Introducing...Tales From a Ticket Stub

I made a resolution this year to try and write every day but I, rather predictably, managed to fail within 24 hours. So instead I decided to challenge myself to do something productive outside of work everyday. It doesn’t need to be anything massive – it can be try a new recipe, watch a new film, start a new book or simply write. I’ve stuck to it pretty well thus far and quite frankly it feels great. It sounds obvious but life just seems a little better when you aren’t just hiding under a duvet waiting for work to begin again. This challenge coincided with finding a big old bag of nostalgia when I went home for Christmas – a rather large selection of gig posters, set lists and ticket stubs. This serendipitous event gave me an idea to ensure that I had something to write about at least one day a week. I call it “Tales from a Ticket Stub”.

It’s really rather a pretentious name for something so banal. My plan is to draw a ticket from the bag once a week, I’m thinking Tuesdays, and write up what I remember about it – from the bands to the booze to the bro-downs. I’m probably going to have to leave out some of the more clandestine details because…well because quite frankly I’m a somewhat awful human being and nobody needs to hear those kind of sordid details. Mostly however this is just an idea to get me writing more often and test my memory – to be fair I’ll probably sack it off after a month.

First up out of the bag is Slam Dunk Festival 2009. 

This was back when there was just one Slam Dunk a year and several thousand teenagers that would otherwise never set foot in Leeds flocked there every May Day bank holiday. This was shortly before I headed off to university and was still firmly in my “Basingstoke state-of-mind” so it seemed like a huge adventure to go on – despite the fact it was only a few hours up the M1.

Me and my fellow ‘adventurers’ Callum, Chelsea and Claire set off early on a sunny Sunday morning for long drive full of sing-alongs and Stellas.When we finally reached Leeds we checked into our hotel, the four of us crammed into a single room obviously, dropped our gear off and headed straight to the venue. The queues were huge and if I remember rightly I made quick work of a few Fosters in the sweltering heat whilst being surrounded by overexcited teenagers. As much as I loved the music I was never a fan of the ‘scene’. Pretty much every gig I went to involved imbibing copious amounts of booze whilst pouring copious amounts of scorn onto the crowd. It was safe to say that I was a grumpy old man long before I reached thirty.

The layout of Slam Dunk has always struck me as a little bit bizarre - different stages littered about a university campus, one way systems and a main stage that can only hold a tiny portion of the people in attendance. It made it impossible to watch some bands and meant I spent a fair amount of time aimlessly wandering the corridors looking for things. Once inside though we quickly discovered that the bar was selling four pint pitchers of Fosters for just nine quid – strangely enough that’s the thing I remember in most detail.

This was a terrible decision.

First up we saw Hey Monday whilst waiting to see We The Kings…the only thing I could tell you about this band was that they had a really hot singer and they sounded a bit like Paramore.

Cassidy - Hey Monday

We The Kings eventually made it to the stage and performed a thoroughly enjoyable thirty minutes of by-the-numbers pop-punk - including a lovely cover of Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle. At some point the four of us hit the BBQ, and the cocktails, whilst watching the singer of Enter Shikari perform a DJ set to about twelve people.

Roux -Enter Shikari

After this we headed to watch Hollywood Undead, a rap-metal band who looking back were actually absolutely terrible – they had cool masks though. Their performance was what can best be described as cringe-worthy as they tried to blend their misogynistic hip-hop with post-hardcore courtesy of some of the most generic guitar riffs known to mankind.

Hollywood Undead

I caught bits and pieces of Silverstein, The Blackout and Kids in Glass Houses (including a great cover of Glassjaw’s You Think You’re Fucking John Lennon) before me and Callum stumbled into the backstage area, where we watched the football results come through and pinched a few free beers. We were just killing time until Devil Sold His Soul’s set so we caught the end of a band called Hexes who were absolutely everywhere in 2008/2009 – presumably because Daniel P. Carter off Radio 1 played bass because they were utterly shit. Devil Sold His Soul promptly appeared and tore the crowd, whipping them into a frenzy with their always epic ‘ambient post-metal’. 

Ed -DSHS

This gig was before they released their second album so it was just tracks from A Fragile Hope and Darkness Prevails. The set ended as always with Hope, which is the perfect song to end anything with. My day however was not over just yet.

I was flying solo as I made my way over to see my final band of the day – Hundred Reasons. They flew through a set that was dripping with nostalgia and was over all too soon, like most festival sets.

Hundred Reasons

I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen Hundred Reasons live but this was probably my favourite. The band seemed out of place at a festival aimed for a younger generation, a group of 30-something men with kids and beer-guts amongst a crowd of teenagers pissed on cheap lager. The band seemed to know that their time was coming to end, in fact shortly after this they went on hiatus from being a band. This reflected exactly where I felt I was in life. In a few short months I’d be heading off for university where I’d be leaving behind everything and more or less starting again – I was pretty overdramatic in my youth.  It was a bittersweet feeling though and I had a good sing-along and a few more beers before heading off to find my companions.