Living in the Limelight

The first song I heard this morning was 'Limelight' by Rush, which was apt and made me even more excited.

Throughout the morning I kept wandering across to Camping Close to watch the preparations, the Fireworks team work really hard and with military precision to get everything set up. The stage arrived and then the PA and sound engineers. 'Goo' the main sound engineer was great, massive enthusiasm and lots of experience.

The band arrived and we trooped over to the stage and set up for sound check..

Oh My Word, 16,000 watts (not sure if they are RMS or not, Andy) of music power.... Apparently we were heard in the next village. It was great fun, Goo sorted the initial mix, the fireworks people worked out when in our set we would have our pyrotechnics and then we left to get ready.

2 hours... how they dragged. 

Eventually the time came, we gathered our guitars and went back across .
Walking past the the main entrance we could see a big queue of people, even more excitement! We got on stage, got the gear plugged in and waited....

The field started to fill up, the bonfire was lit....

We were on.

I've played a lot of gigs in my life and quite a few as an Accelerant but nothing like this. As usual it started quite quietly as the audience got the measure of us, but as we got into our stride they soon came on board and were dancing and singing their hearts out. 5000 or so people singing 'Parklife' back at us... well I doubt I'll forget that in a hurry.

We made a few mistakes, but I think we did pretty well for a bunch of old chaps (and a couple of slightly younger chaps).

By the end of our set Jamie had managed to whip the whole field into a frenzy, they went bananas...It was brilliant, humbling, amazing and quite frankly I want to do it again, right now.

We watched the Firework display which was brilliant as usual and packed up and soaked up the atmosphere for a bit. Luckily there were several parties to attend so I was kept busy until the early hours. 

Feedback from the firework committee is that it was a great success, we are discussing next year ;)

Bill, Pete, Matt, Matt and Jamie, if you get this far down the blip just be aware how brilliant you all are.

This shot is from bit of the stage, I think I need a fisheye as this is about a third of my field of view! 

There were a load of blippers there.

Super Wife
Super Fan
Super Ben
Super Ben's Mum ;)