Tag Archives: Kandi Klub

Graduation

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They had let her out on the morning of her graduation. Two years, four months, and five days after entering isolation and six months after widespread adoption of the vaccine. They’d lied about almost everything on the program including how long they needed her for. April hung on to the only things that she still believed were true: her blood had saved her friend and would vaccinate the globe. She’d spent most of her life isolated and now she was connected to almost everyone through millions on millions of injections of something synthesised from inside her.

She felt awkward and out of place in the Great Hall. It was the first set of ceremonies to be conducted back in the Wills Memorial since 2019, more than a decade ago, the first time that everyone felt safe converging in such numbers in a confined space. They had arranged a gown for her and let her change at the hospital before a taxi had picked her up to drive her into town. She had kept it from her parents, there would be time to call them later and she hadn’t wanted them to come straight away. She couldn’t really explain it but she’d completed her studies shut away, it was hers and hers alone and she wanted to keep them separate from her memories of her time in Bristol.

In the cab on the way over she had dropped a text to Aps, just a jokey thing commenting on the weather: beautiful day for a graduation. She knew they’d all had their ceremonies already as the scientists (even the pseudo ones like Leah) had been earlier in the week; she’d listened to them all chat about it on one of their regular video calls and been bombarded with photos afterwards, the usual shots of mortar boards thrown into the air, friends arm in arm, laughing families.

There was a shot of Aps that she loved, eyes glowing, facing down the camera with a broad smile. There was no trace of the shattered and wrecked girl that she’d seen in the HDU, no vestige of the months and months of rehabilitation she’d worked through, rebuilding her body, processing what had happened. They had clung to each other for the last two years, speaking every day, working through their memories of their shared experiences and talking about what they were facing now. April would read to her in the first few weeks of her recovery, dialling her up on video, and voicing over whatever she was studying. Later, as Aps got better, she took over the lead on their conversations and April was grateful for that; there were only so many ways to describe her day when every day was basically the same in isolation.

The pictures of Leah and Cora also brought her joy. Leah had grown her hair out, falling down across her shoulders. It was how she wore her hair growing up, she said, when they’d first moved to Italy. Her parents had flown over for her graduation and there were several shots of her and her dad pulling faces at the camera before a final one of the two of them, his arm across her shoulders, him looking at her with a quiet pride. Cora was mostly alone in her pictures but looked content and comfortable in herself. April knew she’d met someone in the last few months, they were taking it slow but it was making her happy. Cora had confided in her the day of her ceremony. She’d hesitated a little as she’d said that she would always love Rob but that she thought that it was finally time to move on.

April took a seat towards the back of the hall which was beginning to fill up. Everyone else gravitated towards the front, filling the rows with the best view. She didn’t mind. She didn’t really know anyone, they’d tried dialling her in on seminars but it had never properly worked trying to keep up with the flow of discussion in the room. They had usually forgotten she was there, a disembodied face on a propped up tablet. Towards the end she’d managed with just viewing the lectures and picking up one to one conversations with her tutor. She had hoped to meet him but couldn’t pick him out in the sea of faces and she felt still too uncertain to try and mingle in the crowd. It was only after she sat down that she realised how overwhelming it all was, like she was undergoing some sort of social bends, coming back up into a large group of people too quickly after so long on her own.

She took a deep breath and stood up. This was too much. She turned to leave.

In the doorway were three women. They weren’t wearing gowns and looked slightly breathless, flush in the cheeks, as if they’d just run up the gothic stairs on their way to the hall. One of them saw her and pointed. And then they were all running, all four, them to April and April to them. She felt arms around her for the first time in two years. They stayed like that for a long time.

“Why are you crying?” said Leah, finally. “You got a first.”

“Yeah,” agreed Cora. “It’s us that should be in tears. We didn’t have to study on our own for our degree and you still did better than us. I think the University’s a bit embarrassed about it to be honest, you’ve made them look bad.”

“They’ll spin it as evidence of the effectiveness of their distance learning programs,” said Leah. “And, I don’t know how to break this to you Cora but we are all kind of crying.”

“What are you doing here?” said April. “How did you know?”

“Really?” said Aps. “You think we wouldn’t figure out your cryptic little text. Absolutely classic April, can’t just come out with it and ask us to come.”

“I never was very good at asking people for help. Ask my therapist.”

“Which one?” said Leah. April laughed.

“Hey, now you’ve graduated you could be April’s new therapist,” said Aps.

“I really don’t think that’s going to work,” said April.

“You could be my lifetime study,” said Leah. “Don’t rule it out. I’ve already worked out our first session. Tonight. Classics night at the Kandi. Classics with an x, obviously, you haven’t missed that much. Indie dance therapy. I’m going to get it peer reviewed, imagine it will be bigger than CBT.”

“I never really got on with CBT,” said April. “But screaming Nirvana songs in your face under a strobe light I think I can get on board with.”

Cora gestured towards the front of the hall where some members of faculty and local dignitaries were taking their place on a stage underneath the building’s dome. Someone tapped a microphone and the four of them squeezed into seats on the back row, Cora and Leah flanking April and Aps in the middle.

Aps held April’s hand until her friend’s name was read out. She gave it a squeeze and let go and they all watched her walk to the front to receive her honours.

Alone but not lonely.

Kiss and no tell

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I woke up and I could hear a shower running next door. I knew I was in his room, in his bed, kind of naked in his bed. None of that was a surprise. I hadn’t been so out of it that I didn’t remember, it just took me a bit of time to piece it back together. I tried to see if my clothes were in reach or if I was going to have to risk ducking out from under the duvet before he reappeared from the shower. I couldn’t see them.

So, last night. From the top. We’d met as planned at the Kandi Klub and as promised the girls had left us alone to talk. I had occasionally caught a glimpse of Leah pulling faces at me over his shoulder but nothing that he would see. He’d seemed a bit more sure of himself than usual which I’d hoped was him finally relaxing around me, the whole shy-nervous-sweet thing was starting to wear thin. I thought there was some chemistry but I didn’t usually like to really judge until I’d kissed someone. Someone said that was a bit shallow but I never thought so; I wasn’t judging him, I was judging us, together, whether or not we were going to be a thing. Okay, I was probably judging him a bit. I’m a spectacular kisser.

He’d had a couple of drinks already and I topped him up. He wasn’t drunk but he was definitely looser, it was the first time we’d danced together. Or, you know, sort of awkwardly facing each other in amongst our circle of friends who were also dancing. I don’t think you can dance together in an indie club anyway. It wasn’t even the sort of place that stuck a slow one on at the end. The DJ usually faded the lights up to Daydream Believer so the most you might manage is holding hands, lifting them in to the air, and swaying in a mass singalong. Anyway, we danced. After a while I beckoned him off the floor, gestured that we should get another drink.

I was probably a bit buzzy from the couple of beers I’d had and the dancing. As we walked toward the bar I’d grabbed his hand, met with no resistance, and guided him off to a table back under the stairs that led down from the entrance. I sat him down and he looked, momentarily, a bit startled, like he’d sobered up very quickly and remembered that he was Mr shy-nervous-sweet. I didn’t really want him to remember that, it was no good for my purposes, and so I leaned in and started to kiss him. He tasted faintly of beer but I assumed I did too so that was okay. I’d closed my eyes so I couldn’t see if we’d managed to banish the unsure guy between us but from the movement of his lips, the push back from his tongue, I was pretty sure we had.

I don’t remember that much about the taxi, other than it was unusual to get one. Most nights me and the girls would walk back home, grab something to eat on the way. He’d suggested it straight after I’d suggested that maybe I should go back to his. I thought I should spare him running the gauntlet with my housemates and, to be honest, I sort of preferred it this way round. It meant I could leave when I wanted to, either that night if our flickering chemistry didn’t catch light, or the next morning. Assuming I could find my clothes.

I remember how it started. I’d asked for the tour, before his housemates got back, and stopped him in his room. I kissed him again and asked if he minded if I stayed over. From that point on I kind of led him through it, unbuttoning his jeans, slipping my shirt off over my head, guiding his hands to my hips. After that it wasn’t so elegant, both of us fumbling at our remaining clothes, removing everything and doing that thing where you’re both sneaking a look but both racing for the security of the duvet at the same time. As I reached to kiss him again I must have caught him with the edge of my MedLet, enough for a short intake of breath, so I whispered an apology and took it off, put it on a table by the bed.

And that was it. Last night, from the top. I’ve missed a bit out obviously but, sad to report, it was quite a short bit in the end. Sweet but short. I don’t want to sound mean but the sex took less time than it took him to get the condom on. I wondered if we’d talk for a bit and he’d be one who might come back around for another go but he fell asleep almost instantly. I toyed with the idea of leaving then but I wasn’t sure if I could find everything in the dark without waking him and I didn’t want to have a conversation about wanting a main course but just getting a starter. I guess I do sound mean. I’ll dress up his performance for the girls though, I’m not that mean.

The shower stopped running and I listened to the sounds of him doing whatever it is that boy’s do in the bathroom. No toilet flushing, thankfully. He came back in, fully clothed, rubbing at his damp hair with a towel. He seemed to clock that I was a bit uncomfortable and picked up my clothes, which I now saw folded in a pile on a chair by the bathroom, and passed them to me. It was weird that all my bravado from last night was as easily undone by the thought of him picking up and folding my knickers away.

He left me to get dressed. I said I’d call him.

Heart of gold

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Blame it on Bobby Gillespie. Blame it on the Scream team and Andrew Weatherall. Blame it on the Stones and acid house if you want to go back to the source. It didn’t really matter where you placed it but, afterwards, April knew exactly when they all came around. The precise moment that this one off tourist visit to an old indie disco moved from an exercise in humouring their friend to an essential, no the essential, part of their week. They wanted to get loaded. They wanted to have a good time.

They’d been in the club for about an hour before the DJ cued it up. April knew it instantly, the sleazy drawl of ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’, Primal Scream flirting with Exile era Stones before the full blown affair they’d have later. She knew what would happen as well. She knew the DJ would mix into Loaded during the breakdown, line up the horns across the two tracks, fade out the rock and roll and… wait for it, the drop into those skittering, circular drums once Weatherall had chewed up the original track and spat it back out as a floor filling, killing masterpiece. There was a reason songs had hooks and she knew they were hooked from the grins, from the telepathic agreement to move to the dance floor, exerting its own inevitable gravitational pull now, and she knew from the way Leah leaned in and shouted in her ear: I thought you said it was miserable music you can dance to. She wanted to tell her that was true but there was joyous, mindless, switch-your-brain off, don’t think it, don’t fight it, feel it stuff too. She just nodded her head and raised both hands in the air, span in a circle.

It became their escape. Each week, once they were past the health screen on the door, they descended the steps down into the old boat, moored up, set fast in the harbour, and it felt like stepping out of real life for a while. April liked to disappear into the fog of dry ice close to the stage, dancing on her own to the early songs – the miserable stuff as the others called it – whilst her friends squeezed round a table drinking beers, shouting across at each other over the noise. April would float between their table, swigging at an offered bottle, and back to the floor depending on what songs were playing. Within a few weeks the others knew when it was best to leave her to dance: Freakscene, Add It Up, Velvet Roof, You Got It. Any of those they just sat back and watched her spin and hop, face submerged under her black, cascading hair. Later on when the happy stuff started they all joined her.

They’d never had any trouble before. There had been some pretty low key attention, a few yelled conversations while dancing from some boys they’d gotten used to seeing there every week. Everyone tried to respect the distances you were supposed to keep now; it was kind of accepted it was harder in a club but that was why they had the room limit and the checks on the door. There was one guy that the others were convinced was interested in Aps; they’d catch him looking over or nervously skirting around their space while they danced but all it took to send him scuttling away was for one of them to beckon him over or catch his eye. Leah had taken to winking at him, an over the top, entirely unserious piece of salaciousness. He would always run a mile. Cora wasn’t sure but she thought that maybe Aps wanted them to leave him alone so she could start a conversation more naturally. But it wasn’t going to happen. This was always going to be their night and no-one else was really invited.

There was just that one time that the bubble burst, that reality crashed in. Leah had clocked them when they came in, three guys that immediately hit the bar, loud enough to be heard over the PA. They looked like they’d be drinking for a while, all in suits, ties removed. She didn’t know what the door policy was but the club sold itself as a broad church; she figured it would have been odd to turn them away just for looking too straight, too regular.

It was Cora that had wanted another drink. She signalled to the woman behind the bar  and shouted for a beer when she leaned over to serve her. One of the guys, pin stripe, white shirt, top three buttons undone, moved up the bar and leant in to her shoulder. “Let me get that for you.”

Cora stepped away, holding her hands up to try to indicate both that she was okay and that she didn’t want him in her space. She smiled, warily, and said: “No. Thanks. I’m good.”

He moved up the bar, stopping just short of her, and tried again. “Come on, I’m just trying to be friendly. Let me buy you a drink.”

Cora was about to step away again when she became aware that his friends, the other two, had moved behind her during the exchange. She felt boxed in. One of them touched her back, leaning in to her ear to tell her that his friend was a good guy, give him a break. She felt small and exposed, started silently weighing the distance from the bar to the toilets. The guy offering her a drink took another step, smiled, and ran his hand across her shoulder, pulled her in next to him. “I’m Adam. Pleased to meet you.” Cora tensed and moved to duck away but felt his grip tighten, heard the three of them laughing.

And then April hit him.

Everyone had a slightly different version of it later. The way April told it she had heard the music change to Pulp’s ‘Babies’ and wondered where Cora was. It was the tune guaranteed to get her on the floor. The four of them would shout ‘my god’ in unison with Jarvis at the end of the song and then shuffle away in their own approximations of his louche moves. She’d spotted her trapped at the bar and decided to shoot first, ask questions later. She hadn’t hit him that hard but her fingers were covered in so many rings that she’d left a small imprint of a skull in his cheek. The way Leah told it she’d heard the yells after the first punch landed, saw April clawing Cora away, and had run across to join them. In the confusion she’d kneed one of the others in the balls. The way Aps told it she had just been about to start talking to her shy admirer when all hell had broken loose at the bar, he’d slunk away, and she’d arrived just in time to join in the stage where security was separating them all. The men were asked to leave.

Later, when it was calmer, it hit the point where the DJ played out the happier stuff. They all knew the Primal Scream mix up by now and they all stood up to dance.

It was the part of the night where all their accounts matched: the four of them, arms linked, in a circle, singing to each other: you’ve got a heart of gold, you can’t be bought or sold, you’ve got a heart of gold, baby.

 

Some Kandi talking

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“Who’s this again?” Cora was lying back on the sofa, watching the reflected sunlight from April’s Medlet dart across the ceiling. The music was a dark, droning dirge filling the room. It felt like sinking into the warm honeyed embrace of every one night stand she’d ever had; seductive, noisy, edgy, maybe not that healthy but the kind of mistake you knew you were going to make again anyway. After Rob she’d made a few mistakes.

“It’s The Jesus & Mary Chain,” said April. “Happy When It Rains.”

Cora turned her hands in front of her face, moving them in slow circles in a gentle nod to April’s default dance move. “Another one of those songs? And, happy when it rains, really? Is that, like, your theme song?”

April leant down over Cora, her face looming closer and closer until it blocked out the rest of the room. She stopped about an inch from Cora’s face. “Embrace the darkness, my friend, embrace the darkness.” They both smiled. “Is that my mascara by the way?”

“Well, you have so much I figured you wouldn’t notice…,” replied Cora.

When the others arrived home a couple of hours later they were still in the lounge, Cora now sitting up cross legged, April sat on the floor in front of her, head back in her lap. Cora had braided a few strands of her hair, interlacing them with purple ribbon. April’s eyes were closed and she was softly mouthing the words to a song none of the others knew. I’m not like them, I can pretend.

“Well look at you two,” said Leah.

“April’s been educating me on all the miserable music that we were lucky enough to miss in the late 80s. Now I know why our parents fucked us up so badly,” laughed Cora.

“It’s miserable music you can dance to,” protested April, opening her eyes. “Not this one so much but all the other stuff. And you’re more than capable of being a fuck up on your own without blaming your parents.” Cora poked her tongue out in response.

“Is this Nirvana?” said Aps. She’d come in behind Leah, laden with shopping bags. “That guy that shot himself. You know, the one on the tee-shirt.”

“I’m sure that’s just how he’d like to be remembered,” said April. “Yes, it’s Nirvana. Kurt Cobain is your man. Icon of alienation and isolation.” She flicked off the music streaming on her phone, thumbs flying as she searched for something. She held up a picture of him, blonde hair falling round his face framing blue eyes, a pensive frown.

“He sounds more like he’s your man to be honest,” said Cora. “I like ’em a little sunnier. He’s hot though, I’ll give you that.”

Aps snatched up the phone to look more closely at the picture before rummaging back through one of the bags she’d carried in. She fished out a flyer which she passed over to April as she handed back the phone. “I knew I’d seen him today. I picked this up for you, April, thought it looked like your sort of thing. They were giving them out in the Union.”

The flyer was postcard sized and filled with a picture montage of bands April recognised. Pixies, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, Stone Roses, Sisters, Mudhoney, Violent Femmes, Cure, Cult, Pulp, Oasis, Blur, the Stones, the Beatles. Kurt’s face was lost in there somewhere, the same shot that had appeared first on her phone. She had seen him today. Emblazoned across the top it read: Kandi Klub presents Club George. Down the bottom were details of the venue: The Thekla, Saturday nights, room limit 100. She shook her hair loose from Cora’s fingers and stood up. “We have to go. Seriously, we have to go to this.”

Cora, curious, plucked the flyer from her and examined it. “You sure they stick to that room limit? Someone told me about The Thekla. It’s that club on a boat, down in the harbour.”

“They have to stick to it,” said Aps. “They’d be shut down within a week if they mess around with that. They’ll have checks going in as well.”

“Come on Cora, it’ll be fun,” said Leah. “I mean, we won’t know any of the music but you can just pretend we’re partying in April’s head for a few hours.”

“So there’ll be dry ice and a strobe?” said Cora looking at April.

“You better believe it,” she replied.

 

 

……

This one is part of the overall set of stories about April and crew but as they’re in Bristol, even in the near future, it seemed only right to send them to the Kandi Klub. I don’t think it exists any more but perhaps someone will pick it up again one day.

RIP DJ George and thanks for the memories.

The weirdness flows between us

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32. Freak Scene – Dinosaur Jr.

We showed off to each other back then. Goofing around, throwing ridiculous shapes on the dance floor, conjuring ludicrous puns that, over time, became impenetrable in-jokes, and just enjoying each other. Not, you know, in that way. Okay, sometimes in that way, but mostly it was entirely rated PG stuff; occasional moments of mild peril and sexual references. As Supergrass would later put it: we were young, we were free, we kept our teeth nice and clean. It’s unsurprising that my self penned follow up – I am middle aged, I have responsibilities, I have ground my teeth down to such an extent that I displaced my jaw – has never troubled the charts.

We were 16, going on 17, and weren’t skipping around a summer house in Austria on the brink of war trying to impress a young Nazi boy. But we were interested in the sound of music (boom, and indeed, tish). Specifically we were all starting to share a love of what you might generally term indie music; some gravitating from an earlier goth phase, others from heavy metal (an odd mix of US hair metal and New Wave Of British Heavy Metal), and some feeling the benefit of older siblings passing down people like The Smiths. Irrespective of how we got there we all arrived at a place where a shared love of Nirvana, Pixies, Muses, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, and a host of others became something that both defined us and soundtracked our late teens and early 20s.

We, of course, was me and my friends. A small but perfectly formed gang; smart, funny, at ease with each other, if not always with ourselves. I’m probably romanticising it across the years. I’m sure there were times we had terribly dull conversations and just sat around fretting about our A levels but that’s not how I remember it. In my head now it was all either hilarious, wise cracking bon mots or very earnest, deep discussion about matters of great import. We knew we weren’t the cool kids but convinced ourselves that, because we knew that, it actually made us the cool kids anyway. We were cool because we weren’t cool but we knew it. Make sense ? Not really but it did at the time. Looking back I think we were pretty cool. If I was 16 again I would want to be friends with us.

And I would want to spend my nights at the Kandi Klub. I imagine that every major city in the UK, around the late 80s and early 90s, had its own version of the Kandi Klub: what might loosely be described as an indie rock nightclub. Somewhere for the people who felt a bit out of place everywhere else to go and feel slightly less out of place together. Later in my life I frequented Rock City in Nottingham and Sector 5 in Leicester but the Kandi Klub in Bristol was the place I called home. It was our weekly stage (literally so if it was being held in the Thekla) and where we played out our friendship.

History hasn’t recorded what anyone else thought of those kids that turned up every week and spent their time alternating between dancing very seriously – shuffling feet, head down nodding, fringes falling over eyes – and then appearing to take the piss out of it all – the star jumps, the hands on hips head shaking, the watusi. If it had I’d like to think it would mention how much fun they were having. Was it fun in that slightly self absorbed way that only teenagers can really pull off ? Yeah it was but we were slightly self absorbed teenagers so…

There’s a long, long list of songs that I associate with those regular trips to the Kandi, whether it was ensconced at The Studio or The Bierkeller or The Thekla, but the one that was guaranteed to get me on to the slightly sticky dancefloor was “Freak Scene”. It was probably one of those songs that used to get slipped in fairly early in the night, before DJ George got into the bigger “hits” from people like Nirvana and The Wonderstuff. There were a bunch of songs that occupied that part of the night that I latched on to and still love: stuff like the Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up”, Buffalo Tom’s “Velvet Roof”, Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing”, Pulp’s “Babies”, and probably a couple of Mudhoney tracks. As it was still early the dancefloor might be empty, or virtually empty, but we’d bounce out there regardless and throw ourselves into that aforementioned head down shuffle of a dance.

For the three and a half minutes of “Freak Scene” everything would fall away. There was the song, the sensation of moving, and that was it. Or almost it. I was self conscious enough, I expect, to be aware of the fact that I was dancing and always enjoyed the odd mixture of doing something that felt quite private in a public place* – it was effectively an outward expression of my internal relationship with the song. If you’d seen it you might, mistakenly, have seen it as a tall, spotty kid wearing a black tee shirt dotted with pieces of washing powder visibly picked out, shining, under the blue neon lights rather ponderously swishing his hair around. It wasn’t that. It was an outward expression of my internal relationship with the song. I admit some of that outward expression required that I slowly step from side to side and possibly clasp my hands behind my back. Don’t judge me.

You need places that feel like they’re yours when you’re that age, hovering uncertainly between being a child and an adult. Places and people. Territory that’s yours, where you’re free to work out who you might be. The Kandi Klub was part of my territory and if I had the chance to do it all again I’d be back there in a heartbeat with exactly the same people: my friends.

 

*this will be the only thing I did that “felt quite private in a public place” that I ‘fess up to here…

Underneath a thousand blankets, just to find a place

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18. Dream All Day – The Posies                                                                                        1996

The legendary 1996 Reading Festival… Legendary for me, that is. Not particularly for anyone else I suspect – nothing special about the line up, nothing remarkable happened (beyond, maybe, the shambolic demise of the Stone Roses)… and yet. And yet it remains frozen in my  memory as one of my favourite weekends and, in hindsight, seemed to mark an important transition in my life. I hesitate to say that it drew a direct line between adolescence and adulthood but it does feel a little that way. I was 24 at the time; something of a late developer.

Don’t misunderstand. This is not, probably, going to turn into a lachrymose lament to my lost youth – I haven’t forgotten the mud, the hassle, the people, the hangovers, the Supernaturals, the puking, the dizziness, the traffic, the piss, the toilets and all the rest of it – but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that missed it. For a variety of reasons music has progressively become a less communal experience for me as I’ve gotten older. There was always a balance between the private, listening on my own at home, and the shared, out at a club or, as in this case, a festival. The balance has steadily tipped towards the private over the years and I regret that I’ve let that happen as there’s a whole range of things music can do beyond helping you sit around feeling sorry for yourself…

Surfing various other blogs I came across a brilliant event / idea that some people run down in Devon. The blog’s called Devon Record Club and the basic premise is that they get together on a regular basis, each bringing along a record, and they listen to ’em, discuss, and share their thoughts via the blog. Not complicated, bit like a book club. Bet it’s a lot of fun. Exactly the sort of thing that I, and friends, used to do informally – it was just a natural part of our lives to sit around and talk about why “Verdi Cries” by 10,000 Maniacs should always be in any top 5 best records list… So, if you’re in the Bucks area or fancy doing something virtually – must be a way for that work – then drop me a comment below…

Back at that festival there were inauspicious beginnings in 1996. I was working in Nottingham at the time and didn’t have a car which meant a meandering train journey through the midlands in the rain. Changing trains at a rain sodden Coventry station was just the thing to evoke the festival spirit; “sent to Coventry” indeed. Connection. The train to Reading picked its way down the country, the skies opened and it poured. I was listening to a compilation of old Kandi Klub (my old club haunt in Bristol) favourites during the journey, watching the rain splatter incessantly against the window, and thinking of old flames. Or, in some cases, old flickers. In the movie-of-my-life playing in my head (more of a straight to DVD cult classic than blockbuster success) this made me feel romantically nostalgic, melancholy, deep and imbued with the soul of a poet. To the untrained eye I may have appeared as a mildly sulky young man in need of a hair cut.

On arrival the rain stopped but the break in the weather was short lived and by the time I’d reached the festival site it was pelting down again and the ground had turned to mush. At this point the local Holiday Inn probably looked strangely alluring… Avoiding its charms I met up with I. and R. and we shuffled away to our tent, joining the slow procession past purveyors of, variously, bootleg tee-shirts, posters, beer and drugs. Perhaps it was the weather, or perhaps it was just experience, but the sense of anticipation from previous festivals (we must have been veterans of at least 10 by this point) was conspicuously absent this time out. It all felt almost routine. Fortunately that feeling didn’t last.

Friday. In the morning we trekked into Reading to buy provisions and a water proof coat. Weather noticeably improved after I’d spent £30 on said coat; I should have stuck with the strategically torn bin liner. Managed a quick pint in a pub on the way back and I guess that started it all off as we proceeded to drink for the rest of the day which obviously meant that we got drunk. Really drunk. I should mention bands that we saw that day but none of any note spring to mind. For much of the weekend the bands played a secondary part to our drunken letting down of hair, which is perhaps how it should have always been.

It’s not possible to try and recount a daily version of events from here on in. I doubt I could have recounted it later in 1996, let alone in 2013. Things passed too hazily, too drunkenly. The only constant was booze, each day building on the last to the, frankly, ridiculous events of the Sunday when I think we may have kicked off with vodka at breakfast. I don’t really know what it was about this year that was different to previous festivals in terms of drinking. We’d always had a drink before but we’d never really gone all out and just relentlessly gotten hammered.

Through the fog of time and alcohol there are still memories that loom large. They won’t make any sense – I think the point was that they weren’t supposed to – but they loom large. From beating each other about the arse with some discarded pipe lagging, to the straw fight by the main stage whilst The Posies were playing, to waiting for Billy Bragg in a torrential downpour… just small details that will mean very little if you weren’t there but never fail to raise a wry smile if you were. And then, of course, there was the lemon. At some juncture – may even have been as late as the Sunday (when the wheels really fell off) – someone found the aforementioned fruit. Nothing unusual in that. However, for reasons that even at the time made little sense, we decided to worship it for the rest of the day. Worship quite actively. Largely this involved chanting “lemon” a lot, passing it round to be fondled and kissed, and occasionally encouraging other people to temporarily join our little cult. That’s cult. Journeying round the site we proceeded in single file, usually running, with the leader holding the lemon aloft and the rest of us trailing in its wake; shouting our mantra in a bizarre call and response.

I think it was also the first time I was particular aware that I was getting older – that there was another generation coming up behind. Obviously now it happens all the time (usually in terrible circumstances – 22 year old newly qualified doctor having to check your prostate, that kind of thing). We ended up sat round our camp fire one night with a load of people from neighbouring tents who were all a good few years younger than us – I think they were 16 and 17 as I’m sure we had an astonished conversation about sitting with people born in 1980. They, in turn, were equally astonished that we’d been “lucky” enough to witness Ned’s Atomic Dustbin first hand: in their pomp no less. We were 24ish at the time and incredulous that anyone at a festival couldn’t have been born in the 70s…

Somewhere amid the drink, lemons, lagging, rain and sheer glee of it all, some bands played. Instead of appearing front and centre in my memory they seem to just provide the soundtrack – it was maybe the only festival I’ve been to where seeing the bands wasn’t the main reason for being there. I remember seeing Catatonia – I think Cerys came on stage wearing a big pair of boxing gloves – as we spent much of that day singing “You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For“, apropos of nothing. Otherwise ? The Roses headlined and were awful: lifeless, leaden and topped off by Ian Brown’s atonal apology of a voice. Experience the horror for yourself here if you’re curious. This should have been a massive disappointment as we were (are) all huge fans but, at the time, I think we just found it funny. Black Grape and The Prodigy were the other day’s headliners – the former were good fun, the latter were touting a set that was heard at pretty much every festival in Europe for three years. Beyond that, and the previously mentioned Billy Bragg and The Posies, I’m struggling. Looking at who played I could guess that we would have seen Rage Against The Machine, Drugstore, Super Furry Animals, Ash, The Wedding Present… but I have no memory of any of them. Did I get drunk because the line up was so poor or can’t I remember the line up because I got so drunk ?

Here it is, anyway, for posterity:

reading96

For me the weekend acted as some sort of pressure valve – releasing the pent up stress of a transitory period in my life. The friends that I had in Nottingham were leaving and I had long been looking for a way to move down to London – it took me another 18 months or so but I eventually made it. I’d left University a couple of years prior to this but I think this was the weekend that drew a line under that phase of my life before I moved on to the next – a last outpouring of childish glee before settling in to the serious business of careers and houses and relationships and being a grown up.

So The Posies make the list. Not particularly because I think it’s a great song – it’s a decent slab of power pop but there’s lots of stuff in that genre that I’d ordinarily pick ahead of this (for starters I’d have to dig out the short lived, under appreciated Silver Sun). It’s here simply because I can’t hear it without being back in a field, jumping around, chucking straw (only down due to the mud) at my friends having pretty much as much fun as it’s humanly possible to have.

Anyone up for a 20th anniversary reunion in 2016 ?