Diary of Cassandra Clarke.
Last weekend I spent 2 days standing in a freezing cold disused car show room on Old Kent road, Peckham. Why? YES WAY, a festival organized over the weekend of the 28/29 of March by artist project space Auto-Italia-South-East and music people Upset the Rhythm.
We began our day with a visit to the Mega-sized Asda next door, which is probably the best Asda i’ve ever been to. Can you guess what we bought?
The space was split into two warehouses and none of the bands played at the same time, so we didn’t miss much.
The only problem was that there weren’t any stages and all the bands played on the floor, so we didn’t really get to see anything except the tops of heads. I watched a lot of bands, but I didn’t really take any photos for this reason as I couldn’t get to the front and even then there was just a row of really aggressive people with digital SLRs taking photos but not really looking.
The highlight of Saturday were Grafitti Island who make spooky creepy music about demonic cats, wolf boys and mountain men. I also quite liked the Beards but I think it was more to do with their outfits than anything else.
After that I watched some of Bryony’s band, The Sceptres, followed by The Shitty Limits. They’re always quite fun and what we needed after an afternoon filled, for the most part, with drone and experimental drumming.
I don’t really remember a great deal from the rest of Saturday as it was my third day in a row of straight drinking. All I know is that we spent most of it buying clothes in Asda as it was sooooo fucking cold in that warehouse. Gay Against You headlined but by that time things were starting to get very tedious so we went home and slept.
On Sunday we had to get there early as both Freya’s band La La Vasquez and James’ Teen shieks band had they’re first gigs ever! Freya’s band La La Vasquez were the first band of the day, which I told her was almost as good as headlining, just in reverse. They were really nervous and the sound man was a bit of a knob but in the end it all worked out fine and they played a lovely first set, even if they did refused to look at the audience and swore loads! Check out the awesome rainbow co-ordinated guitar straps.
After that we watched Teen shieks, who were very good and had a cameo from Bryony for a Black Flag cover. Other bands of note were the Pens who as well as being lovely girls make really enjoyable if not slightly screechy songs, I also enjoyed Trash Kit and PLUG. It was much warmer on Sunday and we spent most of the day sat outside smoking hash from the “shop” in New cross. We then went on a really long walk to find a cafe amidst the industrial wasteland that is Old Kent Road. We stumbled across a Somalian cafe with office furniture in the place of conventional tables and chairs, the owner didn’t understand a word of English and I was a little skeptical to begin with but the food was amazing.
Towards the end of the evening the very intellectual looking crowd began to loosen up and a little tiny bit of crowd surfing happened.
Helen got papped by this dude with a pretty serious camera. He said it was for i-D magazine or something.
Then there was a lot of confetti.
THE END
Words and Pictures by Cassandra Clarke
