Crowd Etiquette
Featured Image Credit: Red Grooms – Weegee 1940
Last Saturday, I attended BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Sefton Park, Liverpool, and what I thought would be an enjoyable experience was quite the opposite.
Except for witnessing the wonderful Wolf Alice's comeback festival show.
The four members (Ellie Rowsell, Joff Odie, Theo Ellis, and Joel Amey) were a force to be reckoned with; it was a truly confounding experience, even as a seasoned fan, it exceeded all expectations. The quartet have an innate chemistry so strong that it shines through their music and the soundsystem, almost searing the audience with the peppery riffs and lyrics embalmed with a type of rage which can only be attributed to the lived experience of girlhood. Yet, there is also a softness to Wolf Alice with tracks like 'How Can I Make It OK?', placing the softness on full display, airy vocals from Rowsell accompanied by dreamy riffs and soft drums make for a truly holy experience.
Now, I had arrived at around half five that evening to catch Inhaler and swiftly waved them an Irish Goodbye as I slipped out of the New Music Tent to catch Wolf Alice, and then... I left. Like many, I didn't make it to the Geordie-born ‘Saviour of the Working Class’, Sam Fender's set. Instead, I walked home, got a hot shower, made a pizza, and sat down to watch it in front of the telly.
Why?
Crowd Etiquette.
Respectfully, the crowd at Sefton Park concerts may just be the bane of my existence. Answer me this, and make it make sense, why is it that some gig-goers looooove to push through the smallest of gaps? Like an avant-garde modernist depiction of birth in art, except, instead of a soft, small, crying lump emerging from an overstretched, ripped, bloody vagina, there's a teen girl, or a wee boy in an adult male's body, dressed in their finest Crosshatch and scruffy facial hair, pushing their way through the small gap that resides between yourself and your cosy festival neighbour. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry..." Stop apologising, and stop being a wanker. Look, it's understandable if you're sincerely on your way to your mates, but the individuals who just prop themselves like a happy pig in shit in front of you, it's not gonna fly, especially not with an Irish girl. "Are you gonna keep goin'?" "Were you planning on just standing there?" Get a move on, out of my way. It's almost comical how predictable some groups are, prove us wrong, just once, and don't be a dick, because then we have to be dicks and it's irritating.
What was almost funnier was the fact that most of this was happening during Wolf Alice - a band fronted by a woman and lyrics infused with a rage fuelled by sex pests amongst other things. Lads, a not-so-fucking-friendly reminder that ladies are also anatomically blessed with eyes! Yes, eyes, in all their glory, sclera, cornea, iris, ciliary body, choroid, retina, optic nerve, lens, pupil, vitreous humor, aqueous humor, and all. So, to be blunt, just because a lady is wearing a dress, and her calves are showing, does not mean she would like to bear witness to your atypically small penis, better-known as a micropenis in the nearest porta-potty and deal with your erectile dysfunction and dick-cheese.
So, yeah, I took myself home and had a hot shower, washed the filth of Big Weekend and its crowd off of me, and vowed never to go again.
Great set from Wolf Alice though, worth it just for that.
