Hi, my name’s Rich and I work at the lang cat. But I’m not talking about the lang cat today, I’m talking about how I spent my summer of 2019.

But before that summer, let’s rewind back another 20 years as a 14-year-old me got up on stage with his school mates and played his first ever gig, the school talent show. We were pretty awful, but we were playing punk music, and that always sounds a bit better when it’s unpolished. Plus everyone’s rubbish when they start, right?

In 1999 I caught the bug for playing in bands with my friends and since then I’ve never not been in a band. I’ve played guitar and sung on most of them and most of the time has been spent playing in punk bands, and I owe all of the best times in bands to the punk scene.

I love a lot of things about punk music – and most of the reasons stem from a subgenre of super fast punk music – but I think what I loved most was the DIY ethic. If you try hard you’re generally rewarded, and that’s because in the small label/independent/unsigned sort of scene that it is, you need a lot of people helping each other out to make it work. Fortunately, no one plays punk music in that scene for money. Because there isn’t any. What there are though, are opportunities to meet people from all walks of life, to help each other out and share experiences with.

Reconnaissance

In the band I’m currently still in today, called Captain Trips, is where we’ve done the most ‘stuff’ in terms of recordings, gigs, tours, festivals and the like, and the one where the summer of 2019 is concerned has been the best so far.

Two years prior to 2019, as a band we’d been to a festival in Slovenia called Punk Rock Holiday as punters. Now this is not your average festival. There’s no rain. There’s no lines for the bars or the bogs. It’s set in a simply beautiful area, a national park with a lush woodland and two rivers running through it. It’s also small and has to be to held in the national park where it is, so the capacity is about 5-6,000 people. It’s a week long mecca filled with bands, beers and bobbing down a river.

Some things that were excellent, and generally a new experience, for us were:

• 2 stages only – the Beach Stage and the Main Stage. Beach stage is the daytime and Main Stage for the evening. Then back to the Beach Stage for the afterparty. Doing it this way means there’s never a clash and you can genuinely go and see every band if you want.
• The best cure for the morning after the previous night’s After Party is getting into a freshwater lake and two lakes run along the side of the Beach Stage. That also means you can and will use an inflatable of your choosing to bob along the river listening to the bands playing on the Beach Stage.
• It’s capped at a sensible number of people. There weren’t hordes of overzealous bouncers… or really any at all. Crowd surfing and stage diving all day and all night if you can manage it.
• Everyone looks after the place. Every morning the whole venue is spotless. There’s no army of volunteers tidying up, everyone is just a bit of a grown up and puts their rubbish in the bin. How novel. I think the very pretty location plays into it here, but the organisers also incentivise it. When you get your wristband, you’re handed a bin bag for normal and for recycling and you get a cash card for the weekend (no cash at the bar). That’s debited with a ten euro fee that’s exchanged when you hand in your filled bin bags.
• When you are there you can apply for your band to play. If you’re not signed to a label, that’s the only way you’re making it on the bill.

The bill, please

On that latter point, at that time we only had one recorded song in existence. And only an MP3, when we needed to submit a CD. But we found all that stuff and another friendly Slovenian burnt a CD and submitted it for us. Sadly, that one song was rather unsurprisingly not enough to get us on the bill. The standard is high and to be honest we weren’t ready for it anyway.

By the next time we were there to hand in our actual proper EP with artwork (by a mate) and recorded at a proper studio (recommended by other bands we’d chatted to) and had launch gig (supported by bands that we’d met or that were recommended by other bands we’d played with) all under our belts. We’d played a fair few more gigs and been about a bit to Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

Now this is where it can sound a bit grandiose, saying you’ve played in Europe and that. While that is true, it isn’t like we got put up in hotels, got driven around in a tour bus, or made a penny. We weren’t signed to a big label or owt. We’re just some louts from the south coast that like to play really fast and like to listen to other bands play really fast too. To do this you have to put in some effort, help some people out and then when the time comes, and you’ve made enough friends whose turn it is to help you, then you’re golden. Being based in Portsmouth was pretty helpful for this, as it’d be most European bands’ first stop and as long as it’s not a total shocker of a show, you’re good for a help out in return.

Get in the van!

Anyhoo, we were shortlisted to play Punk Rock Holiday 2019 and giddy like schoolgirls at the prospect of it. It went down to a public vote, and we squeaked it onto the bill. Then as the other main bands started to be added to the bill, we learned that we’d be playing the same festival as some of our all-time heroes and hugest influences. We were absolutely made up and wanted to make a big thing of it.

Now Slovenia, for those that haven’t driven from the UK to it, is um, quite a long way. So we thought best to call in those favours and get some gigs along the way. Stay on peoples’ floors or wherever we could and make it a two week or so jaunt across the continent. The first stop was Belgium for a lovely show and delicious beer at a show for punters going to a different punk festival in Belgium. I do love that country. And its beer. Such delicious beer.

The next gig was in Munich and we had no idea what to expect. It was a slot at a festival in what appeared to be an industrial estate. What turned out to be the case was a massive complex of stages, bars, pop up food stalls and essentially a 12-week party. We played on a nice stage with loads of space, but I definitely played just a bit shit. For no real reason really other than sometimes that happens.

To shake me out of that I had the incredible hospitality of our hosts to thank. Something I didn’t mention is that we were a band of four that had hired a van which is quite pricey. Thankfully another six guys and gals wanted to come along for the ride and that made everything easier, as well as the guarantee that there would be at least six people in the crowd (my record low is two people. At the bar. Facing away from the stage).

Maybe I’m a little cynical, but if we were in the UK I’d suspect that they’d each have to pay to get in, for food and for drink and for accommodation. But alas, the event organisers greeted us all with wristbands, a massive fridge brimming with German beer, food tokens and rooms in a complex on the premises to sleep, shower and have brekkie in the morning, with parking on site. Apart from the actual playing, this was the best gig we’d had in ages.

The next show was in Vienna under a railway bridge which was also really cool, but also a reminder of how nice it is that smoking isn’t allowed in pubs anymore. We’d never played in Austria so had no idea what to expect, but there was a great crowd and a fun time was had by all again. Then it was on through the northern tip of Italy through the mountains in a huge van and into stunning Slovenia.

We’d arrived and got our access all areas passes and entry to the VIP area, the latter being really just another bar, but it was only other bands in there and a few people that had paid through the nose for an upgrade, and another opportunity to get starstruck by seeing some of your heroes. The other main perk of it was to be able to watch bands from the side of the stage on the Main Stage, super cool.

Our slot was just about bang in the middle of the week’s festival, Wednesday at 6pm. Fortunate for us as people aren’t too tired and hungover as they are towards the end of the week, but really our expectations were far exceeded.

I’m in the fortunate position – probably just because I’d done it for so long – that I very rarely get proper stage nerves anymore. Usually just a bit more excited to play rather than nervous I’ll play badly. But I DEFINITELY GOT NERVOUS. But thankfully as soon as the first note of the first song was underway the muscle memories sort of took over and before I knew it, it was over. Such is a half an hour set. At a guess there was probably a thousand people or thereabouts to see some unknown punk band from the south coast of England play a stage in a Slovenian forest on a Wednesday afternoon, and I’ll take that every day of the week. It also meant we could relax and enjoy the remaining festivities and mercifully we’d not booked any shows on the way home so had a relaxing trip over a few days, stopping off for rest and recuperation in pretty places.

Anyway, that’s how I spent my summer of 2019. I still play in the same band now, but as I embark on my fortieth trip round the big ball in the sky, we do a bit less these days in terms of writing and gigging. My back can no longer suffer sleeping on someone’s floor. But we do have a gig in a couple of weeks and had a rehearsal recently which is always good for letting off some steam and hanging out with your mates for a few hours. At the very least.