Leeds Festival 2009 - Mud, Mayhem, Music and Munters

Four words that come to mind - Mud, Mayhem, Music and Munters. What an experience!

Our first major camping festival experience happened this year at the Leeds Music Festival back in August. In exchange for free camping and tickets into the festival we volunteered as CATS or Campsite Assistant Team members. For the awesome price of basically nothing (200 pound deposit refunded after the festival) we received a secured camp site to set up home in, special staff only facilities and a groovy souvenir t-shirt. Our role was to basically be an extra 'presence' in the camp site and help campers with setting up their tents and with directions to stages and various facilities. The staff facilities however were definitely interesting... While we had been lured in by the promise of hot showers and clean bathrooms we soon discovered that these were in fact Port-a-loos and the most intriguing Port-a-showers. Whilst I did have a 'What have I done and how the hell am I going to survive the next 5 nights here?" moment - that was to change very quickly once I saw the facilities for the PAYING punters in the main area.

Day one - We arrived at the festival grounds, two days before the official start of the festival to set up our home for the next 6 days and get our 'shifts' as CATS. As part of the deal, you have to commit to working 3, 8 hour shifts completing the above tasks. As we found out, if you arrive early enough, you can actually score an awesome shift allocation which gives you shifts outside of all the main headline acts. Unfortunately, we got our third choice in shifts which lead us the the tough choice between Radiohead or The Kings of Leon and Faith No More...

It was only on arrival into the area that the sheer massiveness of the actual festival dawned upon us. It is indeed a temporary city rather than just a music festival with a capacity for 70, 000 punters. After orientating ourselves around the 'staff/volunteers' area and successfully negotiating a tiny, tiny remaining patch of grass for our tent, we made a group of friends and settled in for an afternoon of friendly bevies and getting to know you conversation. We soon found that there were quiet a lot of first time CATS, long time UK festival goers in our circle. Needless to say, their first hand stories of the surreal world we had now come upon left us excited and intrigued by what was to come...

Later that evening a small posse of us decided to venture into the main area and explore how the other side was to live in the punters camping areas. Whoa! In just ten minutes of crossing into the arena we saw a line of fifty festival goers in an undies only procession, I was spanked on the arse by a mystery, naked man and a group of aggressive thugs tried to pick a fight with one of our new friends - because he had the audacity to walk past them. Then came my experience of the punters toilets. Imagine attached, open air, metal stalls with metal doors. The bottom of the door and sectioning walls were about fifty centimetres from the ground and the top of the door reached to just my height. Needless to say not a lot a privacy there, especially since there weren't any designated Male or Female 'toilets' and the average male is about ten centimetres taller than me. The toilet consisted of basically a hole in a wooden bench that dropped down into a deep, dark, murky, blue tinged liquid that I do believe could have been a porthole into hell itself. One poor girl in our CAT zone actually had the joy of becoming intimately engaged with the system when she fell head first into one of the pitts. 'Poo girl' as she affectionately became known to the entire population of the festival, lost her balance after trying to grab her handbag which had fallen in. Apparently she reached in to rescue her 300 pounds cash in the bag - Tough call I guess. Personally the threat of contracting acute hepatitis and staining my arm blue indefinitely would be enough for me to wish that money adios. What was she thinking? They have paper money here! Ain't nothing cute about hepatitis! While there were port-a-loos scattered around the place, these were few and far between. One camping area however, were denied even these facilities due to their tendency to blow them up and set them on fire on the last night. A tradition we were to learn more about later.

The punters showers were housed in an open plan large marque and basically had shower heads lining the sides, fixed to a hose.

Day two at the festival (officially day minus one) brought our first shift. Luckily we got an awesomely sunny and warm day, come to think of it, the only summer day I have actually needed sunscreen. We spent the day helping out new arrivals and untangling guy ropes... So many guy ropes... We got to meet a lot of kids in our allocated CAT camp site that afternoon. Most seemed quite friendly and really appreciated our help, we even had a few invites for afternoon beers which was nice. With our aqua, council worker style vests, complete reflective strips we certainly stood out. For some reason though, it was our accents that people really picked up on and was the reason for most our discussions on shift. It was like we suddenly became the be all of Australian history and culture as we had all sorts of questions asked of us (or shouted at us) constantly. "Is it true that in Australia girls only wear ugg boots as slippers?" "What happens in Neighbours next year?" "Are you Stew's sheila?" and "Is it true that everything in your back yard can kill you in Australia?" were just some of my favourites.

The night brought another wonder around the
arena, a few drinks and a general state of
amazement a the sheer volume of campers that
were still arriving into the night. Despite the fact
that the camping spots seemed to run out hours
ago. This lack of space did lead to some interesting choices in sighting. I give you exhibit A, the photo to the right. The tents were actually pitched at a 45 degree angle.

After our dinner of over priced greasy burgers
and warm beer - we headed back out for a boogie
at the silent disco until the wee hours.

Day Three of our stay finally brought the official first day of the festival. Friday. While the day line up wasn't great - given our lack of sleep and throbbing heads we managed to hear the Prodigy and Maximo Park from our tent and we caught sets by The Courteeners, Glasvegas, Arctic Monkeys and Gossip.

Beth Ditto is such a super star. Her presence is extraordinary on the stage, she sounds great live and walks an entertaining line between a post modern punk goddess and slapstick comedic genius. My favourite Ditto moment would have to be when she became so overcome with her performance that she shoved the entire microphone in her mouth lengthwise and left it there to sing remainder of the song. Later she fell dramatically to the floor in her obscenely short dress, illustrating to the back row what the front of the crowd had been thinking for some time - Despite her appearance at the show (as below) - Beth Ditto is not a natural red head. Like a true rock star she then coughed back up the microphone in time for the next song.

Friday night brought our second CAT shift, the dreaded midnight to eight am stretch. Unfortunately, it also brought pouring rain and freezing cold... Despite literally wearing every item of clothing I had brought with me (to the point were I even considered putting on a third bra in an effort to gain that little bit more warmth) it was bitter.

Saturday was day four on our books and day two of the festival. It was also two days since my last shower so I sampled the Port-a-showers for the first time - turns out they were indeed freezing - and surprisingly even more unsanitary then I had imagined. Still despite my suspicion that I would actually be more clean if I didn't wash in the port-a-shower, I braved it.

Saturday was great we managed to see Tim Minchin, Lady Sovereign, The Crystal Method, Vampire Weekend, Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and the very unappreciated The Living End. Out of a sense of curiosity tied into the theory that this might be one of the last chances to see Radiohead live - (coupled with the fact that I might very well be minus a boyfriend currently if I didn't go,) we braved the cold and wet for a solid two hour headlining set. Radiohead were actually very good. The production was supremely professional and the sound was phenomenal. Unlike many summer festivals in Sydney,the music belted out smoothly and in perfect timing to resonate clearly throughout the arena without any quiet spots or dreaded delay/feedback issues. Radiohead also played a good mix of new and old songs and seemed to really touch all 50 000 fans in the crowd gathered to listen to their set. Unfortunately, after an hour of whingy, wha, wha uni music, I was a tad over it. So, I went to find some interesting costumes to photograph. Here are just two.

One of the great things all week was the costumes people got around in. I really wished I could have captured more on film but given the lack of showers and the huge amount of mud , by the time I got my act together with my camera, this was just about all that was left. One if the more ingenious features of the festival were the large, cheap, pop-up, op-shops that scattered the market area. Established by charities such as Oxfam, these outlets sold everything from extra blankets, fur coats, old boots and beanies to full on meringue wedding dresses and taffeta and velvet formal gear. The former which were hilariously favoured by many a young man.

Sunday was the official last day of the festival and our last CAT shift. Unfortunately, freeing up Radiohead the previous night, meant working 4pm to midnight Sunday and missing Faith no More (Although we could hear them from our area and they sounded awesome), Kings of Leon and Florence and the Machine. (Fall out boy was also headlining Sunday night, but not so disappointed about missing that one somehow... )

Sunday evening was also the night of fires... Until around Thursday night, we had no knowledge of this festival tradition - Which was basically setting fire to everything you own - and any other random stuff in a ten kilometre radius so you and your fellow party goers don't have to carry it home. Yes, I was torn by this one as well. You kind of think - fire = fun, lack of carrying heavy stuff home = ingenious. However, the grown up inside of me that I had been cleverly keeping at bay with copious amounts of (warm) cider and tetra packs of Tesco's wine (seriously) shook it's prematurely wrinkled head at the idea. There were people literally up rooting tents from the ground, guy ropes and all and throwing them on the fire. In some places the smell of burning plastic was so thick in the air you had to cover your mouth. Molten, synthetic goo covered the ground in a lot of areas as well, so that you had to be careful where you stood. Otherwise you could quite possibly, involuntarily, end up dragging along a collection of fume-high campers glued to the sticky, hot plastic stuck to your shoes. Like a length of toilet paper trailing you from a visit to the toilet, but even harder to detach and more vocal. What was also insane, was that many campers tried to counter the efforts of the fire marshals -who were trying their hardest to keep some of the fires under control: by throwing onto the fires, pressurised deodorant cans, gas canisters from camp cookers and amazingly hundreds of bottles of dry shampoo. (Empty cans of dry shampoo seemed to out number punters in several camping areas...)

So, Monday eventually rolled around signalling our time to evacuate...

With the hep of our lovely new friend Nathan, and his awesome navigational skills, we managed to by pass the massive traffic jam and arrive back safely at Leeds train station.

All in all, the CATs experience of the Leeds festival was pretty dam awesome. I would recommend any traveller in the area during summer volunteer and take advantage of a well organised scheme. Alternatively, anyone looking for a cheaper option to visit some of the worlds most famous and largest music festivals should definitely take part.

Grass - Now you see it... Now you don't...
What a difference a day makes