Disappointed with Mark Ronson, we squelched through the soupy mud over to the John Peel stage to watch Patrick Wolf. I have been reliably informed by a good friend that the man is a prize git and so I have been dutifully trying not to like him. Unfortunately his sprightly fiddle-playing, brassy vocals and impish dancing whips up a frenzy of happiness in the crowd and before I was able to stop myself, Patrick Wolf had put me in the magic position. I hung my head in shame.
Minifig and I didn’t really mean to catch John Fogerty, formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival, but while waiting for Rodrigo y Gabriela we inadvertently ended up dancing together, clutching our pear cider and giggling. John Fogerty was a treat, playing beefy guitar rock that drew an enormous cheer from the elderly crowd as Bad Moon Rising began to play. And I didn’t feel the least bit guilty clapping along to Rockin’ All Over the World. So there.
Sadly, despite having only two guitars, Rodrigo y Gabriela suffer a technical malfunction, meaning my plan to catch the beginning of their set and the end of Iggy and the Stooges is well and truly scuppered. Above the rain this is my disappointment of the festival. I miss the whole stage invasion at Iggy and the Stooges,Iggy falling over on stage and the opportunity to bounce around and shout. Boo. I also fall over in the mud near Jazz World and am rudely interrupted on the loo. Not the finst 90 minutes of my life. A potent reminder that you should always ditch your friends at festivals and go and see your favourite artists….except, then I would have missed John Fogerty. Hmmn. Such a quandry.
As the clock edged closer to midnight, minifig gallantly abandoned his plans to see Rodrigo y Gabriela so I could see Iggy. And okay, so I only saw one song, but it’s my favourite song, I Wanna Be Your Dog. It took all night for the face-breaking smile to leave my face. We also managed to see the end of Rodrigo y Gabriela. I can’t argue with their technical excellence, but I think an indoor Barbican-style gig would suit them much better as watching two tiny people play fiddly guitar from miles away is a bit dull actually.
Buoyed up by Iggy, minifig and I trundled up to Strummerville, Joe Strummer’s Glastonbury campfire, to raise a drink to Joe and other old friends and loved ones. Halfway through a bottle of wine we realised that actually, between us, we know a lot of dead people and perhaps it was best to call it a night. I fell asleep, dreaming of Iggy’s torso.
Bjork's Hyperballad. I personally think the album version is one of the most romantic songs ever written, while I don't think you could really say the same for this...although in hindsight, perhaps that's not such a bad thing.
On the way back to the tent I caught five minutes of Bright Eyes' set. Five minutes was definitely enough. B-o-r-i-n-g.
A drizzly Friday afternoon magically transformed itself into a pretty blissful evening, watching Martha Wainwright play to a sleepy crowd of probably only a few hundred people on the Park stage. When it comes to the younger Wainwrights I’m not a big fan of their songwriting, but when it comes to their voices, and them, I think they’re flipping great. Her dusky voice and endearing habit of making fidgety flamingo movements as she plays mark this, my first Martha Wainwright performance, as a highlight.
Rufus Wainwright is similarly charming, and his duet with Martha of Hallelujah is sublime. It’s slightly marred by my needing the loo every twenty minutes after one pint of lager, my only drink of the day, so I think that’s quite unfair, but I enjoyed the set. What the BBC hasn’t shown on its highlights section was the fact the sound people cut Rufus’s drag version of Get Happy when he ran out of time. Unanimous booing meant we had to watch the whole thing from the start again, and so the joke of watching his band prance around performing mock-Broadway dance routines wasn’t quite as funny the second time around. Still, he’s a charming man with a lovable warble.
By all accounts Arcade Fire were stunning, but standing further back from the soundstage minifig and I could barely hear anything at all. The Other Stage is a patchy place to watch any music. It gets the worst of the mud, has no natural incline and occasionally the music from The Queens Head pub threatens to swamp the sound. The crowd further back was composed entirely of people who knew none of the songs and were chatting; one of the perennial problems of festivals being that frequently, die-hard fans are competing for spaces with people waiting for the next act or suffering from too much inertia to move. It doesn’t make for a particularly electric atmosphere. After grumbling that we should have moved closer to the front, minifig and I eventually found a spot with enough room to fling our arms around each other and howl along to Arcade Fire like banshees. By the end of the show we are drunk and very happy. So, although I can’t say Arcade Fire were amazing, seeing Arcade Fire with minifig was.
Bjork was very late and we were both very tired. Minifig is disappointed by her minimalist rendition of Venus as a Boy (I loved it), and I am startled by her throbbing rave version of Hyperballad (minifig, along with basically everybody else, thought it was brilliant.) However, we both appreciated Bjork’ s confidence in screwing around with her best-loved songs and delivering a sparkling, colourful show that is nothing like sticking the CD on at home. And her voice is mind-blowing – it still scares me, but also delights me, that a human being can actually make sounds like that.
And if there is no guitar in a house, You know its owner, he cannot be trusted. And if there is no drumset in the office, Don't be surprised when the business get busted.
It’s amazing how good music, or just a good show can distract you from a great British downpour. Gogol Bordello exhibit ceaseless energy and enthusiasm and within about ten minutes (and admittedly, for about ten minutes) I am an evangelical gypsy punk. Phil Jupitus describes them as "a bit like The Clash having a fight with The Pogues in Eastern Europe.” I can’t really better that, except to ask you to imagine what that might look like live. New album Super Taranta is pretty infectious, although if you want a perfect piece of gypsy punk my money’s on Punk Rock Parranda from Multi Kontri Culti. Plus I fear I’m rapidly developing a bit of a crush on Eugene Hutz (v. cute accent).
It’s a shame that Amy Winehouse can’t provide enough of a distraction during the prehistoric rainfall. Her performance is so dull and lacklustre, peppered only with some laconic beehive flicking and manic eye-rolling that my fellow campers desert me and I am left to watch the end of her set alone. The band was good though; lots of Temptations-esque synchronised dancing, and I do sort of like her cover of MonkeyMan. I just wish she’d eat something; it might give her a bit more energy. Because despite her apparent indifference to the audience, watching Amy Winehouse sing made me realise how utterly natural her vocal talent is. She could be eye-poppingly good. But she wasn’t.
