Phoenix Festival 94, Stratford, England

I picked up Jan and Chris, who didn't have tickets, and we just had enough room in the car to squeeze Melantha in (her Dad was a producer or something for Radio 1 so she provided me with a free ticket, backstage pass and ticket to the VIP pre-festival party in exchange for a lift). We arrived at Melantha's house and her Mum appeared with boxes and boxes of stuff. There must have been about 3 boxes of food, a camping stove, and every luxury possible. She just looked at me and gave me that "Mothers, you just can't argue with them" sort of look and I understood. I'm not sure how we got it in the car but we did and headed for Stratford, home of Shakespeare.

Jan and Chris had rehearshed squeezing into the boot of the car the night before so I knew we'd get them in ok. We got near the site and they climbed into the boot. Then Jan said "I don't know if I can do this, I'm claustrophobic". Why he didn't mention this the night before I don't know but he ended up spending about 20 minutes in the back of the car whispering "how much longer?".

Me and Melantha collected our VIP wristbands (bright pink with silver glitter - just my colour), and immediately headed backstage to check out all those celebs. We soon got bored of this as celebs are generally full of themselves and we decided to skip the VIP party and get shitfaced instead. Some of our campsite (who will remain nameless, but you know who you are) took some trips and spent most of the night repeating stupid phrases from the Eastenders (London-based soap opera for those who've never had the pleasure/misfortune) fruit machine in our local pub. I'm not sure how many times you can hear the phrases "I'm just going out to the square for a butchers", "Leave it out Arthur" and "Where's Pauline?", but my limit is somewhere short of a thousand.

The rest of the night was spent shouting out animal names as the trips were called penguins. "Penguins" (said in amusing high-pitched voice) soon metamorphosized into "aardvarks", "duck-billed platipii" and worse. This period seemed to be in the pre-"bollocks" years for want of a better phrase as I didn't hear this phrase until the following year, since when it has been a festival tradition to shout this continuously all night.

Ok, I suppose I'd better mention the music at some point, as this is what some people seem to go to festivals for (can't imagine why, when you can lie in a tent and shout out animal names all night)

Right, first off - the Wonder Stuff. In a word, superb. It was their last ever performance together, and they really went for it. One and three quarter hours of brilliant music, an appearance by Vic Reeves (not so famous in those days) and the crowd were ecstatic. I have never been to such a good outdoor concert, either before or since, and I was left in a daze. I had only got into the Wonder Stuff earlier that year, and had only heard Size of a Cow, Dizzy and a few more singles, but I still recognised a lot of their other songs. Very few bands have the type of songs that work so well live, on a main stage. The songs were all lively, happy and bouncy, and the band smiled throughout and looked to be really enjoying it. There were Idiot t-shirts everywhere, half of the crowd seemed to be wearing black versions of these, and the whole of Stourbridge had turned out that night to see them off. The atmosphere was electric.

I wasn't just dreaming it either, I got the video (The Wonder Stuff - Finally Live, Phoenix 1994) a couple of weeks ago, and its fantastic (once I'd got over the slow motioning the crowd to see myself in it bit - I'm one of the 3 Cure shirt wearers viewed from behind. I am wearing a black version of the shirt and have long hair, not in a pony tail. 19 1/2 minutes from the start of the tape just in case you're as sad as me with your slow motion! ). Really getting into a band during their last ever performance is a bit annoying though. Has anyone any information on the cover band I heard a rumour about some time ago?

The rest of the music was pretty good too. The main other bands I enjoyed were the Beautiful South and Inspiral Carpets. I'm not a huge fan of either but I love the atmosphere in the smaller tents and both bands really knew how to build up the audience. "This is how it feels to be lonely, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your wor(l?)d means nothing at all". These lyrics just say it all, and I found I knew the words to all the Beautiful South songs, even though I didn't know beforehand who they were by. That was a pleasant surprise. I could really relate to lyrics such as "Close your legs, open your mind" and "36D, so what, is that all that you've got?"

Dylan