Well that’s the weekends festival festivities over for another year and I have to say that I could quite easily spend every day worshipping at the altar of rock and roll. It certainly beats real life.

We set off on Friday after lunch and arrived at 4ish, having lugged the camping stuff for miles around the streets of Angouleme, having had to park the car flippin’ miles away. A testing starter, to be followed even more shockingly with a queue for the camp site and then when we got in there the further horror of trying to find a place for our two tents amongst the hundreds of tents already in there which were literally millimetres from one another. Matt, who leaves his comfort zone only under extreme duress, looked as if he was going to have some kind of breakdown and may have done just that had the 2 second tent not lived up to it’s name to literally spring out of thin air - when we eventually managed to find a remaining tent sized space which wasn’t on a 1:50 gradient. The people we went with, Robin and Adi, took longer dealing with theirs, working as they were with a more traditional stick based set-up but I was allowed to go off to watch Archie Bronson who were on at 5pm. Just as I’d reached the stage their set finished…..
Most of that day was spent sitting at a table next to the bar with Kevin and Moraig, (Kevin’s feet were hurting!), drinking iced cider and beer. Robin and Adi had disappeared and it transpired had gone into Angouleme so that Adi could find stronger liquor to drink.
Anyway as always with these things it livened up when dusk fell and the bands were less French. The Brian Jonestown Massacre were fantastic but for me the highlight of the night came with The Raconteurs who in parts almost managed to attain the heights of Spinal Tap with some of their lyrics. I’ve completely fallen in love with Jack White who has to be charisma incarnate. Well he was for me anyway.
At 1.30am we headed back for the tent when the stage was set for Justice (a French dance band - in a Techno not a Glen Miller type way) – lots of lights and amps stacked to the skies etc etc, Alfie and his mates dancing away etc etc….. We did try to dance but it just wasn’t happening- some things we’ll always be too old for. That 2 second tent was just too much of a lure and although it wasn’t too bad we seemed to have so much stuff in it by the end of the night that there was little room to lie in. The sleeping mats weren’t quite as luxurious as they might have first appeared either. Still I don’t think you can beat going to sleep on a thumping bassline and despite not having the best night’s sleep in the world, due to not only the hardness of the ground but also to a general rowdiness of people singing etc I enjoyed myself. Matt ( what happened to my confort zone) wasn’t so enamoured and upon waking the next day at 8.30am with the searing sun, declared that he wasn’t doing that again ever and was that night going to find a hotel instead.
If anyone actually cares if he did or not …oh the suspence….then you’ll have to read the blog tomorrow night as there’s the whole of Saturday to write about – which some might say was more interesting.
The trap is set …….
Here’s a video of The Raconteurs. Sadly it isn’t them at our concert ( which I thought was better) but it’ll do. I stupidly didn’t take the camera.