V Festival Day Two

Oh my god, these post-anything-anything blogs take so darn long...Ugh...

Anyway, hello! To keep this as quick as possible, I'll just say if miraculously you simply stumbled across this blog without reading previous inserts, that this is the 2nd part of the tale of the music festival I went to this past weekend. Enjoy?

The traffic getting in was as uneventful as always, and we got their at eleven, instead of, ridiculously, ten in the morning the previous day. They let us in early, and it wasn't too crowded. Most of the campers were too hung-over to get out of their tents that morning, lucky for everyone else. We still had half an hour to use up, so we went off again to look at some of the stalls. We'd promised my sister a present, which was quite difficult when she doesn't like music at all...But, we did somehow find a small blue elephant model, and a dog finger puppet, after a long time spent looking.

We got to the main stage for twelve. Bjorn Again was the first act on the main stage. They're an awful ABBA tribute act, in case you don't know. My mom thought we should go see them "for a giggle", despite me making quite clear they'd almost certainly be something better and/or more reputable playing somewhere around the festival. They started twenty minutes late, though it gave me time to send texts into the festival's screen system and allow one ofn them o actually get through! They finally opened with Waterloo. That's the only song by them I knew, other than the keyboard line of the 2nd song.

Fortunately we only watched three songs by them before heading over to the 2nd stage. Our schedules had been miss-printed for that stage and we were trying to see if there would be anywhere that said so. There wasn't, unsurprisingly, though I thought paying another 20 pounds just to see what time five or six people were playing. Though, at that tine, The King Blues were on! I only know one song, which I have a sort of love-hate relationship with. The fact that I can't simply place them in one genre--My musical filing cabinet, of sorts--Annoys me no end.

We went to watch the act in the "Up and coming bands" tent after that. They were a strange hard rock act, but they seemed alright. We stayed for one song then went around the shops, yet again. We went to the official merchandise tent, in particular, and I came out with a blue and red t-shirt with "Virgin festival" on the front and a list of all the bands playing on the back, and a black Snow Patrol shirt, identical to the cover of A Hundred Thousand Suns cover. And my mom got a red mug with "V Fest" written across sideways. Not exactly an example of fine artistry or fashion in either cases, but good nonetheless.

At that point we got back to the main stage for Ocean Colour Scene. We were sat on the right of the stage for the first time, sitting down. I was told we couldn't go into the mosh pit until it cooled down, though considering most people around us were smoking/drinking/making out/all of the above, it wasn't a very pleasant place to be. I bought a an ice cream with a flake in(far superior to all American ice creams) while the band closed with The Day We Caught The Train, which is the one song by them I really like.

Presumably a large majority of people are simply skimming this, and if so, you must read this paragraph. We were walking to the 2nd stage when we heard booing and shouting start to come from the crowd, and I turned around to look at the screens by the stage. I saw them mention something about Snow Patrol, and I moved forward to get a closer look. The screens were flashing slowly between two messages

"We regret to inform you that Oasis have pulled out from headlining due to sickness"

"Snow Patrol will now be headlining The V Stage"

Understandably, this would annoy a lot of people. This show was to be the last show of their tour of Dig Out Your Soul, and by the the looks of things, the last show for quite a long time indeed. But "due to sickness"? Yeah, right. If, say, any other band there had pulled out due to sickness, people would be disappointed but at least they'd believe it. When Oasis pulls out, people just assume it's "Oasis being Oasis". People thought it was one of two things; Noel and Liam having another argument(They're brothers. They hate each other. They fight. Using Twitter. For crying out loud.), or simply just them being over-payed, lazy...ugh, you get my point. They'd played near their home town the night before, and went to a soccer game that afternoon too. They sound like they're practically at their death-beds. You may not like playing here Oasis, but for the record; Chelmsford>>>>>>>>>Manchester.

After this we did randomly stumble across one of my mom's old friends who didn't live too far away. We talked for a while--Nothing too interesting. We wondered over to the 2nd stage. The Proclaimerswere ending at this point. We sat down a way away from the stage and texted a few people about the big, unfortunate news. We only really stayed there for 500 Miles. They probably ended with that.

We walked through one of the smaller tents. A strange sort of shoe-shine band in white masks were playing. Personally better than the previous band, but still not that amazing. With no one of particular interest on, we went to watch an extended-set of James Morisson on the main stage, from a huge distance away. I only recognised Wonderful World out of the songs I heard. When I was, like, ten years old that was my favorite song. I thought the lyrics were sort of pretty. In the time passed, I hadn't found out that he'd become a lot of peoples' guilty pleasure, though that seemed fairly obvious now.

After him they played a gap in order to accommodate new Gallagher-related issues and we continued to text people, wander around the smaller tents, and eat. We got back to the main stage for about four. We made it a little way into the crowd for the next band; Biffy Clyro. My mom didn't seem too impressed, in typical parental style. Three pale, bearded, shirtless, tattooed Scottish blokes; What's not to enjoy? Though, you could hardly hear the singing over the trash of guitar, but I think that's the point when it comes to music such as that. We watched three or four songs--Including 57, my favorite--Before moving on.

For the thousandth time, we headed back to the second stage for Athlete. I only heard two songs; One I didn't know, and their best by a mile; Wires. I didn't know they were that popular, but hey, for music like that, they were remarkably good live.

Unfortunately, they were just ending then. We moved a way back, got some smoothies, and waited for the next act. Wait for it...Katy Perry. One or two of you may recall me in a moment rambling chaos describing Waking Up In Vegas as "too generic, even for music like that", or something along those lines. Over the past couple of months that--And Hot N Cold--did grow on me a fair bit. I've recently discovered that she is among a long list of my guilty pleasures. So, yes, we did end up watching her a bit. She's quite good live, jumping between giant flamingos and strawberries.Though we did go after Waking Up.



We headed back to the main stage yet again for James. James who, you might well be thinking yes? I very strange, rock-y pop-y I don't know what-y band I don't like too much, simply called James. I don't quite see the appeal. It's your normal set up, other than a flowery backdrop, an Andy Parsons-lookalike singer who seems to imitate Ian Curtis' dancing style, and a guy in a dress playing tambourines and trumpets. At first I thought that was a gimmick(Amy Winehouse came to play with The Specials the day before, so I was expecting something similar), but no, female clothing or otherwise, he is apparently doing that at every show. What a job, eh? We only sat through a three or four songs. If everything previous wasn't enough, they ended with the singer sucking in some helium from a floral balloon, singing the chorus of Wonderwall, and then walking off with a mysteriously-appearing six or seven year old blonde boy in his arms. Odd.


We'd got to the third or forth row, somehow, for Elbow. The sun was setting now, and thinking about it, that was the perfect them for them. Sooo pretty(<3).Snow Patrol. This slot was essentially schedule chaos. Snow patrol here, Keane on the second stage, and MGMT on the third! We were planning to move between them a bit, but considering we were close to the front and weren't stuck behind Hagrid this night, we decided to stay. Oh my god, was it worth it! They are incredible live. In fact, competing with the Killers from that standpoint. They opened with If There's A Rocket Tie Me To It, I believe that's their most recent single, to a strobe-lighted show, with Gary running, jumping, rocking out, all that good stuff...They also played Crack the Shutters, Run(Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU_DAbCrpzg), Chasing Cars, Open Your Eyes, Shut Your Eyes, Make This Go On forever, Set The Fire To The Third Bar, Take Back The Cities, among others I've forgotten.


Few people were expecting an encore here. But, sure enough, they came back on, for the first part just Gary with an accoustic guitar, saying "This one's for Oasis" to a background of displeased Oasis fans(The few that remained!). But they changed their minds once they heard the opening guitar of WONDERWALL! That was amazing, too, and they followed it up with Champagne Supernova(Considering they'd never played it before, it was really good!), which of course got everyone singing, before ending with my favorite, You're All I Have <3<3<3<3 In simple terms, I LOVE SNOW PATROL!!

We went through the usual bedlam trying to get out, of course, and that was that. For a year, at least.

Sorry it took me so long to get this out to you guys, but Ill be faster next time. Comment, CBOx, you know it all...Hope you enjoyed it.