"What I Did This Weekend" or End of the Road 2008: Fridays are Fine

I should begin this by noting that my esteemed colleague from Sugar and Noise (and award winning young poet) has begun his write up of End of the Road festival and his will probably be loads better than mine because he's pretty good at That Writing Business. Click "Thirty Three Forever" in that list of links at the side and enjoy his view on things.

--

I've always been suspicious of music festivals. At most of them [even my beloved, local Summer Sundae] there are ten terrible bands for every one kinda-good one, the people are awful ["No, I'M more drunk right now. Anyway let's go and see the Klaxons"] and the places are worse [Mud! Mud! Massive Amounts Of Advertising! More Mud!]. But End of the Road is more than a little different. I'm fine to use up as many negative adjectives as I want in this paragraph because I'm not going to get much of a chance to for the rest of the article...

Me and the other half of Leicester's favourite interracial indie-fan duo, my good friend Ashish, arrived at the End of the Road site in fairly low spirits. We'd been up since 5am, we'd been on a series of slow, warm coaches and for some reason we'd had to go through the center of London. We'd just missed the first shuttle bus from Salisbury to the festival so we'd had to wait for most of an hour and then on they were we passed a caravan on fire in the middle of nowhere. A bad omen, if ever I saw one.

But you know what the first thing you see as you head onto the End of the Road site is? A series of big pink letters on top of the box office saying "HEY! HO! LET'S GO!". Right on. Some friendly steward complimented by band t-shirt as we got wristband'd and from there on it was almost all up. We set up tents quickly [with the aid of my internet aquaintance Laurence] and decided to eat instead of watching Laura Marling. Not that I dislike her [um. Except for that "I think he thinks it makes me weak" one which is dire. But her most recent single was pretty good!] but we were hungry and I figured there'd be pleanty of average-to-good acoustic singer/songwriters performing at any given moment from now until the end of time really. Whereas handmade oragnic pizza would only be here this weekend!

I'm not quite sure where the evening went but the only music I remember seeing properly was Robyn Hitchock and Conor Oberst. One of these was weird and funny and very enjoyable and the other was more difficult. I really didn't know what to expect with Robyn, I've heard one or two things by him before and liked them. I was kinda hoping his full Venus 3 band would be with him because that'd really be something [look it up, mighty fine backing band that occasionally includes Sean Christopher Nelson doing backup vocals. More on him some other time perhaps, but in short he is (in every sense of the phrase) one of my favourite voices in US independant music].
It was just Mr Hytchock and an acoustic guitar for the most part but the songs were great. Baffling, but great. Richard once told me he didn't like The Shins that much because James Mercer's imagery was "a bit all over the place" and I'd say that applies times ten to Robyn, and I like it (I like The Shins too of course). There was a particularly charming number performed with two female vocalists about how babies behaviour leads to their sexual preferences in later life. After it had ended Robyn declared "This is folk music!". Then there was something about how all babies are really Jesus. As I said: Baffling. And how often do you get properly baffled in a pleasant way in music? Not often enough.

Conor on the other hand... Oh I don't know. There were some good songs in there; I Don't Wanna Die In A Hospital and Soulded Out!!! were fun and performed well but so much of the set felt flat. The long, boring blues number and cliche "rrrock and rrroll" songs by other members of "The Mystic Valley Band", Conor trying to be funny and just coming off as a collosal asshole ["Hi, we're The Decemberists! Haha! Woo!". I wish, Mr Oberst, I wish] and otherwise behaving like an 8 year old playing at rock star.
The last few songs of his set were made immeasurably more enjoyable by two girls near me who found a space in the crowd and had themselves a spectacularly energetic emo/country dance off, followed by interpretive actions for all the lyrics to [the very dull] "Milk Thistle". Those of us nearby were applauding them more than Conor by the end of it. Good work, girls, whoever and wherever you are [and whatever you were on].

After this I finally managed to meet up with Richard and together we took in a few minutes of Akron/Family [I liked that one loud, rhythmic one they did with all the shouting! Oh and again. Not so much this time. Now I'm bored. The End.] and then tried to see David Thomas Broughton but soon gave up because the sound was so terrible. For a few moments though, I really could see why Plan B goes on about him. His voice and the things he does with loops and samples are pretty incredible and pretty pretty.

So Friday was alright. It was to be bettered by the days that followed but it showed promise. And that pizza was really good.

[More of this tomorrow, obviously. Oh Sweeping the Nation also has their End of the Road coverage up so read that too, they're brilliant]