This Is Not A Democracy

Jasmine (next to Pete in the leggings) looks better than anyone else in this pic! Hahaha.

Joe looks like someone shrank him... and I'm glad they don't do massive, high-res pics anymore because that could be a hideous pic of me.

Lib - do you have the pics we took in the queue?

So, on Wednesday, the Week Of FOB began with Decaydance at Hammersmith Apollo. I've already covered that.

The next morning, satsuma77 shipped out at 6am to get her train home, followed an hour or two later by shiny_starlight. I got my hair dyed red and yellow, which turned out to be a pretty smart move, because hair like that is not forgotten.

Thursday evening, I caught the train to Leeds, to stay with fadefromblack. Sitting diagonally opposite me was a girl who looked like a blonde Jeanae White. This was intensely weird.

We got into the main arena at the festival just in time for Gym Class Heroes to walk off stage. Fail. The lemonade was awesome, though. We both drank a load of that. It was easily the best value thing all day. Most alarming thing all day was when a guy wearing nothing but a pair of Superman briefs accosted me as I approached a bin to throw away my condiment-soaked Subway wrapper. "Can I have that wrapper?"

"Uh... Yeah, but - "

He promptly shoved it down the front of his underwear. Presumably coating his knob in Ranch dressing. Nice.

We lay on the grass listening to Billy Talent, rather than heading down to watch them.

Oh, hai, Liberteh.


They were followed by The Used, who pointedly missed out Fall Out Boy during their, "let's hear it for all the other bands" moment. We actually found a place on the outer barrier for that, which gave us a great view and we spent some time going back and forth during that time. Ashlee was there. We could see her on the side of the stage with what looked like Andy.

We are here:

(It's closer than it looks.)

Funeral for a Friend were awesome. The best act of the day, for me. Yes, even better than Fall Out Boy. They know what they're doing with a big crowd, and they were really just... enjoyable. It was great to be able to hear the actual music, because when I saw them at Brixton the sound was so awful I couldn't tell what was being played. This time they were ace and it was really good to see them live again.

Fall Out Boy, however, had the biggest crowd of the day. People who looked like accountants were singing along to to Hum Halleluja with sheer abandon. It was surreal. We stopped by the soundbooth to say hi to Kyle, and got there just as he was walking back to the sound desk, so we headed on to the signing tent, where we talked to a couple of dads with their primary-aged sons. We couldn't quite believe we were going to reach the tent because we'd been half convinced everyone else had got there before us, but we were actually really close to the front - the queue stretched for miles, as evidenced in this video. Yes, you might see a familiar hair cut in there.

Getting up to the band was surreal. As I mentioned in my minipost while I was there, Joe's eyes are mesmerising. Even from the bottom of the ramp, all I could see was electric blue eyes and a mass of hair. He was first in the queue and I put down my signing item - a packet of Japanese 'Xo' Ramen which I personally found hilarious - saying, "I bet this is the weirdest thing you're going to sign all day!" and added, "And this is kind of an early birthday card..." And that is all I can remember. I don't know what - if anything - he said back to me. All I can remember is what I said and looking at this dude's eyes and then Marcus yelling, "MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!" as if I was trying to climb over the table or something. It could only have been about 25 seconds that I was in front of Joe at all.

Patrick looked up, as he was next, and did his, "HEY! How're you doing?!" thing I think he does at all signings, but he kind of did a double-take and a grin like he recognised us from the times we've met him before. Lib and I are generally together at shows, and almost always down the front by Joe's side, on the barrier, so I guess it's not implausible. I didn't even have time to say anything, though, really - although I like to think I probably said, "I'm fine, thanks," or at least, "Thank you" for signing my noodles.

Andy. Hah. I'm not sure whether Andy was being shy - although that was my first assumption - but he looked at my hand (I had my left hand out with the Trohttoo upward) and the noodles and I tried, "Hello! How are you?" while he just sat there, staring. After about five or ten seconds he quietly mumbled, "...I'm...fine... thank you..." and passed the noodles to Pete.

When I got to Pete, he was still holding hands with Liberty. She'd politely held out her hand for him to shake and he'd looked at it for a few seconds, and then held it with the wrong hand, resulting in a rather awkward fumbling. She detached herself and I pushed my noodles forward for him to sign, saying, "Hi, Pete". He looked at them and frowned for a second, before half-laughing, "What the hell is this, anyway?!"

"Xo - "

"Ramen!"

"..ramen. Yeah."

He laughed and grinned and signed them and said something like, "Thanks - good bye!"




Outside the tent, Lib and I were just: O_O "That was... brief." The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than about two and a half minutes. It was really weird to have just spoken to all of them and never had a chance to actually say anything. It reminded me why I don't generally bother with signings, because I just felt like I hurled my card and noodles at Joe. I hope he liked the card, either way. It was a Morrissey one.

I don't even know if any of them noticed the Trohttoo or realised it was Joe. If any of them did, though, I think it was Andy. God knows what he made of it...

On the way back out to the main stage, we caught Lost Prophets' Ian Watkins yelling at the audience. "How did you like FALL OUT BOY?!... Don't fucking 'boo' you fake cunts, I saw you all jumping!"

Kudos, sir. ;)

The last band we watched, after eating dodgy festival food, was Nine Inch Nails, who we are both into. My ex-boyfriend, Cowie, used to make me CDs of their stuff after he heard I had one of their albums... They were pretty damn impressive - but they didn't beat Fall Out Boy's crowd in any way. Even if their guitarist does thrash around as if he's on fire...

We left before the Pumpkins came on, because, to be honest, we were both knackered and I only ever liked one of their songs. And it was freezing during NIN's set.

All in all, it was a good, if pretty bizarre day and even if we were both badly affected by the blazing sun.

Fuhrealz.


The next morning we had to be on a train for Edinburgh by 10.13am. All of that will follow in the next post, but here we are, working the hoodies during NIN.



Truefuckingemo.

So. I went to see Funeral for a Friend with fadefromblack last night, at Brixton.

It would have been awesome - great company, meeting up with JJ afterward, nice kids in the crowd, incredibly funny ideas for thnksfrthknkrs - but the sound in that venue was CLASS-A SHIT.

Bearing in mind I have weird pitch deafness in one ear, I couldn't hear anything that was going. I had to depend on the crowd singing over the horrendous distortion to work out what they were playing. Especially when we moved to the side to get out of the moshpit and the sound was no longer stereo. Then some knobhead jumped up in the air and swung his elbow down on the landing and smacked me straight in the chest.

Fucking ow.

I hope the sound's better in Chicago.

Oh. And we still don't know anything about our tickets, or whether we're getting some kind of backstage passes. Or, indeed, whether I can get my tattoo while I'm out there.

Good stuff:

Bought travel insurance for £30;

Random clearing out of attic resulted in the acquisition of a BRAND NEW zip-up brown sports jacket that fits perfectly, left by an unknown prior resident;

Am completely on top of my work at the office - because I TURBO TYPE when I'm allowed to work with my music on;

Getting my hair cut on Wednesday, even though I love it, it needs trimming;

Re-uploaded the previously corrupted file of Cemetery Drive and thus listened to it for the first time in months (it's my favourite MCR song);

Made much-texted plans with the eternally lovely fadefromblack to go to Leeds for the Fall Out Boy day (Friday) in August and stay in town for a couple of days;

Seeing Fall Out Boy on 2 April;

Seeing fadefromblack at Fall Out Boy gig;

Co-ordinating a prank on those tight-trousered bitches;

Finished associated t-shirt of awesome;

Going on holiday to Vancouver with gaelic_angel THIS SATURDAY;

Meeting up with CJ and hopefully Rachel Rachael and Jess in Canada.

♥

Now: back to the vampire emokids.