I mentioned this on Tuesday, in my Three Tune Tuesday Post. But, I can go into a little bit more detail here in a dedicated post about it.
Rebellion Festival
Every summer, thousands of punk rockers from around the world descend on Blackpool like a swarm of thirsty locusts, and during this weekend they get to see all of the bands they love in one place.
A lot of people go there specifically to see all the bands they don't get a chance to see that often. As well as this, people go with the intention of getting some merch, t-shirts, hoodies, boots, whatever. Most of the money earned through merch goes straight back to the bands that play which is great, and is the best way of supporting everyone who is playing.
When we played the first... and last, Dublin Rebellion Festival back in 2017, we got to see and meet some really cool bands, and it was a great chance to play to a pretty large crowd - the largest to date, back then, when we were only used to playing to 50-100 people in pubs and small venues.
We handed our merch to the people running the stalls, I'd say we had about 25 T-shirts and 20 or so CDs of our first album - the remains of a batch of each we got printed up that year.
As we were leaving we went to settle up and take what was left, not expecting to have sold much. One of the people totted up the numbers in a daze and handed us 70 Euros, and our bag of stuff.
Needless to say, we were delighted about this and treated ourselves to a taxi back to the bus stop with our earnings. On the bus back home, we realised we left the bag of merch in the boot of the car... after ringing around the next day were disappointed to not get any of it back, but were hopeful that maybe the kind taxi driver decided to hand out our stuff to customers - at least we might get out to some people - but, in actuality, the bag most likely got thrown in the bin... where it belonged lol
I love the name of this, Overseas Invasion, it will be a great chance to get to know some bands from around the world and see what other countries are bringing to the table. We're there along with Paranoid Visions and The Nilz who we played with back in December, and NxBodies are playing this year too, who I did the music video for last year.
The Plan
Because of the way things are set up, there are about four stages, each playing bands all day long, from about 12 PM - 2 AM, as far as I heard once the doors are shut, you can't come back inside until the next day but are free to hang out inside if you don't leave.
Personally, I was thinking of just buzzing around for the four days if we couldn't find accommodation, maybe just finding a utility closet somewhere I could crash in until the next morning... but, that won't be necessary since we found a kind of Hotel Paradiso, about a kilometer away from the venue. We're about to get the four of us in the room and it's only costing us 340 Pounds between us for the four days.
We're going to do the sail and rail over there I think, with our gear, leaving port on Thursday at around 8 AM, and we should arrive there at 10:30, and from there, it's a few hours on the train and we can check in and get down to the venue. The first day will be busy enough because there are a bunch of bands I want to see, and plenty more I'll wander around and find in between sets.
This year will be pretty mad. The Exploited, New Model Army, Descendants, our mate's Bad Manners haha, HR Bad Brains, Steve Ignorant doing Crass - I was at The Feeding of the 5,000, in Shepard's Bush, back when I was 14 and that was the first time I saw them, along with Conflict and Flux of Pink Indians. I've seen Crass Twice since then and even supported Steve Ignorant in Dublin when he was doing his Slice of Life stuff. Being at that gig then was a big eye opener for me and totally switched something in my head, I think I'm overdue for another mental shift and I'd say this August will be the cause of it.
I don't know if this is the Thursday lineup, or whether this is a list of some of the big names playing the whole weekend, regardless, there are a ton of great bands playing and way more I'm looking forward to seeing, who aren't on this list here.
Henry Rollins will be great too. I think he's doing a spoken-word thing. I've watched a ton of his spoken word live performances over the years, he's really funny, but also talks a lot of sense about a plethora of different topics.
As payment for playing on the Friday, we get weekend AAA passes, so will be able to hang out and talk with people when we're not watching some sets and on the Friday we get free food and drink for the day.