V97: Ash + Blur + Kula Shaker + Dodgy + Reef + Pavement + The Supernaturals / Temple Newsam, Leeds

£28.50 plus “a maximum” booking fee of £2?!! For a festival day ticket?!! Who knew the mid-nineties was such an idealistic time? Strange to think that prices have increased more than 200% in the fifteen years since V97, with booking fees being more like a tenner a ticket. But then no-one went to festivals in ‘those days’… There was only really Glastonbury, Reading and T in the Park besides V. Phoenix had risen, then died again shortly afterwards (1997 was the final year) and Monsters of Rock had gone for a little snooze a few years earlier.

I’d spent the nine months since I saw Def Leppard rapidly ‘indie-ing’ myself up. I bought the NME and Melody Maker every week, listened to the Evening Session with Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq most nights and had been filling my ears with Madchester bands, via Oasis et al. Basically I thought I was quite hip, but I wasn’t.

…The new me was desperate to see some more live music, but most of my mates were still just  semi-interested in a handful of bands. Since we’d dodged bottles together at Loch Lomond the previous summer, my friend Jamie and his girlfriend Sara had split up, but we’d all seen a lot of each other at various house parties, since taking our A-levels in May/June, and I’d got quite close to Sara. Unlike a lot of people in Morley in the mid-nineties, Sara didn’t really want to be in Morley in the mid-nineties, which gave us one thing in common. She also had the best taste in music of anyone I knew. This wasn’t hard, and looking back she was hardly patrolling the sonic outer fringes, but it gave us something else in common. At some point the subject of going to V97 was raised, and we decided to go together. I know how lame this sounds, but going to one day of a music festival felt like a grand adventure to me at the time. I couldn’t believe I was going to get the chance to join with like-minded actual music FANS, and see bands I’d only read about in Select. These guys were obvs The Real Deal. They didn’t play stadiums to thousands of people; they played cool rock clubs and festivals to music fans like me. People in The Know. And now they were going to play to music fans EXACTLY like me i.e. Me.

Those of you with a keen eye for detail will be remembering the bands listed at the top of the article and be thinking “er…” right about now. I hear you bro. But this was 1997, and I was (a young) 18. It’s obvious now that the Sunday at V97 boasted one of the worst line-ups in the history of mankind, but back then Kula Shaker’s mix of Deep Purple and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum seemed pretty cool (dodgy comments about swastikas aside) and Reef managed to stand out from the mainstream Britpoppers by having slightly heavier sounding guitars.

As neither of us had been to a festival before we didn’t really know what we were doing, but we managed to get to the site just after also-rans The Supernaturals had started their set. They’d had a reasonably big hit with the song “Smile” and I remember them being fun.

As it’s fifteen years ago, my memory is understandably hazy regarding the middle of the day. However, the keys points are thus:

1. At some point we were sat on the plastic covering the organisers had used to protect the grass in front of the main arena, when a guy in front of us, who’d been overindulging on snakebite, vomed. Because of the slight incline, the watery puke quickly made its way towards us and we had to jump out of the way to avoid said sick.
2. Reef were ok, but Dodgy were really good. I always thought Dodgy deserved more than their final placing in the mid-table of Britpop’s second division. The ‘comedy’ drummer and laddish image fitted in with the times, but probs distracted from the music. I frequently lie awake at night fretting about the issue. Isn’t it.
3. Somehow I accidentally ended up in the backstage loos in Temple Newsam house and had a pee next to Danny from Embrace. Much to my chagrin, we’d missed Embrace when they played the NME stage. The site of the lead singer’s winky only marginally made up for this.
4. We also missed 90% of Pavement’s set and all of Teenage Fanclub. Awesome.
5. It absolutely chucked it down towards tea time. I was not a happy bunny as my shoulder length hair frizzed up dramatically, and my nipples made an unwanted appearance through my, now see through, white shirt.
6. Speaking of hair, there was a guy stood in front of us with long blonde hair, who had dyed one-square-inch sections blue. I though this was A REET IDEA, and looked into doing it myself when we got home. But my hair is dark brown so I didn’t. That’s a story for the Grandkids right there eh? Fascinating stuff.
7. Knowing all the hindi words to “Tattva” and “Govinda” by Kula Shaker seems much less cool now than it did at the time.

We met up with Sara’s younger sister before Blur and I averted an argument between them by suggesting that it would be ok if we watched Blur separately, but met up before Ash to ensure we all came home together. Good work me.

I was still more of an Oasis man, but I’d also distanced myself from the silly “you can either like Blur or Oasis but not both” crap that had been ever present in our sixth-form common room, and was really looking forward to seeing Blur. I particularly liked the first two albums, with ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ being my favourite (it still is), so I was mega chuffed that they played some early stuff, along with loads from ‘Blur’ and not much at all from the double-rubbish ‘Great Escape’. “For Tomorrow” was a bit of a moment, and I remember thinking that I would rather be right where I was at that moment than anywhere else in the world as it swirled round Leeds 15. Bless.

Rather acely, V97 was set up so that the NME stage could carry on an hour after the main stage, which meant we also got to see all Ash’s set after meeting Sara’s sister. They’d just recruited Charlotte Hatherley, which Sara’s sister was not impressed about. I thought they were beauts though. I’d caned “Girl From Mars” over the summer and was mega chuffed to hear it live.

Not only had I survived my first festival, I’d also had one of the best days, like, EVER. If there were any doubt in my mind, V97 made me sure that this music lark was for me.