Turn the Page - Passenger

October 6th, 2008 - by Eddie

Audio, Indie, Rock, Turn the Page

Photo by Andy Sheppard

I’d like to tell you about a festival we played recently in Scotland. It was the last of our festival gigs of the summer. It took us 12 hours to get from Brighton (which is on the south coast of England ) up to the beautiful foothills of the Scottish highlands .

The van that had been picked was in between a tour bus and a minibus, meaning it had beds and a little seating area but really not very much space at all. It reminds me of when I went to Norfolk as a kid and I remember coming across a field which had in it two horses and a sheep. Hilariously, the sheep would run, eat and generally act like a horse. This is what our little bus looked like as we parked up next to the big shiny, expensive ones in the festival artist parking lot.

The next day we got up and to our surprise and pleasure found that showers were available and ones that actually understood the concept of heat (no offense V festival …)after that we found bacon rolls and tea which filled us with a deep felt and deep fried joy.

We walked around the site for a couple of hours and admired the views of the castle and the loch and the majestic rolling mountains that looked as though they had won front row tickets to the festival (maybe after entering a competition in a magazine only issued to mountains…. sorry, its been a long day).

We then headed back to the stage we were to play on as the rain that had been promised started to tumble down.

The band on before us were a refreshing combination of fiddle, accordion and guitar that got the locals all up for a party. Pity then (as Robin our keys player pointed out) that Passenger was on next. We took to the stage and after a quick sound check began our set.

We started with a song called Walk You Home, or Night Vision Binoculars if you’re from the states (don’t ask!) a chirpy little number about a stalker. As the rain cleared, the crowed started to swell in front of us. It felt incredible to play in such a beautiful setting! Compared to the usual beer stained venues, the beauty of our surroundings made me feel quite emotional and as a result I felt every song as intensely as I did when I first wrote them (which I’m sorry to say isn’t always the case.)

Passenger - Night Vision Binoculars

We went on to play two other songs whilst the crowed continued to grow. It was a great sight to see over a thousand Scots in waterproof clothing. I love Scottish people for many reasons but none more so then they’re ability to have fun in any weather.

The fourth song I attempted to play was called Stray Dog. Its a gentle and tragic solo piece describing the plight of a … you guessed it .. Stray dog . Unfortunately at this very point, my guitar decided it was going to make really disgusting feed back noises, screeching and ringing across the audience as though some sort of winged dinosaur was swooping down to pick them off one by one, when this sort of thing happens at a gig, you suddenly become very aware of what you’re doing, getting up and showing off in front of loads of strangers. Its like one of those dreams you have when all of a sudden your back at school, maybe at the front of a school assembly when you look down and find yourself totally naked.

The crowd was amazingly supportive and after abandoning Straydog (which is ironic as that is the story of the song) we finished with “Table For One” and “Do What You Like.”

It was not without incident but nonetheless a truly enjoyable and memorable gig.

Passenger - Do What You Like

-Mike Rosenberg, frontman for Passenger