Leeds(Reading) ‘00

- Saturday

Last year, I commuted to this festival. It seemed easier than camping – as I’m only a train and a bus ride away from Temple Newsam – though it did mean I had to forsake each night’s headliners. This year, Pulp, Queen Adreena and Babybird are heading the bill. And if that weren’t triumverate reason enough to forsake one’s bed… Ellen is taking her House Tent. And I can stay in it. Which means I can say ‘noooo’ to the prospect of lugging my own across hill and dale. And that I get to put my trousers on in a morning while standing up, and without undue wriggling. Marvellous…

Having (been) befriended (by) a supernatural-loving broken-toothed Manc scally of a ticket tout outside Leeds station – who then joined me on the festival-bus and but for the demands of his job would probably have followed me into the camping grounds too – I arrived onsite at Temple Newsam in the late afternoon of Friday. In the glorious sunshine. Filled with good humour. Which I retained for about forty minutes, until I realised the chances of my finding a Security Guard who could actually direct me to Ellen’s tent were only slightly better than negligible – and I was asking direction to the R4 camping ground, not just ‘Ellen’s tent’ – as none of them seemed to know where they were, let alone where anything else was. After going down, around and then back up ‘Jimmy Hill’ (ha) in an extended loop, I found someone with a map. Who actually pointed me in the right direction. And then I just had to go down the hill, along the path, over the fence, up the slope, around the woods, and through the field. When I finally made it, I sat down for about two hours before moving off to buy a program. But hey. I’ve just found a short-cut through the woods. It’s sunny. Temple Newsam’s pretty. I’ve got good biscuits. And in the morning, all I need to do is get myself over to the Main Arena, rather than onto public transport…

The next day though, when it comes to it, rain is dribbling from the skies in a manner most vindictive. We stay in the tent all morning. Enthusing over Daphne and Celeste. Over-quoting Eddie Izzard. Eating cookies. The usual festival malarkey…

“Doesn’t Jenny look adorable when she’s asleep” grins Becky, surveying the tents other residents. “No,” says Ellen, getting closer. “Look at the dribble.”

Hee-hee.

Half-eleven-ish, I set off for the Main Arena. Taking the donut-hunting Becky and George through my woods short-cut as I go. Soggy undergrowth overhangs our path, the ground is slippery underfoot, and Becky’s wearing sandals. Mental notes are made not to return to the woods until the sun comes out. Becky thinks about buying some more shoes…

Safely past the Entrance Security – my wrist-band is legitimate but my bag contains Southern Comfort (cunningly disguised as a shirt) – I plod my way up the hill towards the Carling Premier tent, grateful that the site is arranged as last year. (No supermarket-esque layout-reshuffles to get the punters to try something new and distract them from ketchup, thankfully.) And once there, get to politely bop along to the scuzzy-guitar shufflings that are bandied about by the happily rockin’ MO-HO-BISH-O-PI. Who were really quite good. That Saville-esque green plastic visor was probably a mistake, mind…

And then my umbrella and I went to stand in happy anticipation before the Main Stage, at the exact point where the audience-barrier meets the fly-poster boards – huddled off to one side so as to be sure my silver dome protection wasn’t blocking anyone’s view or wantonly spoke-spiking them.

In the half-hearted rain, I kept being distracted from the stage activities by the water droplets on the hood of the girl in front of me. (They weren’t absorbed, and mostly they didn’t roll off. They just sat there. Like they had nowhere better to go and were actually quite enjoying themselves, thankyou.) And when the band actually came on, they were watched by the crowd through a thin silver curtain of water as the rain continued to fall. It was really lovely… If you wanted a visual distraction from the excellent flailing guitar-smithery produced by MY VITRIOL. Who rocked like little tinkers. And in the midst of the set, the singer pauses, to introduce the few thousand expectant faces before him to Billy The Singing Bass. A fish, on a wooden plaque, almost like the sort you’d find proudly attached to the walls of a hunting lodge. Except this one sings. And so the entire field was left cheering happily at a fish crooning ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ over the monster speaker-system…

Thus enchanted, I bounce off to the Evening Session Tent. Because my subconscious is telling me that CLEARLAKE are worth moving for. And when I arrive on the beginning strains of the glorious ‘Jumble Sailing’ (ie ‘put on your flip-flops, we’re going to a car-boot sale…’) I realise my subconscious was right. Clearlake have the grandeur of My Life Story without the pomp, and the shy class of Seafood without the ‘Snowman’ covers… and this we like…

And then to change the subject a leetle…

In London last year, coming up towards the tube station from Covent Garden, I saw a pair of trousers I thought I recognised, walking towards me. Looking up, I realised the wearer to be Neil Codling. And that my ability to recognise him from the appearance of his knees was indicative of the length of time I’d spent in front of Suede’s onstage keyboard with them at my eye-height. (And of him seemingly having only the one pair of trousers.)

This year, watching the stage being cleared and reassembled after Clearlake, I did it again. The pair of skinny fit brown leather trousers currently slouching across the stage had last been spotted on Will Crewdson, pinwheeling bassist extraordinaire. And even the newly shorn and dyed tresses could not dissuade me from my positive ID – after all, there aren’t many folks out there with such trousers and his tattoos… Three years pause since I last saw LINOLEUM, and when it comes to it, I’ve one eye on the Quatro-haired and brightly shirted Miss Finch, and one on Will (mmm, cross-eyed band lover, nice), who spent the set crouching behind Cowboy Gavin like an expectant ballboy, ever ready to pounce on a straying lead or wanton guitar string. ‘I suppose there’s more money to be made roadie-ing for Linoleum than there is playing with Rachel Stamp at the moment’, comes my mid-set conclusion. ‘And it’d be nice to get paid to hear these songs over and over’. Cos, ooh, I’ve missed them. No-one else kicking about today can sing quite like Caroline can – now there’s a voice you could smoke glass with – and even though the new album songs paraded before us were a bit too slow, the singles (old & new) all seemed to have a lot more zip/vim/pow, and the set became the more balanced for it. Luvverly jubbly, as a man with fierce side-burns would say…

And then I think I saw ANIMALHOUSE. But I can’t remember a thing about them, beyond the fact that they were cheery little rockers, and the three or four songs we shared were really rather good. Maybe if I’d watched the whole set, I’d be able to be more forthcoming, but as it was, I left after 15 minutes to see a leetle bit of LOWFINGER. Who were rockin’ their lil funkadelic Dee-Lite socks off, though I seemed to be one of the only ones moved to dance. (Why should that be? In the Dance Tent? Eh? Eh?) Only the second time I’ve seen them, but already a convert – now I’m just longing for the day when they perform without the centre of the stage featuring a big pole splitting the sight-lines. And still beaming from such arse-wiggling shenanigans, I scooted off (as best one could thru mud) for the sake of… DAPHNE & CELESTE. Who have had me enchanted from their first chipmunk-faced Top of The Pops performance, screeching ‘n’ bouncing their way into the charts with a song whose lyrics are almost as funny (and barely comprehensible) as their Asda-esque bum-rubbing dance-routine. I was there on time, waited for twenty minutes in the drizzle as fools around me happily hummed their tunes, and eventually realised I’d missed ‘em when the next band appeared onstage. Buggrit. (And it wasn’t even like I could complain to anyone until I got back to our tent – I think the appreciative fans at the Festival were in a shocking minority.)

I petulantly wandered off up the hill, and there ran into Sarah, who was happily wielding a lobster. My mews of ‘I want a lobster’ merited a response of ‘oh well go and get one then’, and astonished that all it’d take was an appealing ‘please’ for a non-Orange user, I went and asked for one in the Re-charge Tent. (Which was itself nestled under a bizarre grassed-roof, on top of which were several 7-foot tall plastic orange jelly-baby type creatures. Who were also loitering about outside it. As is the wont of statues…) and – heyhey - I got a lobster. (And fell for the penguin phone-cosies too. But more of them later.) Now my phone can sleep warm at night, nestled inside a lobster. And, if I so choose, I can blind people with a vibrant head combination of pink-hair/orange-phone. Whoo.

Thus re-animated, and forsaking Clint Boon and Jacknife Lee, I went to see Mitch Benn. (‘Scary Weirdo’.) He wasn’t on. Figures. But… there was a hypnotist. HUGH LENNON. On for ooooh, an hour and a half. Initially, I was bored by his onstage act. But then I moved a little closer to the stage - ie so as I could actually see what was going on - and became intrigued. (I always wanna know the cynical Jonathon Creek secrets behind such goings-on, but they genuinely seemed to be hypnotised.) And after a while, I just settled down into being entertained… (It should be remembered that in this respect, alcohol is a great lubricant of the mind and senses.) Of the ‘volunteers’ he had onstage, after making them sleepily believe that they were thirsty/cold/trains, etc. they were all woken up, believing various untruths. Like they were Madonna. Or unable to move their feet. Or that their hypnotist was invisible, and that they’d been attacked by a flying inflatable shark. Or that they could speak (and translate) Martian. Or, as in the case of three other unfortunates, that simple counting is beyond them. ‘When you wake’, Lennon instructs his onstage victims, ‘the number seven will not exist’. And it doesn’t. ‘What’s six plus one’ he asks, under the pretext of making sure his charges are awake and unaffected. ‘Eight’ answers one boy, confidently. ‘No, wait.’ His face crumples – he knows something to be wrong, but can’t figure out what. But it’s when they are called on to assuage their numeracy anxieties by counting their digits that things start to get very peculiar for them. ‘I’ve got five fingers on this hand, and five on this hand’ worries Tom. ‘And that’s eleven. What the HELL is going on?’ Poor Tom. After grabbing the hands of all around him, he turns to the giggling crowd, looking for mollification. ‘Have you all got eleven fingers?’ ‘YES!’ comes the cheery chorus. ‘Ah. Well, that’s alright then.’ He settles back in his chair, still looking quizzically at his fingers. ‘I suppose.’ Poor Tom…

And once the stage had been cleared, Ellen had found me, and Lennon’s dubious canine side-kick – the world’s greatest Hypnotist Dog! - had been ushered away, we were met with our first slab of comedy for the afternoon. In the form of IAN MOORE. ‘We’d flick bits of Fuzzy Felt, try to get it stuck in the teacher’s beard. She hated that.’ Who when not paraphrasing other people’s jokes and passing them off as his own doing – bits of Eddie Izzard & Jack Dee material interspersed the set, grr – was actually quite good. Though he wasn’t a man to make a point of. Unlike ED BYRNE. Who was by far the slicker of the two – ever-confident, the crowd was effortlessly worked and befriended, and the material delivered off pat. Though we were saved from an entirely autopilot set (yeahyeah, shagging, swearing, having a favourite Backstreet Boy… we’ve heard ‘em all) by the appearance of some new material (hurrah for Christopher Reeve, ‘Deep Blue Sea’ and realistically radiation-affected super-heroes). The set became a mish-mash of material past & present, with the older stuff forming the segue-ways between jokes rather than the meat of the act… And not only does he still have at least a smidgeon of humility – thanking us for our attendance as ‘If I was you, I’d be over there watching Rage Against The Machine’ – on many things, he speaks the truth. Such as the fantastic-ness of beds. Or The A-Team being ‘creative little tinkers’. Bust most particularly, on 5ive being allowed to cover Queen. And then the remaining members not only allowing the desecration, but joining in with it. ‘Even though he’s dead, Freddy’s still being fucked by five younger men.’ (Sentiments which merited the most applause of the Comedy Tent’s day.) He over-ran over Angelica – sniff – but was too good to leave. Which is also fairly high applause… besides which, by staying till the end, I profited in penguin – a donation from Ellen when she collected her re-charged phone. So. It was with gleeful penguin clutched in excited paw that I wandered into the LAUREN LAVERNE tent. To see her first solo venture. And give the verdict ‘she was good’ to you, constant reader. By this point in the day though, I was wankered. I don’t really remember taking this picture. So you don’t get any more set-based information. Sorry…

I am similarly unable to remember much about PLACEBO’s Mainstage set, which followed. Beyond the fact that I was thoroughly enjoying myself until it started raining, and that I left when my alcohol-flooded mind gave way to such an extent that I could see two heads on Brian’s shoulders.

Falling over twice en route up the hill, solace was sought in the Carling Tent. In the company of a bevy of winsomely energetic Icelanders. Who sing songs about love and Darth Vader. And have merited the beaming exclamation point of ‘bouncy bouncy’ in my onsite notes. Which I think is a definite thumbs up for BELLATRIX…

My cunning tented positioning – an entire accident, given my inebriation – meant that by this point in the proceedings, I was right in the centre of the crowd. And when Bellatrix finished, I was able to secure a place on the barrier. In the centre. For which, one supposes, I have The Stereophonics to thank. They are headlining this festival on this evening. I get to hide from them in here. And while I do not dispute their ability to sing with gravely passion and write reasonable middle-of-the-road songs, they are not headline material. If the Stereophonics can top a festival bill, we are suffering for talent. Honestly, it’d be almost as bad as if the cloyingly-mediocre Travis were to headline.

Oh wait, that’s already happened…

And then there was BABYBIRD, and all other distractions were forgotten. To the Mark & Lard fuelled yells of ‘Bisto kid!’ (directed towards his guitarist), Stephen Jones wandered onto the stage in permanent sunglasses and a bit of a smile, and launched into a track from the lovely new album. Which kind of set the tone for the evening – all songs presented to us were taken from the last two albums (shame on you, when you have six others to choose from). And he didn’t do ‘You’re Gorgeous’, but no-one seemed to mind ( the sort that would’ve only been in there for that song were instead watching The Stereophonics – and that’s not a gross generalisation, it’s a well-gauged truth), and despite the absence of ANY old material, he still made me very happy. As always…

That over, I went and sat in the next-door Comedy Tent for a bit. Just to see what’d happen.

THE BARON BROTHERS took the piss out of Oasis.

‘I don’t believe that anybody steals the way I do, they don’t know how… But after all, we’re not John and Paul…’

And then things went really crap. So I left.

Now. To get to our tent is, as I had discovered yesterday, quite a trek. Curving paths and gentle hills, incessant plodding past Portaloos and over stiles… Only yesterday, the paths had been flanked by grass. And I’d been travelling in daylight, so’s I could at least see what I was doing. Tonight, it’s dark. The strings of light-bulbs hanging between the trees above are a prettier idea than they are a useful reality. But even the way that they are struggling to illuminate is unimpressive. What this morning was lush grass has since been tramped into a 3-inch mud-slick, so everyone is crammed onto the slim-line stone path. And because this route meets stile-broken-fence a little further up, the traffic is moving in slow stop-starts all the way, as we wait, herd-like, for the queuers far before us to vault the fencing or slip through it. Ever impatient, in my inebriated wisdom I decided I’d be best off vaulting the fence to my right, and cutting through the woods alongside the path. For up to a minute of swift travel, my plan proved a cunning one. However. At the bottom of one slope there was a fen-cum-bog. It being dark, I didn’t notice until the water was seeping into my boots. Once I was knee-deep in it, the addled thought-process went ‘oh well, better to keep going than turn back’. Immediately after, in true farcical style, I was up to my waist in cold muddy water, struggling to keep my balance, and my camera dry, as the wood-goers in front of me lent their sympathies to the situation by pissing themselves laughing. Deeply unhappy and unable to move, I requested their assistance. And while one reached over to help haul me out, two others who’d advanced with him also fell in. Schnarf…

After that, I removed myself from the woods as swiftly as possible – barbed-wire fences proving no barrier to my wet-determination – and sploshed my way through the mud lagoons as the more patient (and dry) pedestrians shuffled half-heartedly up their path, the alcohol still echoing about my system able to cloak (at least in part) the damp discomfort. ‘Better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t’ reverberating about my head until I went to sleep. Waking up to the state of my trousers though, I wasn’t sure…

>>> Sunday

Last revised: 13/08/03