I have to admit, Ive never been to a pop music festival - no not even big day out, none of the BDO's that have ever been, I have ever attended. Rewind festival was positively overflowing with fans in their late 30's & 40's all of whom seemed to have the lyrics of every song hard coded into their DNA - stalls sold pink & purple leg warmers, coloured hair spray and hair gels, leather pilots helmets, string vests...and people were buying them - I bought a wrestling mask... mostly because I'd never seen one for sale anywhere else in my life, then because I thought on some level it would be quite funny (and hand as a prop) and only a little because I thought it was supercool and secretly pined for those long lost dreams of old where I imagined my self growing up to be the next Ultimate Warrior or Brett the Hitman Heart. Does anyone out there remember the NZ world tag team champions in the 1980's and the hey day of the WWF???
The Bushwhackers... black singlets, shorts and gumboots... ahh... how proud (?) the country was!
But I should start at the beginning, Mareena & I travelled by train to Oxford circus (as it was the weekend - the Hammersmith & Circle lines were'nt working) we had to go to Oxford Station to catch the Bakerloo out to Paddington. Once at Paddington, caught a train out to Twyford to catch the connecting train to Henley service to arrive at Henley on Thames.
We arrived without too much more palaver and to our joy, discovered that we could catch a water taxi to the venue! Awesome - anyone can take a cab. How often does one get to arrive at the venue - in a boat? Thats right "I was on a BOAT Motherf%"*er!"

Passes to enter were not available for us at the gate, eventually someone with some measure of power arrived and took us through to where we finally were given passes. The green room had two tables and two chairs (for four comics) and we were right next to the Live Band Karaoke stage - pick a song, sing it with a live band backing you as your whodel (combo whining and yodelling) your way through the track. The wrapped up at 10pm, we were due to start at 1030 - after the fireworks display.

No intro, nothing, just ended up walking out to a crowd that hadn't spent the £10 on a program and didnt know what was going on. Boy George ran late and as a result we started at 1045, did the warm up and intro and got Martin Beaumont on, he lit up the stage for 20 mins, dealt with hecklers and nailed a solid routine. Well done there, I came back out did 4-5 gags wanting to keep the show ticking over and intro'd Simon Lipson who after 8 minutes decided he'd had enough of being heckled, told the audience to go fuck themselves and walked off 12 minutes shy of completing what he was booked to do. I asked to borrow his guitar and was told "Nope.. I'm leaving" and stormed off without even so much as a by or leave. I did a bit more in between introducing Mark Maier the headliner as we were running woefully short. Mark came on and nailed a good gig although it was a little short as well. Went back on and did a ten minute wrap up, any longer and it would have been weird.

Another gig down, Mareena and I caught a lift back home with Mark and made a new friend who lives just up the road :D
Job done.