Anyway, we had a lazy start to day two after the inevitable late night on Saturday. We really got going with another visit to the Comedy Tent, after a brief stay at the back of the second stage to see the Noisettes (and give my mate the "chilled at the back" view of festivals rather than my preferred "get to the front".)
Comedy Tent
Now another thing I love about festivals is the early bit where one just comes across acts you have never heard of. And one of those was in the comedy tent. After a rather indifferent black comic (who did have one quite good story about wanking at the age of 12 which involved a cat, a dog and his grandma and that makes it sound so much worse than it was I will just leave it there), we got a comic from Enfield (which is just up the road from me) called Hal Crittenden, and he was just stunningly brilliant. Terrific material and he handled one heckler just so well ("That's what you get from leaving school at 16"). One of my favourites was telling us how he had done a benefit gig to a group of soldiers just back from Aghanistan who had been through it all, bombings, amputations, etc. And one of the soldiers, who had been through all that, came up to him afterwards and said, "You know, I could never do what you do" "And the comic was touched, and replied "Well, you just have to grow a pair mate!"
God Tent
We happened to see in passing the God Tent. Now quite who would have thought having this amongst all the sunglass sellers and the like was a good idea I don't know. Some trendy vicar I guess who felt the young needed to be reached. Come in, chill out, the slogan said. Well chilling might have been easy given it must have been the emptiest spot on the whole site, but then who on Earth is going to want to talk to some christians in matching t-shirts having forked out £140 to see the great music acts of the day? Well no one is of course the answer. But I suppose it gave a few geeks a day out meeting cool kids. Or rather watching them pass by on the way to the latrines. Well nature calls even if God doesn't.
Mummers
With a bit of a gap to our next target, Hard-Fi, we just slumped into the Undercover tent and watched the Mummers, an act I hadn't heard of at all, and obviously no one else had either as the place was empty. (Ok, not as empty as the God Tent, but all things are comparative). But they were quite pleasant to chill out to on the grass. Imagine a string quartet being forced to play rock at gunpoint, with Bjork as lead singer. Well that was about them.
Hard-Fi
And then the best thing ever to come out of Staines (ok, not exactly a horde of competition there), Hard-Fi, a late addition to the bill, promoting their new album. Well, without wishing to sound pompously Guardian reader about them, they are (maybe along with the Enemy) just about the most authentic sound of working class youth you can get. They just feel right. Say much more than some community worker from Peckham about the condition of being young and underpaid. Not earnest, just honest. Storming renditions of "Cash Machine" and "Living for the Weekend" and the tent within minutes had gone from empty to a heaving mass of surging youngsters. Again, wonderful atmosphere, and again to my surprise, my dance-loving companion really loved an indie set. Hope for the lad yet.
Then on to the Arena which is the very far side of the site (preventing us doubling up on Eliza Doolittle and Hard-fi which looked feasible on paper according to the timetable, but just wouldn't work in practice. Like so much of life really). We caught a little bit of the Saturdays from the back of a packed "tent" (heaven knows how they get this huge thing up but it would take more than a few boy scouts), but really intended to see Hurts. Great 80s style electronic band (see earlier blog entry for their Somerset House appearance), but again they went down really well with the pair of us. My mate commented how much better they were live (perceptive boy - indeed what I said in previous blog on the Hurts). There is a nice repressed power in their music, which just bursts out every now and then like a controlled explosion.
Refreshed by burgers we headed back into the Arena for Big Audio Dynamite, of whom I have heard nothing for years. Can't say that impressed, and nor was the rather small audience. They seemed ridiculously high up the bill to me. But they were conveniently sited for escape to the main course, Pendulum. Now they were my young associate's main target and bang on his tastes.
Pendulum
An interesting clash here, Pendulum on second stage and Rihanna on the main. As my friend so rightly said, all the girls at Rhianna, all the boys with us at Pendulum. Great laddish atmosphere, including a mad cup and bottle-throwing war in the middle (don't worry cups are paper and bottles plastic and harmless, just a mad sight to behold this mass cross flight of empty drinks containers). Pendulum are an awesome band, accompanied by an awesome light show and tremendous boisterous audience. Our pitch front left was just about perfect, lively crowd without the seriously mental stuff going on in the middle. As my mate was playing rugby for his school last year, I reckoned this bit of moshing was well within his comfort zone. Well I was okay with it and I'm a little middle-aged bloke.
As I remarked to him afterwards, Pendulum aren't an act with one big number and such is their music the art isn't in building the set (as it is with many bands, let's say mixing slow and upbeat numbers), their art is in building within the individual tracks. Its really heavy storming stuff with numerous crescendos. You can actually use the term exciting. I love them on cd, and love them live too. As I say, storming stuff, and so we left on a high. Albeit disappointingly, given curfew imposed by his parents, we had to miss the headliners, and given a choice of Calvin Harris, Eminem and Primal Scream, frankly all of which would have been right up the lad's street, that was a great pity. Nevertheless he seemed to enjoy the experience. A good 16th birthday present I thought, and even if rather more expensive than most, from my point of view, well worth it for his company. Most gifts are only about giving - I got something out of it too. Result!
So, my promised musings on the young. First, best bit of advice following on my previous comments, spend a weekend with a 15 year old, especially not your own. Now before anyone randomly starts hauling kids off the streets (there is probably a law against it), it does help if you are picky, especially to go to a music festival with. The one I picked has great music taste and knowledge, so I have lots of recommended re-mixes I need to follow up, if I can remember them all. Although I did find myself explaining who Blur were. Yes, you have to remember he is 15. And Blur's bass player is now more famous for making cheese than being rivals to Oasis. So I grant you the young man isn't exactly a common or garden run of the mill teenager. He is that annoying kid at school who was top of the class academically and sporty as well (plays football for Uxbridge FC - I may have to actually pay to see him play in future) and is really cool. All of which could be extremely irritating, but he is immensely genial and likeble too. I wouldn't like to be competing with him for girls, but luckily I have missed that problem by 30 years! I expected we would be compromising on what to see, but we weren't at all. I let him have free reign (well it was his birthday present) but safe in the knowledge it would be ok, and in fact it was excellent. Class kid. Well, young man really
But here is my general point. Much was said, well usually hollered, during the riots that we don't listen to the youth (usually pronounced "yoof"), but certainly I do, whether it be my young companion or my trainees. But its because they are worth listening to. They are articulate. Give them a chance. Over the weekend, in addition to music and football we chatted about some bigger things too. Trust me the lad is far more mature than most of my contemporaries, and in that I think he was representing the views of his contempories rather than just himself. They are far more grown up about race and sexuality and drugs than most people in their forties. There is such a thing as the arrogance of middle-age, as well as of youth. Try talking to one, not as an authority figure. They are really nice. (I say this not just having spent a weekend with a 15 year old but also having just completed 6 months with my trainee who as a young married woman would no doubt be mortified at being put in the same bed (metaphorically speaking) with a teenage lad, but they are both much closer in age to each other than to me.)
They are not strident or arrogant, but charming and fun and sensible. And they don't need to holler that no one is listening to them. Because they are articulate and have something to say, people will do. Sorry, the rioters out on the street will never be listened to, because they have nothing worthwhile to say, or if they do, are too inarticulate to express it. And we don't, Mr Miliband, need a public enquiry to understand what went wrong. Maybe he would like to fund an enqury himself as to how the Opposition ended up with such a clueless, vacuous waste of space as their leader. Somewhat harder to fathom than why yougsters with little prospects went out robbing when they thought they could get away with it..
The other nice thing about spending time with kids and not their parents is you don't get any of the hassle (ok I am talking from the experience of having done this twice this summer which some of you may feel is a little short of a full scientific study). But they are so much better behaved as there is no battle. They aren't being told off because there is nothing to be told off for. They don't act up, because they don't have anyone to act up against. They don't show off because there is no one to impress in front of. And the older ones frankly you can learn from. Ok for me its new music which I admit may not be everyone's taste. And I don't have a problem with them using urban slang (after all, can you imagine how much pensions jargon I use?) and while I think it is unlikely that "Peng" is going to enter my vocabulary, you never know. But I like to be able to understand teens without feeling I need to speak (or dress) like them (which is just embarrassing when you see it being done.) and without feeling they have to dumb down for me. And we just need to lighten up a little about them. All my younger friends (from early 30s down (and on one of the pics below you can see my young mate doing it) are always on their phones and this we old folks consider rude. Well not really, its just modern manners. If I am not sufficiently entertaining to captivate their attention every second of the time, why shouldn't they text? Or speak in an updated language. Why shouldn't we learn that? And if you talk to them like adults (which as I am not used to talking to kids I largely have to do ), rather astonishingly they talk back to you and behave rather like adults, but with some more fun thrown in. So all I would say (following David Cameron's now rather forgotten "Hug a hoodie" campaign") is spend a relaxing day or two with a teen. You'll feel better for it.
(I am not sure my friends' lad would necessarily think the same in reverse about spending time with a middle-aged pension lawyer, but I think he survived the experience pretty well. I did my best anyway. Didn't talk once about pensions. Honest.)
Oh and one final thought. Are they realy employing serial killers on security now? You really feel this guy's main problem is getting the gore out of his beard when he has finished eating a crowd-surfer. Hear the banjo playing in the background?
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