Well well. The Chemies certainly kicked off the festival season in style, Saturday headliners at only the second ever Rockness festival at Loch Ness.
I feel like I want to post my own personal experience of the set, so no apologies if you find this boring or irrelevant. I don't actaully remember many details about the actual set or the order the tracks came in, I was having too much fun :D
I must say now that I have never in my life seen the Chemicals live, apart from a very brief cameo appearance in Edinburgh where they played perhaps 3 tracks on a small stage in Princes Street. Despite being a massive fan ever since the Dig Your Own Hole days I have just never been in the right place at the right time. When they confirmed for Rockness this year AND Daft Punk I couldn't beleive my luck. I think I must have bought a ticket about 9 seconds after they went on sale.
Double the capacity, double the duration from one day to two, and an infinitely superior lineup, some might say this was the first Rockness and last year was just a practice :)
It was about a quarter past 10 at night, and at Loch Ness in summer it doesn't really get dark till about half eleven as it's so far north. What we had was a kind of cool dusk, which was a glorious relief to the scorching sunshine that had blessed us all day. The mist was properly rolling in from the loch, and became a really dense, thick fog just prior to the main lights coming on.
The effect was nothing short of spectacular. The rolling hills and beautiful countryside, bathed in this blue-grey light with the fog making every light seem like a distant shining star. A strange but somehow fitting backdrop for the huge stage and massive crowd.
The minor tents were as good as deserted when the Chemies were about to come on, which meant the entire gigantic field was swarming with party animals ready for a rave. There must have been at least 40 or 50 thousand people.
Despite the scorching heat and pretty awesome lineup (DJ Yoda rocked the house), high volume music and dancing earlier in the day I had kept plenty of energy back for this moment. Unlike my short sighted friends who were, in a word, fucked. They resigned to watch from a distance on the convenient grass verge lined with flags. I did my warmups (always remember to stretch your legs if you plan on jumping up and down like a lunatic), said my goodbyes: "If I don't make it back tell Laura I love her" and entered the swarm of people.
Just as I began my long trek toward the promised land of "The front" the first track began to ring out. "There's no path to follow", boomed out over the gigantic PA. A chill ran down my spine as I realised that there really was no path to follow. If I wanted to get to the front I would have to carve my own path through this massive sea of bodies.
The stirrings from the crowd were hesitant at first, most people didn't know if this was the set starting or some kind of warmup DJ or sound check, as they will have been expecting something a bit more familiar than an album track from a yet-to-be-released album.
Thankfully the internet had furnished me with an illegal copy of the album a few days before, so I knew this was fucking it. Time to pick up the pace. I shimmied, slid and excused myself past the back markers, who were not very densely packed, all the while keeping my eyes fixed on the stage.
Halfway in, and something a little more familiar to the throng began to pump out, a refrain from "Galvanise", accompanied by a visual instruction on the screen to pump your fist in the air, the blue fist punching through a chimney I'm sure we're all familiar with. The crowd duely obeyed and I was surrounded by a thousand fists gleefully punching the sky.
As I moved ever closer to my goal of a decent view and a sweet spot from the PA system, the crowd grew ever denser as you would expect. Jupming around like a loony provided an excellent subterfuge for jupming *past* the mass of backs that stood in my way. Most accepted that my hunger was greater than theirs and let me past without any aggro, but the odd one or two took exception that, spurred on by the music, I had the strength and will to do what they would not.
One fat lady turned round and said something I couldn't quite hear. Quite out of character I yelled "Fuck YOU" and took another route.
Closer now, and I think it was a mixture of Saturate and Beleive, the visuals a strange metaphoric arrangement of red and blue shapes that formed spinning circles. The fog was still very thick, and the sky was slowly starting to fade into night.
Every so often I would meet someone from the official crowd police, in their bright red T shirts. They proved a tricky obstacle at times, skillfully pushing me back. I battled hard and won though. Someone shouted out "Look out, mental cunts coming through". Which made me grin like mad. Tonight, I WAS a mental cunt.
Sweaty, steaming bodies were ahead. I had almost made it. Looking at the giant screen became secondary to looking at what people beside me were doing, constant falling, pushing, diving and jumping took a lot of energy to keep on top of.
A very short girl asked me to lift me up so that she could see. I obliged, and somehow managed to dance like a lunatic with her greasy bare thighs clinging to my neck. She stayed up for maybe two tracks, a very long and stupendous mix of Beleive and something else I can't quite recall.
One song mixed to another seamlessly and I really lost track of my senses at this point. Absolutely exhausted from carrying another body I concentrated on staying upright and trying to breathe. Thankfully a few chilled out moments in the music helped with that, steadying the crowd. I seem to remember a few bars of Hold Tight London creeping in.
Back to the mission, I regained enough strength to keep pressing on. And press on I did. I met a large shirtless chap and uncomfortably became pressed up against him. He was lovely though, he slid behind me and gave me a huge shove forward into the mosh pit area.
Once here, forward progress became very easy. Most people were so knackered from jumping up and down like loonies that when the music relented for a few moments it was like gliding through tall grass. Within a few minutes I had reached a sweet spot for sound and was within sight of the barriers.
I planted my feet on the mud and began the task of raving like a mentalist. Green and Purple lasers shone out and in the mist reached over the horizon. Monkeys climbed the video wall, Tom and Ed's faces bobbed up and down behind their equipment. I was in the most incredible place on earth at that precise second.
When the intro for Hey Boy Hey Girl started up, the classic Scottish chant started. "Here we, here we, here we fucking go!" I'm not sure which came first, the song or the chant, but they seemed at that moment to go together like they were written for one another.
Eventually the fun had to come to an end. After a fairly lengthy encore and showering us with glitter and fireworks, the Chemies retired backstage. Despite the plug being pulled and roadies coming to take stuff away, the chanting for more continued for at least 10 minutes.
I walked back to meet my mates, drenched in sweat, barely able to stand, and spent the next 2 hours explaining the full awesomeness of the show. When I crawled back into my tent my head hit my pillow for about 10 seconds, and I was out for the count.
I left it almost 10 years before getting out to a Chemies show, something I now regret very much. The next time I go will be a LOT sooner.
--- Thanks for reading, if you liked this story please reply so it gets bumped ;) ---
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