Carling Weekend Leeds 2001

By the time I'd completed my second year at Leicester, I'd been writing for and editing the music section of the Ripple for about three months. My interest in music was ballooning week by week, giving me something to get excited about in amongst all the medieval literature and critical theory. In hindsight I was using it to build a personality, which was why I defended the music that I liked so fiercely. 

I was also aware that I'd led an incredibly sheltered life - even at university I worried about money and doing the right thing, even though nobody really cared whether I got essays in on time. My housemates had experienced all-nighters and classic gigs (Laurence, still a friend, had seen the seminal Nirvana Reading show), whereas I'd seen Take That and a guy I knew called Mike play a homecoming gig at The Wharf, Walsall. So I recall saying to Rob, the Ripple editor, that if he heard of anybody wanting a festival reviewed, give me a shout.

I didn't expect it to happen, but Rob actually did steer somebody my way: a pub chain called It's A Scream, who were setting up a program for student journalists to cover the Carling Weekend in Leeds' Roundhay Park. It was an unbelieveably generous offer - all travel, accommodation and food paid for, in exchange for a brief mention in any review we did in our publication and a 200 word gig review on site.

Needless to say, I bit their hand off, went and had a blast (although spent the weekend mooning over a blonde from a London college who already had a boyfriend), knocked off a five minute review of Eminem's headline set and spent the rest of it drinking and mooching around the backstage area. A more confident me would have made contacts but I didn't have it in me - it was enough to do it on my own as it was. I came back home, in strong sunshine, and slept for four hours in a hammock in the back garden. It was ace. Then a month later, we got sent a disc of photos from various sets, as well as a file of informal headshots which were taken of all the writers that were on the program. The fact that I was the only one missing convinced me that I had looked so monstrously ugly that they couldn't bear to commit the photos to media.

This was the review which followed - me and my co-editor did a kind of prince/pauper thing as he had camped at the very same festival - and it's pretty bollocks. I simply couldn't write very well and it's incredibly amateur, but little bits glint in the light.

A scary postscript to this is the fact the in-house publication that It's A Scream put together was delayed until well after the start of the academic year. Why? Because its cover feature was a travel article on New York and they used the World Trade Centre to advertise it. The whole thing was pulled and republished, but by that time the world had changed, irrevocably for the worse.

I’d always thought that Leeds was the lesser of the two Carling Weekend festivals. After all, Reading had been going for over two decades and it wasn’t until recently that another venue had been added to the bill. So when It’s A Scream - Home of the Yellow Card, offered me the chance to go and check out the full journalistic experience for the Ripple, I thought it’d be a chance to put aside all my preconceptions and decide for myself if it was worth going to.

Of course, it doesn’t matter where you go, because the same bands were playing. On Friday, I checked out System Of A Down and Queens Of The Stone Age, but you never really concentrate when you arrive because there’s so much to look at and so many people to meet. Both were solid if uninspiring performances, with QOTSA augmenting their lineup with Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan, adding some great slide guitar to their laid back rock.

For me, there was a dearth of bands that I wanted to see, so I retreated back to my journalistic base in the guest area, The Temple, to chill out before the evening’s big draw, Eminem. Sufficiently buoyed (and beered) up, I made my way in the dark past all the fifteen year old Papa Roach and Marilyn Manson fans, plus the legend “Twiggy Ramirez is God” on one of the hoardings, and took up position for Mr.Mathers and his posse of Detroit rappers.

At the start of his set, Eminem was too bogged down with D12 to be anything worth talking about. However, once he launched into a diatribe against his ex-wife, and the full details of his arrest, things really started to come alive; D12 left the stage and Em played most of his hits, including Stan and The Way I Am. When he left the stage to take a breather, we were all treated to a cartoon called ‘The Slim Shady Show’, which involved him and his crew giving the characters from South Park a sex drug and laxatives, and was really just an excuse to diss people not included in his songs, like Leonardo DiCaprio.

As he retook the stage, flanked by two inflatable hands with raised middle fingers, you knew he was THE showman of the entire weekend.Geeing the crowd up, he finally requested that D12 be allowed to retake the stage, and they launched into a blistering version of Purple Pills, during which a giant pill danced around the stage, while purple glitter rained down on a tired and chilly audience. It was a shame that a lot of his songs were cut short, and that he didn’t play 'My Name Is' and 'The Real Slim Shady'. I was happy with his performance, but the crowd were left feeling disappointed.

On Saturday, there was a massive air of expectation around the site. The reason? It was the day The Strokes came to town, of course. Having been moved to the Main Stage so all who wanted to see them could, they came on as the sun was going down, between Eels and Iggy Pop. Despite the set being short, there was the impression that they could have played the worst set of their lives and the crowd would have sat up and begged for more. Julian Casablancas seemed to be going though the motions while the band behind him rocked out, but there was one surefire way he used to get the crowd onside: ‘Next up is Iggy Pop to come and blow us off the stage’, which met with widespread derision.

After meandering through all the stalls selling tofu and henna tattooing, I checked out Greenday, who made the weekend of three lucky punters by inviting them onstage to play the band’s instruments. It was all going well until the makeshift drummer tried a drum fill, messed it up and confused the other two! I don’t suppose you’d get Feeder setting fire to their drum kit either...

After the extremely crowded Ash gig (as good that weekend as they were at our Uni in May), I trolled back to the guest area, where there was a party in full swing. In all, 48 bands came into The Temple that weekend, and most of them that night. One moment I’m chatting to Robbie G from perennial Ripple faves King Adora (we come from the same hometown, I found out), the next I’m sharing a beer or shooting pool with the guys from Mercury Rev. This was my defining moment of the festival, I mean, this was my first festival, and I’m chilling out with all these bands! It was great fun.

It was inevitable that Sunday would be a bit of an anticlimax after that, so I stayed away from the music stages and went to the comedy tent, to check out some new talent. I can’t say that I found any, but I recommmend Geordie comedian Ross Noble if he comes to Leicester. It was more entertaining to watch the hecklers try to get onto the stage at some points though. In case you were wondering, they didn’t have a chance!

Sunday for me had the best bill though, and this was illustrated by blinding sets from both Supergrass and Fun Lovin’ Criminals. Huey’s appreciation for the crowd extended to his statement “I hope y’all get laid tonight.” He must have enjoyed himself more than I thought...

For the second time that weekend there was a feeling in the air as the Manic Street Preachers prepared to go on stage.There were rumours it was their last gig; would it be? At 9:30 that evening a clock appeared on the giant screens, chiming down the hours.Ominous? Not a bit of it. Karl Marx appeared and proclaimed the Manics as his favourite band. The stripped down set started with 'You Love Us' and didn’t slow down for a second, even when new single 'Let Robeson Sing' was aired. It was a more than fitting end to a great weekend.

Even though I didn’t camp at the festival, I was extremely tired at the end of the whole proceedings. The intentions of most people to see every band  possible goes by the wayside as they attempt to get some rest before the bands they really want to see come on. Festivals are strange places because there’s always something to see and do. Leeds is a great festival, and even though my circumstances that weekend were a damn sight better than a lot of people’s, the atmosphere was really friendly and any festivalgoer won’t go away disappointed. If my story sounds a little far fetched, it really is the truth. If this little insight into my Carling Weekend 2001 doesn’t make anyone want to become a) a musician or b)a music journalist for the Ripple, they’ve obviously set their standards too high. Absolutely blinding.