I’d craftily managed to blag two free tickets to Derby’s Bloodstock festival claiming to own an active metal blog entitled Snap-Your-Neck. The blog I emailed co-director Adam Gregory consisted of a mish mash of previous work I had written, collectively containing no continuity or real relevance to a Bloodstock audience. Luckily for me, I have prior experience in the field of blogging, and so making the page appear convincing wasn’t too much trouble, and a busy man who has a festival to organise will generally be inclined to judge a book by its cover. The week went by slowly until Thursday eventually managed to show its demonic face. We knew we wouldn’t be able to get there in time for the festivals warm up bands because of office hours, but thought we could get all the bollocks out of the way like setting up the tent and hopefully receiving our free guest passes, just to avoid any unnecessary stress. Simon, a fellow photographer and metal enthusiast who claimed the plus one, picked me at about half six. I’d prepared 5 compilation CD’s of Bloodstock bands, some of whom Simon wasn’t familiar with, so I dropped him in at the deep end and played “Last Rites” by “Morbid Angel”. Specialising in fantasy, progressive and fucking viking metal, Morbid’s atonal stylings took Simon by surprise.
“Ere geez, I don’t really listen to much death metal to be honest, but I must confess, this is already
growing on me. Bring on Morbid Angel”
On our journey from Manchester to Derby, we listened to Exodus, Triptykon, Napalm Death, Kreator, Rhapsody of Fire, Lawnmower Deth, Coroner, Wolf and a few others; generally just main stage bands to get the juices flowing.
We arrived! Our first job was to actually get in, which was a little bit worrying considering how easy it was to get on the guest list in the first place. With the correspondence email tucked into the inside pocket of my denim jacket, the necessary proof of free tickets was ready to enforce upon those in charge. I found the man with the credentials.
“Alright mate, we’re on the guest list, snap-your-neck plus one”
“Ok, let me have a look ………………..”
He nonchalantly flicked through his guest list pages, knowing he was in full control of the situation. He’d gone through the same pages a few times now, I started to fear for the worse, then he finally opened his mouth and said:
“Snap – Your – Neck plus one.”
“Have you found it mate?” I responded.
“Nope …. not yet.”
I started to panic and so unleashed the legally binding bomb inside my coat.
“I’ve got an email here man, off Adam Gregory.”
His eyes lit up at the sheer mention of a Gregory, I suddenly envisioned him praying to a tacky homemade shrine of the metal family, before whacking himself off.
“Oh right” he responded in a high pitched Warhammer voice; this guy was a bit of a twat. “Let me have a look at that. Yeeessss ………. And where exactly does it say yes?”
“Well it doesn’t actually say yes, it just says it’s all sorted, look, just there” I said nervously pointing towards the evidence.
“Ahhhhhh, I see” he pondered the situation carefully before painstakingly agreeing with me. “Well ok, here you go, just place this on the dashboard of your car and follow instructions towards the car park.”
“…………………………………….ok…………………, nice one mate.”
There was a good reason why we weren’t on that guest list, and that’s because I never asked to be on it, or even brought it up in conversation. I thought it would be a tad too cheeky to ask for free parking as well as free tickets, considering it was only £15 for the full weekend after all. Ha-ha, Snap-Your-Neck 1, Bloodstock 0.
Now to find the real guest list box office.
“Alright mate, where do you go for the guest list?” I asked someone wearing a yellow t-shirt.
“Straight down that way” he responded.
We were walking for what seemed like forever, then the path ran out and we were suddenly in a forest. Something seemed a little bit strange, but we saw someone walking towards us from somewhere else, which confirmed there was light at the end of the tunnel. We eventually arrived at the right place but there was something wrong with the generator, so there actually wasn’t any light at the end of the tunnel.
“Hiya, I’m on the guest list.”
“Ok, what’s your name please?”
“There it is, Snap-Your-Neck plus one.”
“Ok, here are your passes.”
Well that was a lot easier than expected, Snap-Your-Neck 2, Bloodstock 0. Now for the photo pass though. The emails were very vague concerning where to get the pass from and if we were definitely going to get one, this could be a bit tricky.
“Where do I get my photo pass?” I enquired. She flicked through her sheets in a similar manner to that of the twatty car park attendant.
“You aren’t actually on the press list. Who are you with?”
A made up blog I thought to myself.
“Snap-Your-Neck”
“Nope, you’re not here.”
I showed her the email correspondence out of desperation, but she too thought the conversation was a little bit vague.
“I’ll give him a ring if you want, get it sorted.” I said pretending that I actually knew him.
“No, no, no, that won’t be necessary, give us five minutes and we’ll get back to you.” She responded.
Five minutes went by, then ten minutes, then the lights came back on accompanied by thousands of weird looking flies swarming over them, twenty minutes…….
“Hi there, we’ve just spoken to Adam and he said that we can’t give you one tonight, but if you arrange a time to meet tomorrow after he arrives, he will give you one then. “
“Ok, no problem, I’ll ring him tomorrow.”
I thought the whole situation was a bit strange and that the chances of me actually getting a photo pass after meeting with one of the festival directors, was a bit slim.
Our passes allowed us to get a VIP bus from the camp site to the car park, and vice versa. We still needed to get our tents, cameras and crates from the car, so I don’t think we would have managed without the VIP treatment. Our campsite was brilliant, with real flushing toilets, a shower, drinking water and no knob heads. You could tell the people on our campsite weren’t short of money just from looking at their posh tents. Simon set his up in no time, he just unzipped the bag and voila, the tent popped up into shape without needing any encouragement. However, when I unzipped my bag of death, I was presented with unmatched bits and pieces of shit. I then remembered asking my friend why there was only one tent pole included with the mass of shit he was lending me, and him answering:
“Yeah, it only needs one.”
Then I felt a bit stupid and a little bit depressed. After lots of debating and fannying around, we arrived at the conclusion that I was fucked. I heard Simon getting angry at himself for forgetting something comparatively insignificant, all the while I just stared at my heap of shit tent that had one pole, with nothing holding up the bottom end, and got very angry. I was half contemplating sleeping in the car, but instead I persevered and tried to modify the fucker using guide ropes and bottles of water. It was still shit, but now it looked weird and even more embarrassing. The only solution I managed to think up, was to prop the bottom end up with a few bags and bottles of Evian. Not a good start. Simon then somehow managed to lose his sleeping bag which brought him down to a similar level as me; what a pair of idiots. We decided to crack open a few tins of Strongbow and try to forget about being pissed off at ourselves. A few cans in and our survival situation started to become funny to us, so we decided to have a look at the metal DJ’s in the Sophie Lancaster tent. Due to the fact that we didn’t have our photo passes, we were forced to leave the cameras in the tents. Neither one of us mentioned it, but in the back of both of our minds was a constant reminder that thousands of pounds worth of equipment was being protected by a pair of flimsy tents. Anyway, we got bored of the metal tent and its price of beer very quickly, so after having a quick nosey at the silent sombre main stage, we headed back to our tents for more cider and financial peace of mind.
Me and Simon thought it would be a good idea to text Adam Gregory regarding the photo pass, and thought it an even better idea to ask for a second one. The Strongbow had begun to take hold, so instead of waiting for a response we would never receive, we called it a night and crawled into our sorry excuses of tents, and drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep.
