Photo courtesy of Dana Gorab

V Festival 2004. We were young (well, younger), carefree and happy. A ragtag group of friends and lovers that spent most of their time together. Although we had all started going to festivals in the 90s, this was our first V… well, maybe not some of the others but it was certainly my first V. And my only V but that’s another story.

Now, being the sort of people we were (still are?), we were fully loaded. Enough alcohol to fill a swimming pool, an amount of mushrooms to give us some real feels (and no we’re not talking mushrooms you can buy in Sainsburys), at least an eighth of smoke each (remember when it was empirically measured?) and a cache of pills. Our usual festival stash.

Now, as you can imagine, my memory is not picture perfect of this event, so before you continue reading please be aware there may be inaccuracies regarding who played where and when, and even what day I’m talking about. That being said, let’s move on with the story.

I’m not gonna mention the names of people I talk about here as I don’t know if they’d appreciate me talking about their hedonism during their early, or earlier, years. We had myself and my girlfriend at the time; her sister and her boyfriend who was also the bass player of the band I was in; my longtime friend of many, many years and his wife; and finally the guitarist from the band I’d mentioned previously. We’d spent that Friday indulging in all our vices and watched many good shows and when we awoke on that Saturday we were still feeling it.

After a slow start to the day, the Saturday vibes were picking up. The beer was flowing, the smoke was burning and the pills were popping. I think the remainder of the shrooms were for Sunday. We were having a lot of fun, I know that for certain. But I couldn’t tell you who we saw play that day. I think we may have seen The Dandy Warhols at some point, and I remember Pink and Muse playing on a large stage round the corner, but like I say I could be wrong about that. All I do know is that we kind of split up doing our own thing and we reconvened once people had seen what they wanted to see.

We all got together again and there was a gap in the acts, but we were in the mood so someone checked the lineup for the day. Five out of the seven of us were 70s-born 80s kids and we spotted The Human League was about to start. None of us had owned any of their music and at that point we thought we knew at least one of their songs so we thought it’d be worth a look and headed to the tented stage they were playing.

The Human League started and we were pleasantly surprised that we knew the first song. Don’t ask me what it was now, I really do not know. But then they played the second song, and lo and behold, we knew it. And we knew the third. And the fourth, and so on and so on.

The gig was absolutely amazing. The feeling of pure joy at this unexpected performance, all the while surrounded by the people you love. The overwhelming feeling manifested itself by way of tears of joy from everyone in our group as we hugged, jumped and sang along with what we now consider to be classic after classic.

Even though that entire festival is a bit of a blur and memories fade and merge with other festival memories, that experience will stay with me forever. I can still remember the exact spot in the tent where we stood.

Thank you, The Human League, for one of the best and most memorable shows I have ever been to. Thank you, The Human League, for making me cry.