Festival Hosta Francs

We had arranged to meet there at 7 because we thought we might get a sound-check in earlier somehow. But the shell of the stage had only just gone up in front of the church and there was a mass on. So of course we ended up sitting in the local bar drinking beer and rattling our nerves in advance of the earth-changing gig we were about to do. Outside punks with dogs and old ladies dragging each other around firmly by the armpits squinted curiously at us, the bunch of obvious gringos pale and ghostly laughing in unison. We could barely get out of the pub at the rare old closingtime of 8pm. Two poky ladies promised to return for our gig purely out of curiousity. Shame we forgot our formula one costumes.

We found Calle Vilardell number 44 easy enough. There were jaunty plastic streamers burning over lights strung across the street as old men ascended ladders and tied them randomly to poles whilst smashing bulbs. Tired waitresses rearranged chairs and tables in preparation for the floods of people to come. Several of the afore-mentioned old ladies poked at the food that was left out on the tables for the bands to dine at. "Youth Rock Festival," Darren intoned, reading the poster. Crap, that rules us out. Even with my mere 26 whippersnapper years, the average age of the band is 32. We grimaced in a friendly way at the yound lads sat next to us and dived into the food. A fine middle-aged spread.

Well, the first band was just attrocious. God love them, they were young, but even I wasn't that bad at my first gig. The singer giggled and refused point-blank to do a voice test on the microphone, the pianist played arpeggios in her sound-check, and the guitarist couldn't string a fishingpole. My friends all stood with looks of pure horror infused to their faces. Please god they don't stay like that for our performance, I prayed to no-one in particular, not being very religious or anything. I decided it would be more productive to visit the toilet, have a bottle of water, and run around a bit and tune my guitar. When they started, I took advantage of the free toilet paper I had snatched and shoved it deep into my lugs.

On stage, the monitor sound was awful. I could hear the bass, and pretty much nothing else unless I stood in front of them and then I could hear the whole street reverberate with the sound of our hard-hitting kick drum and eerie dirty jesus keyboard. Actually, the sound out front was pretty good. Several people gawked in surprise and stopped leaving, and some photographer started flashing his camera, with my friends having a jolly good bop up the front. An eight foot stage was a god-send, even if I was glued to the double-mic setup for the guitar for some of the songs. But our final song had a great 5 minute instrumental mental bit to which I could hop around like the hippy windmill and I made use of it then. We even got the unexpected encore which we felt stupid to have added to set-list, but I had insisted (hurray for me). An hour later our feet were back on solid ground.

Afterwards was an awesome heavy metal band who played some great covers to which I danced relentlessly with Alex. Gordon and his baby had gone home, Darren was being kept in line by his anti-social and frankly boring girlfriend and Radt was chatting up a workmate (as usual). So we just went mad and laughed and danced away. The lads from work had given us cava in celebration, and celebrate we did. Still full of energy at 2am, we all decided to head to a local 80s club, where we stayed til 6am when dawn and hunger called. Some of the lads went to a rave party but having a high like the one I had, a rave would only bring me down. I was delighted to get home to some basil pesto on toast, fresh orange juice, and a crossword. What a rock-and-roll star I am.