I’m in love with Carl, the photographer I’ve brought to the 6 Music Festival. In a really conniving way, I get him gigs with me so I can have him to myself for an evening, away from his other life. But this was Friday AND Saturday. Two luxurious nights experiencing great music, one-offs, surprises and him. And although my ears were upset with me, I chose to hang out in the pit with Carl.

I’ve never done this before, but I was into the whole set-up. At Victoria Warehouse, the photographers have a nice little seating area behind a black cloth and they can go and get coffees from the catering area any time they want. Everyone was shocked when I came back with a banana. Apparently you can’t take fruit.

While behind the black cloth, I got chatting to the photographer Shirlaine Forrest. The other blokes were great but they didn’t have green nails and a matching camera (step up your game). Shirlaine works a lot and hopes one day to photograph AC/DC. I imagined being a lone, female photographer, always picking hotels near a nail bar, taking apart lenses like a manicured sniper, capturing people rocking out, and then disappearing into the scaffolding for a coffee (no banana). As someone with autism, I like the idea of moving invisibly but doing great things without anyone telling you not to.

Lily Fontaine from the band English Teacher seems to have the same vibe of small yet powerful brilliance. A magnificent starling with notes that cut a crystal path through me and into my broken heart.

I loved her Ian Curtis dance to the cover of Transmission, a duet with surprise guest Richard Hawley. Fontaine mentioned Hawley’s large collection of jackets and, with his rockabilly image, I can envisage an idolised painting of him on a fringed throw on the back of a Catholic family’s settee in the 80s. He knows that when he goes “‘urryup I’ve got a bus to catch” that it’s paradoxical. Just as I know that me sometimes looking like Jennifer Coolidge but with old Alsatian teeth and an Oldham accent is quite loveable.

At the end of English Teacher’s set, Fontaine holds and distorts the last note of Albert Road and I feel the ghosts of old toxic towns evaporate. Things are moving in the right direction.

Dotingly following Carl around, I watch Mogwai for the first time. Everyone needs to experience Mogwai beneath 25 speakers. I feel the music in my ribs, something sharp loosening in me with each song. In the rise of the rendition of Mogwai’s Ether with the KNDS Fairey Acid Brass, I feel the release. I can see that same thing manifold in the audience. We need this, oh, we need this.

By Saturday, I feel that my fawning had become a bit suffocating for Carl. So I climb to the balcony. Up there, overlooking the stage, is not as vibrational as being in the pit, but at least I could hear my ‘s’s on the way home. I see Sherelle gathering the crowd in and I’m in a nice little corner with everything to the right (people who have Duane’s syndrome always position the world to slight right).

While I watch Perfume Genius slo-mo his body, I’m thinking about what I read about him and his school days. And I’m thinking about how hard it is to be listened to when you’re picked on, because the education system won’t stop and look at you. And that’s my real world encroaching in on me, and I want to be lost and hit hard in the heart again like last night. So I think, I’m going to get Carl up here for Kae Tempest’s set. 

Tempest is a soothsayer. The audience sees itself mirrored in the residents of the street they fictionalise. In this new work, Tempest speaks of truth and beauty and we need this. We feel released and refreshed and that thing that was loose in me, it falls away.

We run quickly up to the balcony, not wanting to miss a drop in Tempest’s ocean. We are tight next to each other, closer than we’ve been in a public space before, and we cry through the whole set. In seven stories in Tempest’s salvo of quotable morsels, our life together is splayed out and, slowly, refurbishment begins.

Me and Carl the photographer go our separate ways on Sunday morning to see our Mums. We thank each other for a great weekend, double-checking who will be home first to let the dog out.

By Cathy Crabb

Main image of Sherelle by Carl Gibson

 

6 Music Festival 2025