Calling all Rocker's

This weekend has seen Hyde Park host the daytime festival Hard Rock Calling. Which is in assocation with the Hard Rock (Cafe) brand. Funny that, for some reason it just didn't click at the time. Blonde moment number one, but no, I won't be going into that any further!
Swiftly moving on, Jen and I decided we wanted to see Pearl Jam, who were the headliners on the Friday night. Having arrived at Hyde Park, which we both forgot was ENORMOUS, we had to locate gate X9. Which in theory, should be in between 8 and 10, but clearly not.

Mr Vedder himself, casually knocking back Red straight from the bottle!

Found this in the loo's...So really, we should
all drop this eco-lifestyle change, and just go for a poo!

Anyhow, joining the mass of festival goer's we began to queue. Although, Vodafone customers got to queue jump. Unfair, until we realised that hardly anyone is on that network. And for a good reason!
The day kicked off about 3.30pm, eventually coming to a close at a rather civil, 10.30pm. Plenty of time spare for the old folk to maintain bed time. And with the nature of the headliners, there were plenty of old-school rockers!

Avid fan!

The Hives

The band that opened the show were called Robert Francis and it was their first ever festival performance. Felt a wee bit sorry for them as the crowd looked particularly uninterested, although I think everyone genuinely were just enjoying chilling out in the afternoon sun. Following their set were Gaslight Anthem, The Hives, Ben Harper & Relentless 7, and then finally Pearl Jam. The frontman from the Hives certainly had some energy! With the flow of alcohol picking up pace the crowd got going, as people started standing up and bopping about to the tunes. The whole crowd really were there to see the legendary Pearl Jam, who delivered a top class performance :-)

The British trend of not wearing usncream still going strong...

Gaslight Anthem

In true, un-original festival style, objects started getting thrown into the crowd. Such an unnerving feeling worrying if you're about to get knocked out by the cap-end of a bottle, which you can only hope contains something cold, and only cold! However, one I haven't seen before - massive loaves of Tiger bread being thrown in!! To be fair, it did look really funny, but then everything appears that way until it happens to yourself. Poor Eddie Vedder did seem concerned throughout the evening, stopping a few times to make sure we all 'looked after thy neighbours', though in particularly his comment that we ensured that our Queen to be well rested to watch Wimbledon tomorrow! Best left unknown what the unkempt mosher's thoughts were on that comment, but luckily we were well back from them.

Main Stage

This lady had the best/most amount of tattoos. In some wierd, perverted

way, I really wanted to see under her clothes...!

On the whole, a pretty darn good day. I did temporarily feel like I missed out on the true festival experience by not camping over for a few days like normal. However, the fact it felt like we were sat in a bin for the best part of 6 hours covered in old sweat, suncream and beer more than made up for that! That and overhearing a man giving directions over the phone.... 'Yeah, mate, we're by the Hard Rock sign, you know the one kinda near the stage'.... Wow, no wonder he never made it.

Robert Francis

Pearl Jam Tee

The only downside were the fact that the bottles of beer cost 4 pounds each FOUR squidders for a coke-can sized drink. Oh, and the event t-shirts were £20. Pffft, to be expected I guess. Note to festival organisers... Really???! Note to self? Better smuggling of "ginger beer".
A selection of pics,
Enjoy :-) x

Sweaty leg leaflet imprint. Nice!