ireallylovemusic goes to glastonbury - 2005 - part 2
saturday
despite many many hours mulling over the schedule for saturday, apart from the headline act on the john peel stage, the oh so glorious go! team, and my current guitar totin' munchkins, the departure, very little really stood out. so, upon my slightly later awakening hour on saturday morning, i, along with one of my co-festival bravehearts, decided to go for a meander and check the sights and sounds of the far reaches of the site. we catch the time wasting queues for budget busting rubber boots, the lakes of sloppy mud preventing people spending their money, and spot the emergency lorry of wellies supplies (millets own helicopter had been used to get them on site i heard). all non-music related, and therefore of little interest? yup. except, we happened to chance upon john 'goldblade' robb on our travels. a man with whom i have a certain amount of history.
ok, that' may be over stretching things, slightly. i read his playlouder column, and listen to goldblade when the mood demands some fired up punk rock-n-soul. however, a few moments of nerdy music related chat later and suddenly i am in the mood for some splendid noisy upstarts - john could fire up a rotting corpse to form a punk band should the need ever arise.
what a great start to the day.
following this early high, my fellow adventurer decides to check the location of the cider bus (just in case its actually been moved) while i head, unsurprisingly, for the john peel tent. as i arrive morning runner are finishing off their set with their first single, 'work', to rapturous applause. no matter how hard i try to ignore the voice in my head, it really is the waterboys up on stage isn't it ? i must check the credits once more for mike scott involvement. still, it's cracking stuff. they will definitely be higher up the bill next year. now to the days first big surprise : art brut. i don't listen to radio these days, so while i don't know their songs, even i am aware of this lots perverse pop ways. they write songs about lost underdogs ('these animal menswear' - best song title ever? quite possibly), and generally don't adhere to the basic rules. so when a basil faulty styled frontman (eddie to his mates i hear), is stood next to a spiky haired power punk hero, i realise that this is a motley crue on a mission. as always, the crowd are ready for some serious action, and eddie delivers. he regularly barks at us, ordering us to form a band. and i think he actually means it., he tells tales about his little brother, wanking, and generally makes a bloody nuisance of himself to the lighting crew. the man is a hero. and i realise that i love him and his twisted updated britpop ways.
next on the list it's the rakes. i feel obliged to see if the hype is worthy, and if moshi moshi saw fit to release a single by them, then there has to be something going on. they saunter on stage and look as if they have come straight out of a nu-era post punk stage school. all the right haircuts and clothes, my hackles rise. luckily, the music is spot on. tight, urgent and with all the correct non-right-angles in place. i recognise the tracks off the one single i have, but everyone else seems to know everything else. i feel old. if the band can get their debut out before franz ferdinand release their second album, then the rakes should indeed get some of the action they so obviously crave. weirdly, i think that their current record label have a lot of hopes riding on them, as towards the end of the set i am handed a credit card with the rakes's picture on it. now that's serious promotion - took bowie years to get to that level of financial clout. the flexible bugger still hasn't paid off my ebay bill yet, but i am working on it
oh, one little side note here. the rakes finished at about 10 minutes past 4. those of us in the john peel tent never joined hands at 4pm as the rest of the festival did. instead the tents long haired compeer urged us to do something useful instead - like stop buying nescafe. the man is a hero.
now that i am in the mood for this nouveau post punk noise, it's time for my second choice cuts of the day the departure. i have listened to the album a lot in recent months, the ,mixture of darkly defined pop edges and quite awesome guitar noise has become a major playlister at ireallylovemusic hq. but can they do it live? they certainly go through the motions and the noise is pretty damn tight and right. but unlike art brut, or maximo park the lead singer just doesn't have the same stage presence. maybe, for once, youth is not on their side. however, i ain't giving up on them just yet.
feeling a little overdosed on the whole guitars and noise, i spot a sizeable gap in the schedule, so i decide it's time for a break. i wander off into the twilight zone, one that involves a lot of cider and playlouder.
amazingly, i emerge from the zone just in time to check out my raison d'etre. the go! team are about to hit the stage. i am so ready for the party groove my nerves are probably as wired as the bands, having seen them a few months ago, i am ready to shout along to ninja's call-response clichés like i just dont care, i am ready to feel the bass ooomph that the band excel at, and i know it'll all be over far too quickly.
the band come on stage to an almighty roar.
let's go. it's time for another glastonbury moment.
but it doesn't happen. very quickly it becomes apparent that something just isn't right. vocals are low in the mix, cant hear the bass lines. and where are the overloaded loopy samples? people are looking around to see if someone is holding the answer in their neighbours hoodie. when suddenly the band walk off stage. the party mood is broken, and the crowd are suddenly regretting not going along with their girlfriend/boyfriend to see the chris martin joke revue. a message is flashed up on screen, advising of technical difficulties
the bastards don't even capitalise the message. how cheap is that?
when the go! team do come back on, the crowd are instantly back on course, but regrettably the magic has gone. and so has the volume, my heart sinks. i love this band. and i know that tonight meant a lot to all concerned. luckily though the final track (i dont do track names!) puts a smile on all our faces, but it took some doing.
so lets jump ahead in time and find out what happened :
"the front of house mixing desk packed up, hence why the band had to go off. from then on they had to mix from the stage, which meant mixing from the monitors which was obviously not going to work. also there was a sound limiter in the john peel tent which worked fine for week as piss shite like XXX or yyy but not for the go! team."
as told to me by the bands record label
feel that pain.
and so saturday finished. well not quite, but that dear reader is another story.
next up : sunday !