GLASTONBURY
‘98 - Saturday
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
Alice - “The Ice Warriors need press just as much as pop-starrs, you know.”
HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY:
Drugstore. Though they could’ve thrown caution (and chances
of survival) to the wind and played ‘Offside’. Ah well.
In the
night, Elaine’s tent was slashed. Her watch was taken, and the walkman from out
of her ears as she was sleeping. Woke up to this, and to water. Neither of
which could truly be remedied. The tent inside is damp, and puddling along the
Vickie-side. Even the application of a furry coat as kitchen towel equivalent
does not wholly correct the situation. There’s another reason why I truly hate
camping. ( Beyond the baseness of it, the unclean cramped living, the shivering
nights, the complex Houdini wriggling required to change trousers... ) We are
at the mercy of the weather, all the time. Cloud-breaks are met with cheers
which drown out the band onstage. The entire campsite becomes stricken with
Seasonal Affective Disorder, for the entire festival duration. Even if you’re
somewhere dry during a rainstorm, you’re still worried about the liquid state
of your tent, ‘pon your return...
‘I lay awake in the soggy darkness loud with rain.’
( Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
The morning saw a pause in the falling
deluge, and 
the opportunity was grasped upon by our small group to
go a wandering about the place. ( Foolish, in retrospect. Too much mud. Too many
fat muddy vehicles on your paths. Too many looming clouds, appearing SOLELY
because they know you’re out without your anorak. Though, on the plus-side (
there always has to be one ), we met a Flaming Star at a cross-roads (
irritatingly not as muddy as he ought ) AND I got 2 v.cool t-shirts out of the
wander. Best then to treat the exercise as a friendly shopping excursion than a
deliberate plot to muddy my fresh socks. Buggery. ) And then we came back
around lunch-time. Astonishingly good timing, in retrospect. Because five
minutes later, Alex appeared. White feather boa, leather coat, tiara.
Phwee-hee. ( So we both kinda wanna look like Nicky Wire then yeah? )
We arranged
to meet for Kenickie. He went off to see A. I, despite acknowledging my own
vague dislike for them ( they wear SHORTS ), was dancing around Richard’s tent
to ‘Bad Idea’ ( oh for guitar-songs with only 2 words )... If I liked shouty
noise-core rawk with deftly hidden choons, I’d have been down the front. As it
was, I retreated in the comfort of Becca ( & Claire & Claire &
Elaine )’s tent when it started raining a couple of songs into their set. And
was joined shortly after by Alex, whom sat, bedraggled, in the porch for a bit.
Becca did her leg-exercises. Claire
tried to sleep. Alex was accused of being an axe-murderer. We all
realised his feather boa smelt like chickens. Oh happy days...
‘Rain fell and fell.’
( Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
And then the
elements were braved for the melodic disco-funk of KENICKIE.
Johnny X now
graded forward to guitar, but still looking really shifty. Now he reminds me of
Kenny ( as in ‘ohmygodtheykilled’ ), but in a blue hooded top, not orange.
Lauren’s
mouse-ears somehow made her haircut suit her face better.
Emmy-Kate still
reminds me of Zia from The Dandy Warhols.
And Marie
now looks like Kaste Winslet with 
brown hair ( as opposed to blond ).
Oh, and the
music was good too.
Most every
song they did which included the word ‘sunshine’ made it do just that.
There should
be a Kenickie stage, at every festival. That’d be lovely. Yeah. Cool.
Idlewild
cancelled. I only know that now, writing this up, here. Which makes me feel
SOOO much better about choosing the lazy option of staying put through HEADSWIM
so as to get a good place for the next band on. Where Idlewild would have been
a sticky trek for sonic pummelling and the chance to see a man fall off a
stage, Headswim were just a lesson in Bush-rock. ( Lead singer to fancy, lyrics
of depth, troubled past, good hair. )
They weren’t
dull, they weren’t exciting. They just weren’t anything.
The musical
equivalent of flat Sainsbury’s own diet no-sugar cola.
Perfectly
legitimately defined as a drink, but not something you’d want to try more’n
once.
Best move
swiftly on to the hot chocolate warmth of MARION then, yeah...?
What can I
say ? The set was lovely. Effervescing skinny-fit rock ‘n’ rollers blasting out
their calls-to-arms and calls-for-solace, illuminating the weak afternoon in
optimistic sunglasses. Woo-hoo.
‘He was as tall as I, and slender, with a clear, open, and
beautiful face.’
( Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
Set over,
and on to the Signing Tent. I had been going to go to The Dance Tent - I wanted
to see if the Scratch Perverts were as good as their name - but for some
reason, didn’t. As it turns out, this was very much a good thing. On this
afternoon, in preparation for the coming sets of the early evening, it had been
decided by officials to try to remove the liquid mud from the floor of the Dance
Tent. Using one of the giant vacuum-cleaner type machines similarly used for
the clearing of The Portaloos. ( Can you guess what’s coming next ? ) Someone
in authority pressed ‘blow’ instead of ‘suck’, and lo, human effluent covering
the Dance Tent. I’m so glad I went in there on the first day. ( Particularly
given my predisposition towards declaring myself to be ‘kicking funnky shit’. )
Aiieeeeeeeeeee.
And so The
Signing Tent. Now, I don’t like doing this. I hate to have to queue for an
audience with a person. ( I would rather miss them than have to be introduced
and forever set-in-mind as someone willing to queue for an audience. ) My only
exceptions are for people I’ve already met. But I still didn’t wanna see
Placebo.
And I
didn’t.
We queue for
about 45 minutes, shivering in the cold and confusing passers-by ( we looked to
have joined an immobile line of people solely for the joy of standing still )
before my wants get the better of me, and I disappear off to see THEAUDIENCE
with Alex.
Now this is a band I’m still undecided on. ( Even
having seen them live. ) Are they worthy of more than just a passing interest,
a bargain-bin rescue job? On the grounds of some of the songs, yes. But I
haven’t yet seen them soar above ‘reasonable’.
Their
closest comparisons could probably be made with Dubstar, because of the quiet
attention the songs and the singer demands of the audience. Sophie is something
of a china-doll of a lead singer, but with a steel-dipped porcelain voice;
delicate and elegant, but with a strong cold ring.
Throughout
most of the set I found myself playing out the what-ifs of the band supporting
Catatonia ( or No Doubt. Or, I suppose, Garbage ), and having the male band
members swap lead singers, see if anyone noticed. Or wanted to. I know that
Catatonia isn’t the property of Cerys alone. And that theaudience’s lyrics are
not the sole fruit of Sophie’s mind. But in both cases, the lead singer
outshadows the others. Well, mostly. For me, the most entertaining aspect of
theaudience’s set was the guitarist whom had obviously had too much of the
heady Glastonbury atmosphere, and was doing his best to upstage Sophie’s cool
by hopping around behind her. Heh-heh. At least he looked happy to be up there.
As did
DRUGSTORE. And with them, everyone was happy for them to be up there. Even the
security guards Isabel picked out to sing to / humiliate / titillate.
Short set,
but the best of the day - the songs were fair zipped through ( VROOM - there
goes Monde Cane! WHHOSH - d’you see Sober? ) but the energy was infectious, the
band glowing as bright as their Brazilian t-shirts. And where else would you
find folks cheering on 
largely sombrero’d Mexican horn players popping up at
the set end...? I ask you... What a lovely way to spend an afternoon...
Alex zipped
off to see The Deftones. I, having filched his tiara, was quite happy to stay
in the New Tent and wait for GOMEZ. Well, now security guards had the head-wear
excuse to talk to me - one was quite happy telling me the last person he’d seen
in a tiara was a very large ( and hairy ) man in an Eighteenth Century
ball-dress. Context is all.
And if you
were to listen to Gomez with your eyes closed, you probably would be in Old
Mehico, with their Tijuana lady, just as they want you to be. Ben’s grizzled
voice echoes of whiskey fuelled shoot-outs in the Old West, or porch-led
ruminations in the Deep South. But when you open your eyes, he’s just, well,
The MilkyBar Kid, with a guitar. Who lives in my home-town.
Context is
all.
Without the
other two vocalists, you’d keep your eyes closed for the entire set - their
vocal balance act as the sand-bags to his Transatlantic balloon ride.
( As I write
this, I’m tired. If I’m incoherent, blame the bearer of my cold. Bastard. )
The set was
lovely too. If Drugstore were the sugar-high of the afternoon, then Gomez were
the sweet come-down.
And PLACEBO
were fluid fuel-injection of grace and ardour. Yay...
‘He was an extraordinarily handsome human being, by any standards
and as either sex, and I couldn’t help staring at him...’ ( Ursula LeGuin’s
‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
For the second year running, Placebo play Glastonbury
on Claire’s birthday. ( The deja-vu didn’t just begin and end with the mud, you
know... ) I haven’t seen them ( live ) for ten months. My hair’s different, I’m
at college, and I work in new circles of friends. But as I’m still watching
them in my dad’s anorak ( ‘and a stolen tiara’
she wailed, trying to appease the situation... ), so they don’t seem
seem to have changed. Brian’s guitar breaks on the same song as it did then (
though we escape the blame this time around ). Like I’ve never left them.
Appearances kept in stasis for the year. Stefan still slinks to his bass, Steve
still thwacks all hell out of the drums in a nice shirt, and Brian is still
pouting to the microphone through his delicate frame of hair. The new material
is the new material of last summer’s sets - ‘The Crawl’ and ‘Allergic To
Thoughts Of Mom’. ‘Twentieth Century Boy’ is tantalised away from us, and to
hear the new single ‘Pure Morning’ that the music press is so full of we must
listen to the radio. So there are now strings of lights hanging from the flies,
and the set now includes 2 re-jigged B-sides. The sweetest moment was the piano
lullaby of ‘Teenage Angst’, but even that was pre-empted for my viewing by
their having done it at Brixton Academy ( MTV gig ) the month before.
I still love
them. ‘Lady Of The Flowers’ still threatens to reduce me to tears, I still have
eyes on Brian’s clothing, and I don’t regret choosing them over Tricky on the
Pyramid Stage, not at all. But they
don’t fill my every element as they used to. And I don’t know who of us is
growing apart from the other...
And Elaine
went to see Blur. And Elaine was one of the ones trampled in the mud. And Elaine
really wasn’t having a good festival. Covered head-to-foot in mud and bruises
by the time she got to sleep, and now crowd-wary. The things you do for those
you love...
‘Rainclouds over dark towers, rain falling in deep streets, a dark
storm-beaten city...’
( Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
D’you
remember how last year, on Claire’s birthday, after Placebo, I decided to go to
the Cabaret Stage, instead of heading for The Prodigy? How I was hoping for Lee
& Herring and Bill Bailey, but actually just ended up covered in mud and
holding an ice-cream ? Well this year I achieved all that ( bar the Herring
part ) AND with company ( Alex and I avoided getting lost together ) AND I
didn’t have to sit through Malcolm’s compering.
I don’t care
if the man is as much of an institution to the Cabaret Tent as Party Ring
biscuits are to my festival packing. The man is something of a twat. When
Boothby Graffoe announced Malcolm to be dead, I personally was cheering. ( And
when he announced him to be dead ‘like Kenny from South Park, he dies every
week’ so as our worry was not to be wasted, I was cheering even louder.
BEEF-CAKE! ) This year, not only were the acts running pretty much to schedule,
but the compere also amused me. ( And may I also take the moment here to
congratulate him on having achieved a haircut which doesn’t worry me - he looks
neither like a rodent Christ nor scary skinhead now. Praise be... )
‘They laughed at the king, but were not otherwise much interested
in him.’
( Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
So we settle
onto the matting right before the stage. ( Matting which appears to be under
delusions of kitchen towelling, as it is frantically attempting to soak up all
mud in the vicinity - yet without the added protection of a dry-weave top-sheet
all it did was draw the moisture straight up to the bottoms of the audience.
Grrreat. ) And are introduced to our first comedian. NICK WILTY. Who was
reasonable, for the first five minutes. But thereafter didn’t get the chance to
be anything more. The audience, by now with attention spans shorter than the
day’s sunny periods, are uninterested and bored. Soon the man is being assailed
by cups of mud. Maybe a couple of badly-timed heckles would’ve been fairer - he
really wasn’t bad enough to merit THAT bombardment.
One run-by
splattering is instructed towards Nick’s friend Stu, for rebuke.
I turn.
And the
person in question turns out to also be Rich’s friend Stu. Stewart Lee to the
rest of the world. I disentangle myself from my anorak-cum-floor covering, and
go over to say hello.
He’s not
happy. The weather, and the general atmosphere. He doesn’t like playing to
festival crowds anyways ( if you have to pay to see a person, you’re more likely
to a) appreciate their humour b) give them a chance ), and ones with short
attention spans but plenty of mud are ones to be wary of. As it turns out, his
fears of being splattered are unfounded. Even Wilty, by the time I return to
sitting before him, seems to be regaining some sort of control over the crowd.
Well, they’re now queuing up to tell jokes into his microphone, and he has his
own cup of mud prepared to strike back at any would-be attackers. Most of the
jokes are crap, by the way. And the ones told by the small children are
astonishingly rude. But at least he’s allowed to continue in an Ecoli-free
environment...
Boothby
Graffoe comes back onstage, but now a seriously peloothered man with a
fluorescent Diablo ( giant plastic egg-cup on string, essentially ) is also up
there, demanding his rights to perform a trick with it, and threatening to
upstage him. Probably thankfully for Graffoe, the most exciting thing the
Diablo Man can manage is to have the thing fall out of its tangles. Withering
sarcasm seems to leave him unaffected, and without the intervention of the
stage management, wee would probably have been watching that for hours. As it
was, we got BILL BAILEY.
The Kling-On
one that does songs and stuff. You know... A Cockney medley of today’s greatest
hits. Classical stuff, interspersed with cocaine snorting donkeys. The right
thing to have given the audience at that point. Most of it was immediate, and
could be understood and found funny on at least one base level. As an
entertainer, Bailey has a gift. And I loved the idea of squirrels ( ‘with their
big Afro tails’ ) being little more than ‘Seventies rats’. And the French
voice-over to the ‘Doctor Who’ lounge-music amused me, though probably went
straight over the heads of the inert audience whilst providing them with some
nice incidental music. But I resented the heavy reliance on old material. (
Seen either live, or on the TV series. ) The cats and tramps collaboration no.
with Boothby Graffoe rocked my little world though, and not just because I
hadn’t heard it before. It utilised the talents of both men perfectly ( Bailey
- musicmaker, Graffoe - strange noise maker )... and besides, I’d never heard
an impression if a monkey with Tourette’s before...
‘I found this funny, and so did the clansmen of Gorinhering,
though for different reasons.’ ( Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Left Hand Of Darkness’ )
And if I’m
going to gripe, I had mostly the same complaint with Stu’s time onstage as
well, if at all. To already know the material DOES leave the listener with the
smallest feeling of satisfaction ( ‘see how well I know my loves, this is an
old sketch and you are all fools for never having heard it before’ ), but more
overwhelmingly, leaves you feeling slightly cheated. I’d rather see a band
doing a greatest hits performance than a comic. ( Humour ought not to be so
prescribed and recreatable, for one thing. ) So I can’t expect him to write new
material solely on the off-chance that there will be those in The Cabaret Tent
in such a mental state so as they will be able to appreciate it both for its
content AND for being fresh. And the material he was doing was funny - the
Jesus sketch, and the Princess Di / ET
material ( which admittedly did give me a good excuse to say, finger
aloft, ‘ouch’ a lot... cheers m’dear ) I do like. Though I liked it better the
first time I heard it. But I still liked it.
Whatever, I’d probably have laughed had he just regurgitated the entire
series of ‘Fist Of Fun’. Still, it was a good way to end the night, that...
>>> Sunday
Last
revised: 27/07/01