I have often thought that I was too good for Carlisle. As a teenager, it was my self-diagnosed difference that formed the bedrock of my personality.
I was thus painfully pretentious and largely unliked. When I did leave Carlisle, it felt like the best decision I’d ever made.
For my snobbery it is just desserts that I’ve been forced back into my cosy family home up the road from Carlisle after a period in South America. I have ‘seen the world,’ and met ‘proper people’ – things I’d dreamt of as a teenager.
It would be cliched and grievously untrue to say the world ‘wasn’t all that,’ but returning to the tranquillity of my home has felt as good as rewatching Dr Who here. They don’t have iPlayer in Colombia.
Carlisle has excellent qualities but exhilaration is not its strong suit. But even the most comfortingly predictable places can surprise you. Returning to the swamp after my escapades abroad, I was delighted to hear that in my absence some club nights and up-and-coming DJs from the same primary school as myself were – for lack of a better phrase – getting the ball rolling.
I don’t know exactly when Carlisle’s heyday was, but I think we are due a renaissance.
Enter Borderlands – Carlisle’s first festival in its castle. Running over two days, with day one largely catering to house music fans, day two said ‘how do’ to a slightly older crowd – probably the people who partied to house the first time round in the good old days.
Nightmares on Wax offered a gentle but very danceable set on the final day of the glorious late summer sunshine, before Friendly Fires, who played before headliner Happy Mondays that evening.
Before the thrill of Happy Mondays came Friendly Fires.
After a brief pause to go to the loo and get another drink (and do the setting up of the stage for the band, I guess), the lights went down and the iconic Happy Mondays grid logo illuminated the screen.
The reason we were all there were about to appear, maracas in hand, and Carlisle seemed ready for it. Anticipatory silence fell as plumes of vape filled the air, and a polyester and imitation velvet costumed knight shuffled past me to get a better view of some of the most famous Salfordians in the world.
The band looked the part and received a reassuringly warm welcome. Funny, considering a teenage me would have insisted that I was the only person in Carlisle with a ‘decent taste in music’.
Shaun Ryder was clad in a tracksuit and sunglasses and Bez’s cheekbones were surely visible from even the upper most turrets of the castle. Good to see you, to see you nice indeed.
While hearing Shaun Ryder ask the crowd what we wanted to hear when we were making love felt a little silly, extended versions of Hallelujah and Step On were sensational.
The band (now in their fourth incarnation) held down the music assuredly: the thumping bass and wily guitar a masterly canvas for Bez’s dancing and Shaun Ryder’s rather Alan Partridge and Lynn Benfield-like bickering with the band’s backing singer, the phenomenal, Rowetta Idah.
Happy Mondays were scheduled to play for 90 minutes, but this was cut a little short when intra-Mondays frictions seemed to appear. As a result, if you were at Borderlands on Saturday, your remaining question is likely ‘where did Bez go?’.
Bez slunk off stage mid-Step On. There was no sign of panic from stage management underlings to the sides of the stage but it didn’t seem that Ryder knew the answer to this question, either.
Mischievously or coarsely (or some combination of both) Ryder deadpanned that “Bez had died of a heart attack backstage,” before clarifying he was joking, and that “Bez can’t die”. Unlike “our kid,” his brother, Paul Ryder, who died year.
Bez’s exit was clearly unexpected, but thanks to backing singer Rowetta and guitarist Mark Day, Happy Mondays weathered the storm and continued to step on.
The funny thing, and this is what I couldn’t grasp as a teenager, is that while Carlisle isn’t New York – or even Newcastle – it’s not pretending to be. So, unlike in a big city or a big festival, when I was dancing like the Hacienda never went bankrupt I felt no fear that some leech would appear and take my two-stepping as an invitation to treat.
And, unlike New York, I’d reckon there wasn’t a single person at Borderlands on Saturday that wouldn’t have given me a swig of their beer if I’d asked for one.
Yes, I was on tenterhooks when Bez made his impromptu exit from the stage and did not return. As the sun set over Carlisle Castle, while people three sheets to the wind or reclining in camping chairs confessed in chorus to ‘only going with your mother coz she’s dirty,’ I crossed my fingers that nothing would jinx this day, or thwart the efforts of the patient staff who had made Borderlands happen.
But I didn’t need to worry. As far as a day player and weekend offender like myself could see (Bez aside) the event went without a hitch. What did make me smile, though, was the security’s parting words to the crowd, “please leave through the underpass – it’s much safer than the road”.
At 11pm, I can’t think of anywhere but Carlisle where this could be true.
My town is full of interested and interesting people. We don’t need more tribute acts. We need live events where no one knows exactly what will happen, but we can dance while events unfold.
