You can't BOO Damon!

Last night, I was severely trampled on by several heavy, sweaty, stoned men. My hair was given a beer shampoo. My shoes (not to mention my feet) were labelled write-offs after being trampled on for four hours straight. A bottle of piss, kindly thrown by some stranger I would like to kill, exploded up the side of my leg. I was pulled, pushed, shoved, crushed, headbutted and grabbed in every direction.

No, I was not assulted. I was in the unofficial mosh-pit of Blurs comeback concert in hyde park! Despite being covered in about 10 peoples sweat, beer, urine, and hell, probably fan-shit by the end of the night, words cannot describe how awesome it was - but seeing as words are pretty important when writing a blog, I shall give it a go.

We got to hyde park at about 2 (we being me, Jems, James and ermm... we'll call her Rosie) and after I had an experience I would rather forget in a portaloo, we stampeded to the front of the park and ended up only about 5 rows back from the stage. The actual stage. Where blur would be playing. Guitars. And drums. Damon Albarns feet. Would be on that stage.
You get the idea.

We had a bit of a wait ahead of us though. The entertainment started at about fourish and we saw this weird chinese band, who sang in what I can only assume was chinese and chucked a rubber ball about on stage. They were.. interesting, in an I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-these-nutters-are-singing-about-but-ok-lets-dance way. Then Florence and the Machines came on and they were freakin' awesome! They were followed by this African samba group, and Vampire Weekend wrapped it up for us. They did 'A Punk' which I was very glad about.

But by this time the crowd was getting pretty restless to see blur. Most us had already been there for about six hours.. bottles started being chucked about all over the place, sporadic chanting and 'woohoo!'s rose up into the air, the sun kept on getting hotter and a little Aisan guy in front of me tutted pissily as the enourmous drunk bald guy in front of him fell on top of his wife. Everytime we thought Blur were about to come out there would be an unbearable pause while everyone screamed and cheered... before another cheesy sixties number started again over the speakers, and we groaned collectively. Finally the music stopped comletely. Smoke started blasting out across the stage, and Blur appeared walking through it in a bizarrely Charlies Angels moment and launched straight into their first song.

The whole place went mental.

I can only describe it as trying to keep afloat in a massive tidal wave of hot, sweaty human bodies (while at the same time trying to cling to my bag, that I'd stupidly bought with me): while people crashed into me from all directions, I tried to keep my head at a resonable angle in order to be able to see Damon, who was wielding the mic like a god, and scream along with the lyrics. This meant doing my fair share of leaping, shoving and kicking, which was actually extremely enjoyable. However, despite my best efforts, me and Rosie were separated from Jems and James in a matter of minutes when we barrelled backwards by a bunch of guys who I think were attempting to make a human pyramid.. with no one as the base.

By the time Blur had started 'Coffee and TV' I was jammed in between two guys, both irritatingly tall, Rosie, and a hysterical blonde girl who kept clutching my elbow. And I mean literally jammed. If you wanted to put your arms up, that was it, because you wouldn't be able to get them down for a while. Also, this very tight situation meant that the guy rammed in behind me seemed to think he could grope my ass without me noticing (at least I think thats what he was trying to do... very hard to tell with so many limbs in such close proximity) and I was far to squashed to turn round and tell him to fuck off. But it was around this time that the afore-mentioned bottle of piss flew out of nowhere and splattered up my leg, at which point I thought fuck it, that must be the worst that could happen, may as well just get right into it now.

And so I did :-D despite the bruises and achingness this morning, exellent, exellent night. Damon Albarn is a god. Alex James likes cheese. What more could you possibly want from a band? It would be hard to pick out a best song from the set - for some songs I was so busy trying to stay afloat in the crowd that I didnt completely realise what they were - but 'Tender' was bloody good. It was kind of a relief to have the crowd relatively still and swaying for once.

And of course, Song 2 was amazing.