Performing at The Cornbury Festival

I put down my pen for long enough to head to the Cornbury Music Festival to perform as part of David Ford's band (that's me, far left): The weather was as fine as our spirits were until we arrived to find that the people who were running the festival were either officious, clueless or, as was often the case, both. Therefore we found ourselves with nowhere to camp, no-where to leave our gear, and with no-one from the festival seeming to give half a shit. If we had said we were going home, they would barely have cared. Indeed, it was a festival where the artists seemed to be little more than an inconvenience to those who were running it. It was truly a woefully-organised event. Still, we eventually managed to get someone to make the effort to find us some space to camp amongst the great unwashed, and we had a great time in spite of the fact that absolutely everything was made difficult for us (even the act of travelling from one place to the next was made harder by the fact that we were stopped at every turn by a steward who had no idea what he was doing. It was farcical).

Ford’s gig was a triumph though and my la la la-ing was note-perfect. Or maybe it was not perfect. Whatevs, I had fun. Afterwards we helped ourselves to the free grub and proceeded to avoid almost every other band’s shows (except The Proclaimers and Echo and The Bunnymen), in favour of drinking grog and dancing like twats to bad music. We decided not to stay for the Sunday and instead got the fuck out of there. It was a horrible festival, filled with middle-class 30-somethings and their spoilt kids who believe The Lighthouse Family to be the height of musical genius. It was a festival where the music was almost incidental and there was no-one who wasn’t white to be seen. Awful. Still, at least Ford got a great reception, even if it was from Middle-England.