Last week, while my Blackbridge colleagues’ collective liver was visibly twitching at the prospect of the annual trip abroad, I packed my bags and headed for the exit. Not as a tactic to swerve the company of my delightful co-workers you understand, but to Serbia, where for the second year running I was to attend the Exit festival.

For the past 9 years, Exit has been held in Novi Sad, Serbia’s third largest town. But unlike the bleak British festivals that seem to be multiplying faster than rats in a Viagra factory, there’s no damp fields and dung-dodging to be had here. The festival is held in the Petrovaradin fortress on the banks of the Danube, an imposing site that dates back to the 1st century and looks out over the entire town. This, along with temperatures that are almost as hot as the local ladies (around 38 degrees on one day), makes it about as far from the corporate misery-swamp than is Glastonbury as it’s possible to get. Having learned my lesson from the previous year, I’d left the tent at home (trying to sleep in a canvas oven is an experience I’d rather not repeat) and along with 4 friends booked a nice air-conditioned apartment in the town centre. Around 15,000 Brits had apparently also made the trip, and with beer not exceeding more than 100 Dinar (that’s 1 shiny English pound to you and me), the potential for carnage was pretty high.

Although, it wasn’t really. For the entire week I was out there, not once did I see any of the traffic-cone-on-head, pissing in the street, ENGGG-ERRRR-LUNNNDD cringe worthy behaviour that usually follows our countrymen abroad. Exit is different from the more traditional festivals in that the diversity of the music on offer means that everyone is there to explore new sounds and have a good time while keeping an open mind. Inside the site, walking from the top of the fort to the bottom is like a long descent from refinement to madness. Each night, thanks to a fluttered eyelash and flash of cleavage from my friend Tina, we managed to get into the VIP cocktail bar and relax with a few ‘Challenges’ (vodka, white rum, absinthe, orange juice and some other forgotten ingredients) while listening to some rather soothing jazz. Take a step outside, and you come to the dub / reggae stage, perfect for lounging in the late evening with a few beers. Which is what we did for all of the four nights. Make your way down through the tunnel that links the upper fort to the main festival site though, and the tempo starts picking up. Small stages are dotted everywhere, with full line-ups of everything from Romanian gypsy-punk to Latino salsa, to the sort of death metal you might expect to find in the Eastern bloc, to the obligatory euro house.

But it’s at the main stage where the real action happens. As you walk into the field, you’re greeted by imposing speaker stacks and huge video screens and a sea of people packed into every corner. Getting to the bar is no easy feat but despite this, the Tuborg flowed freely. Over the next four days, the main stage hosted N*E*R*D’s unique brand of hormone hip-hop porno-rock (quite entertaining if a little cheesy), followed by the Streets’ cockney moan-fest on the Thursday night. The festival doesn’t really get going until around midnight, so once the more festival friendly bands finish, the main stage is given over to Djs, playing until well after the sun is up. Night one saw Noisia’s industrial drum & bass followed by DJ Hype’s jump-up jungle. Friday night was the strongest line up, with Paul Weller kicking off proceedings, followed by Primal Scream who were pretty amazing, never letting up from the frantic pace they kicked off with for the full 90 minutes. Followed by Roni Size and Reprazent, staying still wasn’t really an option. If you’ve heard of dubstep, chances are you’ve heard of Skream and Benga. Their ribcage shaking brand of bass heavy party tunes kept everyone moving until the sun was well up, and was probably my highlight of the entire weekend. Saturday had gypsy nutters Gogol Bordello opening proceedings followed by Manu Chao and High Contrast, before Sunday night’s closing line up of the Sex Pistols (who were pretty awful to be honest), and Shy FX’s usual reggae-tinged jungle to see the sun rise for the final time over the giant main stage.

Further into the site, and you come to the Dance stages. Now I’ve been to quite a few of the dance music festivals in this country (Global, Homelands, Creamfields et al), and I can safely say I’d never seen anything like this. There’s none of the sweaty wide-eyed fake camaraderie that this sort of thing usually brings, and despite not really being a fan of the deep progressive house / techno that I heard coming from the giant speaker stacks, I defy anyone to walk past that field as the sun comes up to see 25,000 people still dancing their socks off, and not get a little shiver down the spine.

I realise I’ve rambled a bit with this post. And as it’s taken me nearly a week to get this writte, it was actually nearly 2 weeks ago that I left these shores. But no matter – it all boils down to this; go to Exit. In fact, just go to a European festival. Believe me, if you’re disillusioned with the sub-standard overkill that has become the UK festival circuit, it will give you renewed passion for all things musical. Although, I am going to Bestival in September. Bring it on. See you down the front.

Exit 08 (mostly in serbian)

I recently came back from my holidays in Skiathos and had a tremendous time. Normally I wouldn’t mention the finest beaches in Greece, the mouthwatering grilled black bream with lemon and olive oil and the smell of pine on those balmy summer nights. These are the things commonly associated with Greece and are to be expected.

Also to be expected, unfortunately, are small, pine effect, mosquito infested, plumbing affected accommodation … Not anymore, the Cape Pounta Villas are the finest on the island, with a commanding view, great pools and little touches such as the Korres products in the bathrooms, state of the art home entertainment and the most comfortable cocomat beds. The owner, Diamantis, has built these villas and furnished them beautifully and I would recommend them to anyone (which I am).

So if you are planning on going to Greece and there are upwards of four of you then it may be worth looking at these. Here is the link and an aerial view is above.

http://www.capepountavillas.com/

Gullwing doors. Hot. Fact.

I went to Las Vegas last week. Here is me in a photograph in one of the casinos, wearing a suit. Erm…that’s it.

Ahem. I have been absent from the blog of late; happily we’ve been very busy here at Blackbridge Inc. and while I’ve been up to all kinds of stuff from going to my first boxing match to seeing an awesome jazz gig to eating lobster in East London to watching Arsenal thoroughly not win the league, I have been not really writing about it.

But anyway, we are where we are. And I went to the National Portrait Gallery on Sunday. My co-visitor was mainly keen on taking photos of the ears of marble busts and examining any paintings of lace; that said,we both paid attention to a great exhibition they have of portraits from the first part of the 20th century - everybody from Kingsley Amis to General Montgomery, Walter Sickert to TS Elliot. I also saw a bust of Sir Noel Coward, taken from a face mask - he was a tiny man. Tiny.

Talking of ‘the Master’, I read over the weekend that the 19th of April is “record shop day”. Sad that it has come to that really; they’re dropping like flies. The best record shop I ever visited - or rather the shop with the best owner I ever met - was in Fargo, North Dakota, as in the Coen Brothers film. Previously, this guy had a shop in Minneapolis where I was living and a friend of mine knew him; he’d left the Twin Cities record community under a bit of a cloud in a dispute over the ownership of a Beatles Butcher cover. I was going up that way to see my then girlfriend’s parents and managed to persuade her that a two hour diversion followed by a similar amount of time looking through a room of dusty records was perfectly acceptable. What can I say? ‘4 Weddings and a Funeral’ had just come out in America and my stock has never been higher.

My friend had called ahead to say we were coming and in my girlfriend’s Honda Civic we headed north. A bit too slowly as it happened; we must have left late and were still miles away when my hard-fought diversion was cancelled despite my very best Hugh Grant-esq pleading. I called my friend when we got to Crookston (home of the world-famous Sugar Beet Museum) and he promised to ring Jim and say we’d come back on Sunday for definite. Sure enough, a couple of days later we left early and got to the place in a little strip mall in Fargo and sure enough Jim was there. A friendly fellow, grizzled hippy-type. “I’ve just got here myself, Keith said you were coming today so I went and got a twelve pack” - a twelve pack! - “while I waited for you”. I was glad he had; I went through his records while drinking his kindly offered bottles of Miller and found some brilliant stuff: Shamek Farrah’s ‘First Impressions’ on Strata East, a psych-rock Loading Zone album (that Youtube clip is WELL weird), a great Jackie and Roy album, lots of soul - hell, he even threw in three Dean Martin records for my girlfriend as “today is his birthday so they’re free”; it probably wasn’t his birthday.

What I also picked up and probably paid a couple of dollars for were some records as unlikely to end up in a North Dakota record shop in the midday sun as I was, two albums by the aforementioned Noël Coward, both of which - by coincidence - I had listened to while lounging on Saturday afternoon.

The Live in Las Vegas one is superior; it’s absolutely hilarious. And surprisingly risque for the time, I can’t recommend it enough. Best of all is his update of Cole Porter’s ‘Let’s Do It’ - I read a great biography of Porter while on holiday in Spain a few years ago and it listed quite a few of the wonderfully salacious unpublished lyrics from his more intimate live performances. I’ll perhaps not mention them all here.

Right. That’s it for now, more next week. Honest.

No, i am not referring to the tasty vodka-based cocktail or handy DIY tool. I am in fact referring to a label my friend and I were wrongly branded with upon our most recent trip to a motor-racing event. It seems people think that girls who profess an interest in motorsport are only interested in the drivers and not the cars. While I can’t deny that the eye candy isn’t a bonus, it is not the main reason for the somewhat recent development of my passion for all things car.

If you’d have told me five years ago I’d be paying to go and watch cars go round a track I would have laughed in your face (or more likely poured forth some torrent of expletives, as is my want). My best friend at uni, Annabelle, was a massive F1 fan, and still is, and I used to mock her come race day when i encountered her in the corridors of the halls of residence with cotton wool in her ears. This was, she explained, because she had recorded the race and didn’t want to inadvertently hear the result before she’d had a chance to watch it. ‘What a fool’ I mused. Little did I realise I would soon be acting in a similar fashion (minus the cotton wool) a few years down the line.

It was thanks to Annabelle’s love of the sport and another good friend of mine working in the industry that I started to actually pay more attention to F1 in particular to see what the fuss was all about and once I started watching I became addicted and now I am a self-confessed motor-racing geek. This addiction is what found me, up at 3.30am on Sunday, Red Bull in hand, very excited to watch Hamilton stick it to Ferrari in the first race of the season.

Whilst watching races on TV is all good fun, nothing compares to experiencing the F1 circus first hand. I can say that my trip (with my F1 buddy Annabelle) to the Italian grand prix at Monza in 2006 was without a doubt one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. Sitting on the pit straight, I experienced one of the most amazing sounds - an F1 car going full tilt literally 10 feet away. I thought my eardrums were going to burst but I was hooked! Not only are the cars awesome the fans are exceptionally friendly, like a happy community of like minded people. All the more so when we all stormed the track after the race and stood under the podium when Schumacher was spraying the champagne (you wouldn’t be allowed to do that in England…)

This September I’ll be returning to Monza and I can’t wait, not only will it bring back great racing memories, it will also make me smile as on our inaugural trip Annabelle and I (using our feminine wiles) managed to gatecrash the GP2 end of season party where a certain Mr Lewis Hamilton was partying hard having just won the GP2 championship and learnt that he was going to debut in F1 the very next year…