events at the Monarch and at least two of these bands were vastly superior to this hybrid of The Zutons, Mark Ronson and –Lord, deliver us- Scouting for Girls. Their Myspace describes them as ‘wonderful and unfashionable’; I certainly agree with the latter adjective, and their peddling of irritating, beardy bounce-pop that my Dad would call ‘good fun’  reaches its apex with shit songs pilfered straight from the little England cliché songbook like ‘Yes Man’, ‘Passive Aggression’ and ‘Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be.’


I have been queuing for what seems like an ice age for this Aspalls-  it is pissing down with rain and I’m covered in wasps. How this has happened I will never know.

‘Aren’t you the guy who vomited on our tent?’

 There are very few words that me, you or anyone can say to these insipid inbreeds in front of you in a situation such as this. These are the options that ran through my head:


 1)       I refuse to lower myself to the torrid accusations of such vile creatures

2)       Go Fuck yourself

 or a rather more adventurous

 3)      Parlez- vous le Francais?


 Before engaging in what I’m sure will not be an easy conversation I scan my memory for evidence- what follows are a series of polaroids of tequila shots, arguments, terrible dancing, semi-gratuitous nudity and arguments concerning Springsteen.
 

‘There is a good chance, now shut the fuck up and let me buy you a drink.’
 

After a couple hours of lies, truths and tall tales we decided to leave our new found friends and head to the top field. Bouncing off ideas and shoulders we bumbled along competent in our abilities but unsure of our faculties....


We Used To Make Things inability to make us sing is, fortunately, an irrelevance.   By the time they swagger off our fingers are dusty and we're really starting to rev- a step is a jump, a snigger a cackle, a head scratch an elaborate swipe of hair that was lovingly coiffured only hours before. We meet some Standon friends of Barrett- one of the idiosyncrasies of this festival is a discernible Standon community of friends and reprobates who see each other only once each year, on these pleasure addled fields.   They embrace like old friends and, in light of the fact of the fact the attendance has been increased to 4000 from 1500, make the inevitable ‘its so much bigger this year’ observations, before some wistful, rosey reminisces of the festival back in 2007 when it was just them, Alex Trenchard, Axl Rose and a one-legged dog that could tell the time and do a mean version of ‘When I’m Sixty Four.’ 


‘Bo Ningen!’ I say.

‘Am I going to like this Dave?  Or is this some East London shit?’

‘You’re going to fucking hate it Barrett.  Perfect.  Come on.’


My prediction is correct, as he twists and recoils into a terrified, wired version of himself whilst Bo Ningen slash out their beautifully invasive, at times downright terrifying, noise to an increasingly head-banging crowd.  The band look incredible- sexually ambiguous and all four doubles of her that crawled out the TV in Ring , and it’s nothing less than a  Hadrians Wall of sound with feedback levels loud enough to satisfy the most ardent of fuzz-fans.  Lead singer Taigen yelps and wails into the microphone, whilst flanking guitarists Kohhei and Yuki bob, knod and wave in tandem with the thrust of the whichever soul-bothering riff  they are launching out into this hungry Twisted Licks tent.  I’m with them, jerking and thoroughly losing myself in the scragg of their final 10 minutes whig-out, when I come to and turn to Barrett.  He is pale, wide-eyed, gripping one side of his face. He looks at me, bottom lip wobbling with a bona-fida Riverjaw.

‘Can we go Dave?’

‘I think we’d better.’

Posted In Festivals, Aug 31 2010. Words - Dave and Barrett