Wet

Wet #

23 August 1998

It rained heavily overnight, and it was still raining when the scousers early-morning chorus woke us up. We didn’t feel like venturing out, so spent the entire morning chatting and playing word games. You know the classic parlour game Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? Well, we played that, but found that it was severely limiting, as you could only pick non-abstract nouns. So we extended the game to Animal, Mineral, Vegetable, Conceptual. I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. This simple amendment allowed us to “be” such interesting things as:

  • Schrodinger’s Cat
  • Love
  • Eternity
  • Smell
  • Haste

The game continued for the rest of the weekend. Coincidentally, the game of “bollocks” also took an unexpected twist on Sunday morning, when the following exchange took place:

Tent 1: “Bollocks!”

Tent 2: “Bollocks!”

Tent 3: “I’m getting bored of shouting ‘bollocks’ now, can’t we move on to something else?”

Tent 4: “How about ‘pollocks’?”

Tent 5: “I quite like ‘rollocks’!”

Tent 6: “I think we should try ‘mollusc’!”

See, even the simplest games can have variants.

The rain abated somewhat by 1pm, so we donned a black bin-bag each and headed out to catch the end of the ever-wacky ​Whale​, followed by the dreary and somewhat arrogant ​Marion​. I can’t believe I bought their debut LP.

Chumbawamba are a great live act, and the music is pretty damn good too. I find some of their politics rather dodgy, but still enjoyed watching them. However, they were about to be upstaged by the one and only ​Iggy Pop​. I never realised how many Iggy songs I knew, or how much fun he is live - another great showman.

Over to the NME stage again to sit through the rather tedious Montrose Avenue and ​Gomez​, before Saint Etienne appeared to brighten up the cloudy skies. I always feel happy to be English when I hear Sarah Cracknell.

Catatonia were one of the weekend’s highlights, which is more than can be said for ​The Verve​ - Emperor’s new clothes or what?! I may as well have sat at home listening to some CDs and turning my bedroom lights on and off. We got so bored we left after 40 minutes and went to catch the last half of ​James Brown​’s set instead.

Overall, then, it was good fun, but more through having a laugh with some mates and laughing at other people than due to the wonderful bands. I had more fun discovering that the donut stand didn’t sell donuts, or spotting somebody with a Kierkegaard football top than through the more orthodox entertainments.