GLASTONBURY 2002 – Sunday
Had woken up, in
the wee small hours, feeling deeply paranoid for no good (obvious) reason, too
uncomfortable (in brain, not just in body) to get back to sleep. Trying to
discern where the unzipping noises are coming from, wondering what I’d have to
biffing hand if there was an intruder, glad all my valuables were in the mogwai
tucked
into the sleeping bag with me. Drifted back off, telling myself not to be
silly… And thought nothing of it when I emerged from my tent, mid morning, and
saw that the zips weren’t where I’d left them. (There was a gap in the inner
ones, but I could’ve done that, and the two which stretch out to close the
outer porch flapping freer’n I’d left them, well they could’ve been kicked out
of place by flatfooted pedestrians…) Till Roger tells me he lost £30 from his
tent in the night. (And his library card. And his washing bag. Though they were
both found abandoned nearby.) He didn’t seem too phased (Spilt Milk principle
‘n’ all…), just a little creeped out. Someone had opened his tent (Velcro &
zips), been in his tent (torch?), taken things from his tent… and he hadn’t
woken up. (And had they been in mine? Had I woken up just after or just before?
In retrospect, was that my spider-sense tingling?)
I, jumpy at the sound of
pausing footsteps, slept with my – still unopened – glass jar of raspberry jam
to hand that night, anyway, just in case.
And so to move on to something altogether more pleasant…
Free in The Observer today, a Picture Dictionary which works on the
‘Point It!’ principle. Fifty-five pages of food ‘n’ fun ‘n’ transport photos
(“I would like to sit next to this man on a train”), two pages of vital phrases
(“hey, I can say ‘Phat’ in three languages”), seven maps of the world (“am I in
Olekminsk?”), and one full colour diagram of the human body (“help, I have a
pain in my super-imposed uterus”). Observer readers need now never bother with
learning 
that tricksy foreign mumbo-jumbo. (Well, apart from
the 21 key words & phrases at the back of the book, which include: “I like
boys” (“Ich mag Jungen”) – no mention of girls – “I can’t open the minibar”
(“No se abre el minibar”), and the ever-vital “Do you collect stickers?” (Vous
collectionez les étiquettes?”) Now, all Observer readers will be fine, if they
ever find themselves in need of chopsticks / empty wicker chairs / occupied
wicker chairs / individual coffee beans / rare birds’ eggs / a baby warthog /
two ears of corn / seaweed / a coconut with a straw / a French toilet / a
washing line replete with old underwear & saggy tights / a room with a view
of prairie horses / a saw / a cable-car / a baby octopus / a worried Japanese
lady in a life-vest / an off-road Desert Range-Rover / a motorbike in the middle
of a field / a traffic jam (of identical cars) / a Chinese woman with a bucket
/ Rizlas / Anne Rice’s ‘Memnoch’ / a snapshot of 18 old people / unsealed glue
/ a very empty cinema dedicated to Westerns / a crap tennis partner / spanners
/ a tiny Cheetah enclosure / hypodermic needles / an occupied phone box / a
baby. Phew.
Not only that, this morning, but the Q-Spy game,
& excellent eavesdropping potential too… The lad in the tent behind mine
spent about an hour trying to coerce his dad into a
‘do-we-pack-up-now-and-leave-mid-evening-cos-all-today’s-bands-are-boring…?’
conversation, but every plaintive wail of “what are we going to doooo?” was met
with a less than satisfactory reply. Like: “we’ll sing Rolf Harris’ ‘Sun
Arise…’” Or: “we’ll think about eating some nuts”. Or: “we’ll pretend to be
German”. The father, even without such evidence, is in No Fit State to be
answering taxing questions; as I was co-ordinating my breakfast, I heard him
ask for 
“my poodle”, pause, apologise, and re-phrase the
request to include the word “shorts”.
Half-eleven, and Nigel
Roger & I are making our way to the mainstage – via the ice-cream van – me
idly contemplating whether I’m getting tanned around the wrists, or whether
I’ve just developed an immovable dirt-ring. There in time to catch the end of
the colour-coordinated AVALONIAN FREE STATE CHOIR, harmonising to a wholly
indifferent crowd (every face registering little more’n blank patience).
Everyone here is vantage-point waiting for a certain Australian, and most are
taking more pleasure from the signs and banners currently being unfurled than
the terribly earnest choir onstage[1].
From where we stand, I can see the pigeon on a stick, a TIE ME DOWN ROLF!
exhortation, a silver dog on a stick, a ROLF I’M PREGNANT, a large pair of
pants on a stick, a somewhat worrisome ROLF I WANT TO DIDGERIDOO YOU, a Yoda on
a stick, and at least one Rolferoo. (Can you tell who it is yet…?)
Eventually, after a good
half an hour of stage co-ordination and ten more impatient minutes of the band trickling
onstage and warming up (they weren’t even milking it, just pissing about), out
steps the man we’ve all been waiting for. ROLF HARRIS. 71 years old (not that
you’d know it from his outfit) and still dancing. The only act to be distracted
from his job by a banner declaration of pregnancy, or the sight 
of two eight foot kangaroos (the Icarus
Theatre) bouncing through the crowd, and the only man capable of leading an
entire field into a group rendition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. So bugger the papers
currently claiming he’s only on the bill so as to give ironic students the
chance to declare him their festival highlight; he was actually bloody good.
Very entertaining. And in good voice. Our Rolf did a (deliberately
out-of-season) uptempo Christmas song, ‘Two Little Boys’ (naturally), a couple
of aboriginal numbers, The Hollies’ ‘He Ain’t Heavy…’ and an ode to coffee
(demanding a proper cup of coffee from a proper coffee pot, no less). Even the
wobble-board came out for an airing. Proceedings were ended with a
didgeridoo-backed encore of ‘Sun Arise’ – just as it did – and a patriotic
version of ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport’, which consisted of those five words,
sung by we all, to the tune of ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’.
“Darling, I was BEAMING,
truly, just like someone’s mum…”
(©
Geoff Pugh)
Eschewing the chance to watch the remainder of the World Cup on the mainstage big screens, and still happily humming about jumbucks, I set off at a pace towards the Other Stage. For some passionate guitar-smithery, courtesy of the exceedingly attractive MY VITRIOL (who seemed far more chuffed with their having an audience at all – when we could be watching Brazilians in little yellow shorts – than with the repeated declarations of love hollered from the mosh). Tore into the singles, pinwheeled through a couple of album tracks, and ended the set on a coruscating feedback meltdown, as is their wont.
Newly fired up, and with a
Super Furries shaped hole in my afternoon, I decided to go off exploring.
Fuelled by milk. (Had spotted the cow-painted tractor just as it was pulling
out of the Other Stage field, but it being a tractor, I was able to catch up,
and make my purchase 
keeping pace behind it.)
Perambulated through the
Greenfields a bit. Moseyed past the tepee field. Managed to find the only bit
of mud in the entire campsite (and still get dust in my eyes as I was
squelching my way down the path). Decided all this walking nonsense was much
too much effort, and that I should take my chances in the Circus Tent. Which is
how come I ended up trying to sit leaning against a pole and be
comfortable, watching a lady spin plates on their rims while repeatedly yelling
“wow!” at intervals of up to 17 seconds (that’d be the self-impressed BROADWAY
AND CO’S ECCENTRIC ACTS then yeah), followed by a small child getting a round
of applause just for raising her arms (they’re a reasonably amenable crowd,
this lot), and the KNAVE OF CLUBS, who was a juggler, and did indeed juggle
with firey clubs for his finale, but he did it in a spangly blue jacket on a
unicycle. After a brief interlude in which the
magician-cum-comedian-cum-compere (Paul Zenon has little to fear from the
competition as yet) attempted & failed to get us going with a bit of
Forsyth-style interaction – “I say ‘nice to see you’ and you say…” “Fuck off!”)
– we were presented with JULES AND HER FLYING PANTS. In which a woman busied
herself 10’ above the stage sticking appendages out of the holes in a pair of
giant elastic pants which were suspended from a trapeze-cum-washing-line.
(During which I found myself checking my watch every minute, because I’m
strictly only filling in time before I need to get myself around to the second
stage and it’s highly possible I’d find a burger van that’s more entertaining…)
(sorry – too much to resist:)
And
from one loads of pants to…
Next up, the refreshingly impressive BLACK EAGLES who came
tumbling out, diving straight into a tri-corner routine of cartwheels leaps and
backflips. (The competence of professionals! On the Circus stage!) The fluidity
of bodies in motion, the intricate grace of their ring-diving, 
the chance to see men do a flaming limbo;
I was loath to leave. But I had a date on the other side of the site, with the
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYLE CLUB. Who were just like the album. In that they
faithfully reproduced their debut record live onstage, and were mostly hidden
from my view by machinery. Ahaha.
Standing at the side,
though right at the front, there seemed to be little energy I could find myself
caught up in; no vim from up there, no fervoured dancing from out here[2],
and little passion on either side, just mutual respect. Which left me with
little more’n a fine musical score to my inner distractions, ‘…Rock ‘n’ Roll
Punk Song’ a soundtrack to my lengthy daydreaming over Little Chef milkshakes…
Purchased the ingredients
necessary for a chip butty (from a woman so flummoxed by a request for a bun
she initially forgot to add the potato-related extras), and settled myself into
the barrier-crowd to the right of the
Pyramid Stage. Ready and waiting for Soul King ISAAC HAYES. Honing my
unrealistic Hayes expectations as I – LittleMiss Carbohydrate – stuffed my face.
I think I was actually convinced it would be Chef who would appear on stage.
Maybe Chef with the face of Shaft. Not a thin Barry White, coolly hidden by
piano and shades, content to pound out songs of lurve surrounded by a phalanx
of musicians all proving exceedingly competent but in no way eye-catching. And
for all the schmoove-lovin’ slickness, it only took half an hour for me to be
getting fidgety (and cold, and hungry, and mneaymnyeahmnyeah…). So I wandered
off. Missing the ‘South Park’ songs by minutes, I’ve since been informed.
(Nigel meanwhile, who’d settled down – beers in hand – to watch Hayes from a
little further back, and had found himself nodding off with the soporific
love-funk lullabies, had managed to wake up just as the stage giggled their way
through ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’. Sod.)
Now I know it’s a shocking
oversight, but today was my first introduction to the live excitement that is
BELLE & SEBASTIAN. (It’s taken me a faintly preposterous 6 or 7 years to
get round to seeing them, though I’ve been a fan since the days of Mark &
Lard’s Graveyard Shift; well, I’m a sucker for any band with an Isabelle (or an
Isobel) amongst their number[3]…)
Here today they did excellently in justifying my long-term affection; the
ensemble cast uniting in mellifluous sweetness, with extra backing singers and
recorder wielders wandering on and off as required. (Bless ‘em.) Stuart
bouncing around, dapper suited, thanking us for being there, 
playing a bit of keepy-up onstage, then
losing the ball to the crowd. The chance to play at being A Proper Rockstar
clearly too much for one band member, who can’t help himself, and yells out a
rabble-rousing “Alright Glastonbury!” (swiftly followed by an equally well
received “How y’all feelin!?”) Even the crowd I was amongst were nice; the fans
– beyond the madman in the sun visor trying to get a mosh-pit going while
wielding two open cartons of Just Juice, and the girl in front of me waving a
furry snake around with the tail at face-flicking height – are mostly just as sweet
and seemingly shy as the band. (Mostly. One man behind me only seeing fit to
join in with the singing when it got to ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’, with a
perfectly timed yell of “You're constantly updating your hit parade of
your TEN BIGGEST
WANKS!”) My highlight was a bumbly ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’ – beautifully done,
with an appearance by Monica Queen to do the vocals justice 
– but for five other audience members
(two guys, three girls) I’d guess it was being cherry-picked by Stuart to dance
onstage[4],
one girl (knee-socks!) even sharing his vocal duties. Shaking their stuff to
‘Legal Man’, and then back in the crowd to watch the finale; a cover of ‘The
Boys Are Back In Town’. Which was fabulous. No really. Belle & Sebastian
did Thin Lizzy. AND it worked.
Moving – slowly, so very
bottleneck slowly – out of the field, I spot Roger. Who makes the mistake of
uttering the polite social nicety “how are you?” Well. I have “bag neck”
(muscle twinges), “barrier elbow” (bruisings) and “festival knee” (aching from
lengthy upstanding), and I just want to sit down somewhere warm, drinks in
hand, and let the entertainment come to me. So I do. Bugger Groove Armada, Zero
7, Rod Stewart and Air; I’m going to the Cabaret Tent, and I’m not moving till
Woody Bop Muddy. Not even the promise of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci can shift me.
I arrive just as MITCH
BENN – a long-haired beardie very much grateful for the newly fashionable
MiddleEarthian look – is settling into the beginning chords of ‘Scary Weirdo’.
Now (unfortunately?) a theme song he is known by. Along with ‘Crap Shag’. But
even though Benn is an adept musician – after the growling Burt ChewBaccarach
number, he starts strumming along in time to the music resounding from outside
– he’s also fairly nifty at the between-song 
banter. He is, after all, a man confident
that Californian teenagers battling the undead on trains tend to be confined to
the Buffy car. A man who finds it faintly suspicious that Ozzy Osbourne should
play Buck House, and for the palace (or at least, a palace cupboard) to then
spontaneously combust. (S’not quite ‘rivers of blood’, but still…) A man whose
initial reaction to mentions of a ‘Terrorism Bill’ was to imagine it being
divvied up by a pernickety house-share (“All of this anthrax is Dave’s!”).
Unafraid of chucking a bit of politics or big-scale thinking in to the set (as
well as a demonstration of the reggae direction Motörhead would inevitably go
down if they recorded in the Caribbean…), which was quite refreshing after a
weekend of safer (typically more personal) material. Having saluted the
determination of would-be asylum seekers[5],
he outlines his plan for determining who gets to live on this green and
pleasant land: “Deport the entire
population of Britain to Pyong Yang – and if you make it back, you can stay.”
And to finish us off, an encore repeat of ‘Crap Shag’. But in the style (and
with the sonorous backing) of Jimi Hendrix; the lyrics became lost beneath the
wail of the guitar, but what an end…
Somehow the return of
VENUS, the Diablo twiddler from Amsterdam with the tights that don’t match the
dress, didn’t quite entertain as much as a man with a tiny guitar impersonating
a 
Yoda vicar for his dream Jedi-wedding. (But
then the ultimate comedy weapon is the ability to do a decent impression of
Yoda – clerical or no – once you have that, the audience is yours.)
Venus was
followed by the re-emergence of CAREY MARX, our compere, who tries (and fails)
to enlist audience sympathy for a childhood tormented by playground name
rhymers. Carey (the “hairy scary canary”), now anxious to feel the love in the
room, asks if anyone would be willing to do a group hug. On the count of three.
“One…two…three…aaaaha.” And at least four people actually stand up. They are
urged into the middle of the tent, and suddenly there’s a steady trickle of
people all willing to clasp a stranger, stepping over bodies to join the
huddle-mass. Carey, presumably delighted by the Power Of Suggestion, 
gets
the huggers to shuffle down to the front of the stage. So as he – and an
eight-year old called Jacob – can leap onto them and crowd-surf. The crowd,
bless, actually stay in place to catch them, and then the other children who
also scramble to the stage to join in. Carey starts scanning the room for a
really big fat bloke to make the dive, curious as to the limits of his
arm-waving troupe. Mitch Benn appears onstage behind him. Declines to do the
run up. But does launch himself at the knot of people. Who do catch him. Most
impressive.
“Baa baa black sheep / Have you any wool? /
Course not you bastard / I’m burnt to a
crisp.”
And welcome to the world of STEVE GRIBBEN. Also armed with a
geetar and the ability to 
both
read newspapers and find the funny, though he looks substantially more like
Barney Rubble (and knows it) than Mitch Benn. He began his set with a
Coldplay-inspired ode to nicotine stains. (Mm-hmm. Yes. To the tune of
‘Yellow’. Clearly.) And inbetween the elegy to cannabis premiered earlier
(‘Reefer Madness’) and a musical call to mischief (he’d like to see more
schools putting up notices in their windows announcing ‘only two newsagents at
a time’), he takes the time to boggle at our nation’s dyslexic lynch-mobs
(haranguing paediatricians, honestly) and suggest that mums, with their
astonishing ability to find ANY lost item, should be flown into Afghanistan by
the plane-load to put their skills to Osama bin Laden related use. All of which
ended with the sight of a child in front of me dancing like Suggs to a song
which had lyrically deteriorated by its end to basically just consist of the
choice lines: “fuck the Queen Mother, la la la la…” Gribben gets it all from
his dad, apparently[6]…
“Oh little town of Bethlehem / How still you sleep tonight /
That’s because we’ve shot every fuckin’
thing / With our telescopic sights.”
Yesterday, after the Balloon Dance had gone so horribly wrong but
before Craig could be so very closely shaved, a naked Malcolm Hardee had been
joined onstage by a naked Venetian, who had joined with him in singing ‘Nessun
Dorma’. Yesterday, the Venetian had failed to hit the high-notes properly.
Today, a fully attired ALESSANDRO apologised for that. (Though not for the
nudity. Or today’s – quickly abandoned – bonnet.) He gets on with the singing,
and high-note hitting, but I’m fairly swiftly distracted by Roger pointing out
that the man’s balding head is gently steaming under the stage-lights. As with
yesterday’s ‘Craig Campbell’s balls go up and down as he talks’ observation,
this is both undeniable, worryingly hypnotic and faintly alarming.
JACK RUSSELL was on next.
A man who I’ve never seen naked. Though I’ve also never seen him with so little
hair. But he is only recently shorn. (He went to a very niice hair salon, and
asked them to do something funky. “Obviously, what he heard me say was ‘can you
make me look like a baby monkey?’”) Other pertinent Russell information is that
he is delighted to be in a field. (“I’m in a FIELD!”[7])
And at a festival that’s scally-free; no-one, 
as yet, having asked “is that your tent?
it’s not? oh, then it must be mine…” He is also convinced that the best way to
smuggle drugs through customs would be up your pet’s arse – any untoward
sniffer-dog attention could thus be easily explained. (Dogs, it must be noted,
are fine unless you have a particularly large delivery to make. “I’m on my way
to Marrakesh…I need a baboon…”) Audience members, already charmed, are easily
won round by this; when he’s not gleefully reminding us where we are (“You’re
in a FIELD!”), the material he’s using is really very solid. (Possibly because
he’s had a full year to be polishing it…) Witness his challenge to the
life-philosophy of David Ike: “If you really believe lizards are in charge of
the world, how come they’re still in charge in winter?” Or his assertion, based
on their being happy to devotedly follow you while declaring their love, that:
“Having a dog is like having a best friend who’s permanently pissed…” Before
leaving (“I’m in a FIELD!”), his final gift to us is a physical challenge to
alternately raise the thumb on one hand, while pointing the forefinger of the
other, and vice versa. Which meant that, as Carey hands over the compering
reins to CRAIG CAMPBELL once more, the audience are half-listening to his
exhortations to sew their comatose friends to soft furnishings, while subtly
attempting to prove themselves the superior life-form on the planet and make
their synchronised digits go in opposite directions…
Two drugs-casualty
festival stories, courtesy of Jack Russell.
1) Stephen K. Amos would be compering
this evening, but instead he’s looking after a friend who’s in need of a good
long rest in a quiet place. As was indicated by the friend ringing him up and
wailing “I’m lost!” – and Amos being able to retort “I can see you.”
2) Russell’s favourite festival sighting (of all time) is an empty
wheelchair being determinedly pushed along, either by a man who’d suddenly
regained the ability to walk (which is a lovely happy ending), or by a man who
hadn’t yet noticed he was missing his cargo. Which would mean that somewhere
out there was a person lying on the grass, unable to get up, with people
side-stepping around their prostrate body sniffily thinking “well THEY’VE
overdone it”, believing the plaintive yelps of “I can’t move my legs” to be the
result of a chemical overdose. And that telling people “I was on a wheelchair”
would simply mean there would be a small percentage of the festival crowd
eagerly scouring the site for someone dealing in ‘wheelchairs’, a drug so
potent you lose all feeling below the knees…
I’m not sitting in exactly
the same spot as I 
was yesterday (or the day before),
although I’ve stuck to the ‘down the front on the left’ ruling. This helps
lessen the feeling of déja-vu induced by a repeat sighting of OLÉ. (Them three
Mexicans, with the guitars and double-jointed abilities.) Motion for motion,
the routine is exactly the same… until the one who looks least likely to be an
actual Mexican (think Stan Laurel in a leather hat) fumbles his catch during
the three-way guitar juggling, and the result is a large chip taken from the
base of the instrument. It being buggered, they decide to smash it up
completely, and forsake the guitar ping-pong for the chance to, um, have a
drumming competition using the little miked-up wooden boxes used as seats. As
you would…
Splinters swept away, and the stage was given over to the BASTARD SON OF TOMMY COOPER. Who’s a skinny Welshman in a Fez, stripey boxers, and little else, with an astonishing preoccupation with an empty bin (“EMPTY BIN!”), a prosthetic penis with which he can wee on us from on high, the ability to catch a bullet (or a blood capsule…) between his teeth and a love of sword-swallowing. Ably assisted by Minnie Cooper (d’you see? Mini!), a woman with far stronger nipples than I.
He finished his act by
attaching himself to some sort of electricity generator, sticking up an
electrode up his arse, and managing to act as a conductor for his own headgear.
You’d be right to ask what could possibly follow that. The answer you’d get
would be this:
It’s, um, a man throwing eggs[8].
Craig Campbell re-emerges,
apologises for introducing the previous act as plain ‘Tommy Cooper’ (there are
several pertinent reasons not to do that, not least the one that features a
corpse), does as asked by an audience member and hurls hard-boiled eggs at the
enemy of the man who’d brought such a picnic to a midnight comedy show, and
then, still 
being
taunted by yells of “moose fucker!” (and people requesting he say “aboot”, in
that peculiar Canadian style), takes it upon himself to mock those persons who
have intimate sexual relations with docile farmyard animals. (“Anyone can fuck
a sheep; a moose has got to LIKE ya.”) And explains to us why no Canadian ever
choose to insult their countrymen with such cries: “They know what a moose is,
they wouldn’t bother a guy who fucks one.”
Followed by JACKIE T,
again, who twiddles a glowing Diablo around the darkened stage, again, in front
of an art-student film projection, again, to the tune of ‘Pull Up To My Bumper
Baby’. Again. Happily brief, though.
Craig Campbell returns to
the stage, imparts a little more life-wisdom (if a Scot tells you he’s going to
give a “pus full of heeders” you’re about to be headbutted by a man effectively
declaring “I’m so confident in my fighting abilities my plan is to attack you
with my face”), and, before he can leave us, is confronted with a heckle
supreme: “I used to fuck guys like you in prison.” Which, at the very least,
makes a change from the moose taunts.
CHARLIE CHUCK comes onstage, gurns, yells the word ‘donkey’ a lot,
and waves his plank around. To rapturous applause and general hysterics. Which
left me with the blinking feeling that I’d joined the film an hour too late. Or
had thought I could survive in Thailand without a phrase-book, just The
Observer ‘Point It’ Dictionary. Or was the only one at a funeral not wearing a
Sombrero[9].
He’s an old man with a pliable face, inordinately frizzily vertical hair and a
tendency to shout in the style of a grizzled tramp, who believes that you
should bark at your cat to teach it a second language. Maybe if I’d been
peloothered (it would have all made sense). Maybe if I’d seen him before (I
could have snuggled into the familiarity, à la ‘Fast Show’). Maybe if I had a
thing for donkeys (um…). As it was, I was mostly disconcerted (though I already
knew it was inadvisable to give a baby booze), and by the end convinced that
the man is the comedic equivalent of a pigeon on a stick…
And onwards…
PHIL NICHOL, a man who used to play with Corky & The Juice
Pigs (Sean Cullen et al) – yup, ANOTHER Canadian – ambles onstage,
guitar in hand, and proceeds to mess about, in a manner most amenable, for
about half an hour. He plays us ‘21st Century Boy’ (straight), and a
snatch of ‘Kum By Yah’ (which doesn’t catch on). Despite being introduced by a
jealous Campbell as something of a genius, Nichol only allows us tantalising
glimpses of his sharp comedic abilities – describing the eyes-down woollen man
wandering through the tent as a beachcomber (“there’s no logs in here buddy”) –
eschewing joke-telling for the chance to start a fight with an audience member
who comes readily comes onstage only to find he’s the one being chased, by a
predatory Nichol who’s rapidly losing his clothing (though with your trousers
round 
your ankles you can’t move too fast).
Rish, the stage invader, picks up the guitar to defend himself against Nichol’s
advancing advances. Somehow this ends with Nichol, on his knees, berating his
newfound sidekick for forgetting their release word… and then a big Hollywood
steamy-close-up kiss. (The stage invader returns to his place lickettysplit…)
A request comes in for ‘I’m The Only Gay Eskimo’, from the other side of the room. And being pliable to suggestion (drunk) he acquiesces. Thus does the Cabaret Tent ring to a plaintive tale of furs, lust, snow and silent throbbing longing on fishing trips. In the style of the Proclaimers (upbeat), Bob Dylan (incoherent), Billy Bragg (strident), Morrissey (plaintive), Elvis (wiggly) and Nirvana (breathy-screamy all at once). Inordinately good for one so wasted…
And the last
stage-excitement of my festival was a haphazard gaggle of Canadians (and
possibly the odd non-Canadian interloper) ignoring the crowd’s indifference
(and sleepy bemusement) to lead each other in a rousing version of the Canadian
national anthem.
>>> MONDAY
Last revised: 13/07/02