V Awesome

So yeah, V Festival. Other than making a slight fool of myself by falling over while walking across the floor sheets right in the middle of everyone in front of the main stage during the morning (before any acts came on, I might add) and not being able to get a T-Shirt of the occasion, the experience was well and truly awesome. I know some of you may scoff at my music tastes, others may agree. This is not important to me.

Starting on the Saturday, we managed to get free beer and burgers thanks to my forward planning and finding out about the Virgin Mobile Union Tent, and thus enjoyed our freebies while enjoying the sound of The Hoosiers. What we didn’t realise at the time was that we were missing a band called 606 on the Channel 4 stage at the time. Why would we be so bothered about an unknown band, you may ask? It later transpired that 606 was actually a fake name for the Foo Fighters to play a secret acoustic set. Grr.

Still, we didn’t find this out until I got back yesterday, so next we trotted down to the Channel 4 stage later that afternoon and saw The Fray, and then went to see Kanye perform. I will admit, he wasn’t on my list of priorites, but the girls in our group did. And to be honest, I’m glad I did. I rather enjoyed his set, especially when he dropped in a bit of The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, at which point I definitely perked up. And yes, I admit I did rather laugh at the irony when a bit of Winehouse’s Rehab was also dropped into the set. Pink followed Kanye, and she too was pretty awesome, especially when she had a slight dig at Britney. (“Tired of being compared/to damn Britney Spears/She’s fucking crazy…“)

But then the two best moments of the first day followed. Snow Patrol played an absolutely awesome set. I already quite liked them, but they really were something else. Playing what I thought was just about all their awesome songs, they really were brilliant. And the rendition of Run they played was probably the best I’ve ever seen or am likely to see. I am so glad I didn’t miss this one. Then the Foos. And they truly cemented their place in my mind as my favourite band. Opening with Everlong, heading straight into Monkey Wrench with Learn to Fly not long after, they played an absolute blinder. As my first live show I’ve seen of them, they exceeded my expectations and more – and their new stuff, including The Pretender, that they played also seems fan-foo-tastic. I am throughly looking forward to the new album.

Day Two was also very impressive. Starting a little earlier, mainly as most of the guys phones were running low on battery (the negative point of them owning SPVs: they use them far too much) we spent a fair amount of time around the Virgin Mobile Tent. But then the girls went to see Mika while I went for an unsuccessful T-Shirt hunt. Well, I say unsuccessful, I managed to get a different sort of T-Shirt, but not as good. After that, we headed to where we would be spending most of the rest of our time for that day over by the main stage again, beginning with The Fratellis. Altough I wasn’t in a prime position for their set, they were again another brilliant band to see live. And yes, the V Stage was absolutely packed, I would hazard to say they could have easily been higher up the bill than the position they had.

After a short break (we decided against seeing James) we returned in time for Kasabian and The Killers. Again, wow. If Saturdays performances were the best musically, the Sundays absolutely had the best stage shows. Kasbian really know how to play a live gig. And they impressed no end, really getting into it and playing some absolutely awesome tunes. As for The Killers, well I’m not the best fan of their music – although I do kinda like a fair few of their tracks – but their stage show was fantastically impressive. Lights, shiny things, video screens – they had the works, and to be fair, really impressed me, rounding off an absolutely fantastic weekend. By the end of the weekend, I was soaked through, caked in mud, exhausted and my feet were soaked in alcohol…

But damnit, I had an awesome time.