Clash Guest Blog: Emmy The Great (Latitude Special)

This summer we asked Emmy to review every festival she graced with her live performance, and her reply is an in-depth artists point of view, covering everything from Kendall Calling, to Glasto. Today we are in the depths of Suffolk, for Latitude Festival...

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Emmy writes...

We have a show in London tomorrow, so Latitude is supposed to be in and out. However, because it’s one of our favourites, we negotiate a bit of time before and after the gig. I spend the time before in the catering tent, filling myself with food that is neither from a motorway service station or Marks and Spencers, and telling anyone who will listen that I saw Vivienne Westwood on the train, in the standard carriage, with all the normal people. No one is that impressed by my story, which I find uncivilised.

After feeding, we wait in the dressing room area. Mika is performing a one-off acoustic set before us and there is entourage everywhere, making special Mika hats and filling things with confetti. I have a suspicion that we will be late on stage. Also that some of the audience will be distracted. Thankfully, I’m only a bit right. We are ten minutes late and have to cut some songs from the set, but the crowd is here for us, and most of the leftover Mika fans are in grouped in a corner, waiting for him to sign things. When our set is done I climb down into the arena to find my friends, and someone comes up to me with pen and paper.

“Do you want an autograph?” I ask.

“Yes, please,” he says, “from Mika.”

After the loadout, we sit in the dressing room and celebrate two years as a band. Latitude 2007 was the first time Tom and Euan and I played together, with the rest of the band coming very soon after, and we count it as our first show. Tom is now writing an album with his band Three Trapped Tigers, and tomorrow will be his last. We make cocktails out of a watering can from the production office, and I give him a gift and a long note, which doesn't say enough, but which he promises to open tomorrow.