The Best Coast gig at Oxford Art Factory can be summed up by a nearby punter who kindly remarked, “omygod the girl standing next to me is fucking crying hey.” 

My day: stressful work shit, stayed back 2 extra hours for soundcheck, almost didn’t go to the gig because I was like “what’s the point to live music anyway it’s all fake” (see first point RE: stressful work shit), drank 2 jugs of cider by myself in approx 20mins, cried the whole way through the set due to mental cocktail of emotions (work vs “my boyfriend is in Europe for 2 months.”) Woke up the next morning with a fucking ridiculous hangover, a signed Best Coast poster and the vague/embarrassing recollection of talking to Ms Betty Coast about something totally inane. I meet and work with bands everyday and yet I am still so socially retarded that I couldn’t even say, “hey dudes, I loved your record and I’m so glad you’re playing at my venue” without it coming across as some kind of freaky fangirl thing. I felt like such a loser!

Wavves was a completely different story though because I didn’t have to “work.” So I had some beers and danced and sung along and smoked some weed and had the best time ever. Afterwards we ran into Bobb again and I thought, you know what - I am a huge, dorky fan. Why should I pretend to be cool just because I “work in the industry”? So we got a photo with him and it was really nice and I felt a lot better about the whole thing.

(Nice to meet you too, Fake Bobb!)

There are so many rules and set behaviours in music, the politics can be so dumb. I’m never going to be good at schmoozing and networking, never. It makes me sad sometimes because I feel as if I have to act a certain way so that people respect me or take me seriously? But I do love my job, I do love live music and I am dorky but lovable, so from now on I’m just going to stay positive about it all and not take the bad experiences to heart. There’s always good stuff about to happen anyway.