Glastonbury Festival
27 - 29 June 1997
I poke my head out of my tent and realise that it wasn’t all a horrible post-apocalyptic nightmare - it IS a bit soggy underfoot so I strap my Docs’ firmly to my feet and set off to the second stage, originally christened the Other Stage, to catch the first band of the festival, Radcliffe and Lard’s spoof band The Shirehorses. It’s a good job it’s funny, because due to stage sinkage it’s the last band we see on this stage all day. As a result, I miss Embrace, Catatonia, Kenickie, Ben Folds Five and Sneaker Pimps, amongst others. Depressed, I return to my tent to come up with a contingency plan, and listen to Finlay Quaye play ‘Sunday Shining’ approximately one hundred times on the Jazz World stage.
Jazz World is a part of Glastonbury that is unfairly maligned - the line-up is no longer made up entirely of drum orchestras and blokes with unpronounceable names, as Fun^da^mental prove, although they do bring on a drum orchestra part way through. But there’s a bloke shouting so it’s OK.
I contemplating sticking around to see Lamb for about 20 seconds, and instead make the treacherous journey to the Pyramid stage and it’s a choice I don’t regret. Beck tears the place up in a big way, and for the first time, I start to feel like I’m at Glastonbury. This is Beck playing to the biggest crowd he’s ever going to play to in his life (with the Other stage out of action, there must be at least 50,000 people in this field) and he knows it. The man is a true star, body-popping his way through a set that takes in the paranoisier of ‘Motherfucker’, the soulful crooning of ‘(I Wanna Be With You And Your Sister) Debra’ and the solo harmonica number ‘One Foot In The Grave’. As he finishes ‘Where It’s At’, Beck successfully sums up his set, and the whole festival, as “The biggest , loudest coming together in the history of where it’s at, ever”.
After this wake-up call, it’s plain sailing for Supergrass, who just cash in on the good time vibe. Their new material may very well be more ‘mature’, but it’s undoubtedly the songs off ‘I Should Coco’ that go down best with this crowd. Rumour has it I’ve just missed Placebo on the newly un-sunk second stage, so I return to Jazz World and accidentally arrive in time for the excrutiating Nightmares On Wax. Poor Acid Jazz, done badly, is the reason this stage gets so badly slagged off.
Jazz shouldn’t have evolved into Brylcreem-slick, pre-chewed grooves, but into the rougher, meaner, generally more challenging sound that Red Snapper make. They don’t need the guest rasta vocalist - there is no space for vocals in the Red Snapper sound.
I was interested to see Spearhead, if only to see if the ‘they’re better live than on record’ rule would apply to the disappointing second album. It does, but no matter how much of a showman your awesomely tall frontman is, he can only do so much with material this weak.
Not for the first time, I am struck with a dilemma. Do I trek across the muddy wastelands in order to see The Prodigy, or stay where I am and watch Massive Attack? I’m knackered, my neck hurts, my legs hurt, I’m fed up and my feet are cold. After 2 songs, I head back to my tent and listen to ‘Karmacoma’ from a safe distance.
It’s all OK!! A momentous set from Jonathan Fire*eater has reminded me of where I am and why I’m here. A severely caned Stuart Fire*Eater has just rocked his way through the most energetic 11am performance I have ever been half-awake enough to witness. The arrival of The Dharmas heralds a search for breakfast, returning to the Other stage to check out Silver Sun, who are so rubbish I go to the Pyramid to watch The Longpigs instead. I can understand where the Radiohead comparisons come from, but I can’t help thinking it’s a bit like comparing Bob Wilson with Des Lynam.
Which would make Geneva who? Well, based on Andrew Montgomery’s eye-watering vocals, probably Sue Barker. ‘Into The Blue’ is the obvious highlight, but it’s a set that shows this is a band with many more strings to their bow than simply a girly-voiced singer with an ear for a melody. A higher billing undoubtedly beckons next year.
G-love And Special Sauce are next, and even if it’s still a little cloudy, the Philadelphonic sound transports us back to two years ago, when it was blisteringly hot and there was no mud to be found anywhere. He’s an unlikely star, is G-Love, with his ill-fitting suits, elastic face and kncking knees, but a star nonetheless. As ‘Cold Beverage’ draws the set to a close, I think I even see the sun coming out. But it disappears pretty quickly for Stereolab. There can’t be very many bands so poorly suited to a festival and their wibbly drone-rock is lost here. One for indoors, I reckon.
An attempt to see Roni Size’s Reprazent in the Dance Tent is thwarted by their late arrival, and my companions’ lack of stamina - after an hour of waiting and dancing, we’re in no state to cope with Mr Size’s brand of live drum ‘n’ bass. Which means Dubstar and Neneh Cherry are safely over with by the time I make it back to the second stage. Darkness is falling and the crowd is gathering for the arrival of The Chemical Brothers, who I am giving exactly 30 minutes to play ‘Block Rockin Beats’ and ‘Loops Of Fury’ before I have to join the massive crush on the bridge over the river of human piss to get to the Pyramid stage in time for Radiohead. I’m not disappointed - the Chemicals’ set is just one song, one fluid, organic song that shifts from one recognisable riff to another, and they get in ‘Leave Home’ and ‘Chemical Beats’ as well, before I am forced to leave.
After nearly falling over twice (and after an amusing incident in which my mate James loses the sole of his shoe in a particularly sticky patch of mud) we get to the Pyramid field just in time for Radiohead’s arrival, and the opening double whammy of ‘Lucky’ and ‘My Iron Lung’. This is Radiohead in their element; big stage, big crowd, big sound, proof that ‘stadium rock’ doesn’t have to be a pejorative term. ‘Paranoid Android’ is slightly spoiled by a technical balls-up just as it’s supposed to go all noisy, but the real revelation is ‘Creep’, for so long the stone around Thom’s neck, the song tehy didn’t want to play, but had to. Well, tonight is probably their first gig in many years when they haven’t HAD to play it - no-one is in this field to hear ‘Creep’, which is probably why the band perform it with more conviction than ever before - tonight, in front of thousands of people, Radiohead reclaimed ‘Creep’, and reminded us that it was them who created the song, not the other way around. As fireworks go off in another field to the strains of ‘No Surprises’ in this one, it is clear that this was the performance that they’ll be talking about all year. If you weren’t there, where were you?
The day starts badly when I am woken up by Perfume, accidentally see some of The Stereophonics on my way to get breakfast and find out that the ‘Special Guests’ aren’t Oasis or The Rolling Stones or even Paul Weller, but bloody Kula sodding bastard Shaker. However, things pick up as I watch Travis stir a Sunday midday crowd out of their sleeping bags and down to the Other Stage. Anyone who made the trip was rewarded with the kind of punky pop that Silver Sun think they make, but miss by a mile.
After this, I let Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, The Supernaturals and Three Colours Red try to change my mind about them, but they don’t. Gorky’s still manage one of the most original bands around at the moment, without actually being any good, The Supernaturals are terrible, and Three Colours Red are still under the impression that not being able to play very well and not writing very good songs is, in some way, ‘punk’. Their outdated notion of what is ‘punk’ is shown up by their clichéd choice of cover version - ‘Anarchy In The UK’, of all things. By the end of their set, they are covered in mud, the fate of all bands at this festival who turned out poor performances.
“If you do not stop throwing mud, the next band will be taken off the stage and the stage will be closed down” says the stroppy DJ woman. “Fucking come on then!!!” says Symposium’s Ross, and instigates a mud fight that lasts for their whole set. Three Colours Red could learn a lot from Symposium, for Symposium are punk. Yes, they are ludicrously young, but their performance ranks alongside the best I have seen at this festival so far. And they are probably the only band I have ever seen who have a roadie specifically employed to follow the singer around and untangle his mic cable from monitor wedges, amplifiers, guitarists etc.
Now for the biggest dilemma of the weekend. Super Furry Animals followed by Pavement, or the mental Jimi Tenor followed by Ninja Tunes’ Herbaliser. And which idiot put them on at the same time as DJ Food? In the end, my curiosity as to what Finland’s leading Joe 90-lookalike techno lounge lizard is like live drags me to Jazz World.
And he’s fantastic. Resplendent in red velvet cloak, black sequin jacket and transparent black shirt, backed by a female rhythm section and an animated (as in ‘they move about lots’, not as in ‘cartoon’) brass section, his show is a homage to Vegas lounge acts, porn soundtracks and squelchy techno. At the end of the show, after eating one of his keyboards, he stumbles offstage, tired and emotional, clutching a bottle of champagne. A true star.
The Herbaliser live are a very different beast to how they are on record - they have no vocalists with them, which restricts them to an entirely instrumental set, and the live DJing is poor, but their blunted trip-hop beats bring the sun out for only the second time this weekend and I don’t regret my choice in the slightest.
Especially when they’re followed by The Jungle Brothers. This is real old skool hip-hop, literally two turntables and two microphones. They start shakily, and there’s a little too much ‘wave your hands in the air’ and not enough actual music, but after ten years, the JBs still know how to rock the party.
After this, I’m in a good mood, so decide to give Mansun the chance to redeem themselves to me. Unfortunately, they only get to perform one and a half songs before several power failures force them offstage. Not wishing to close the weekend watching an empty stage (or The Bluetones), I trek to the Pyramid to see Ash who have replaced a poorly Steve Winwood. At first they seem an unlikely act to close the Main Stage, but it soon makes sense - they’ve been here all weekend, camping it up with the rest of us and it just seems right that they should finish it off, rather than some AOR has-been who was helicoptered onto the site so as not to get his feet a bit muddy. The crowd they are playing to is probably smaller than the one they played to two nights earlier, but they still rise to the occasion and rock out. ‘Jack Names The Planets’, ‘Girl From Mars’ and ‘Kung Fu’ are the obvious highlights in a set that sums up the whole weekend - us against the mud, against all odds. It’ll go down on record as the muddiest ever, and the tabloids had a field day, but other festivals would have sunk without trace in similar conditions. See you next year.