Leeds Festival Day Two

Day 2 I was woken from my dreams of Claire Nazir by a neighbouring tent telling all and sundry just how good The Prodigy were, not the actual tent as outside of HR Puffenstuff, that is just fantasy, the person in the tent decided to tell people, loudly, that The Prodigy were excellent and as far as men that shout over their own records, they were right up there with the best of them.
Enough of that though, I had an appointment with a Welshman that likes to sing in an American accent, he wouldn’t be the last today but kicking things off for day 2 was welsh pop punk band, Kids In Glass Houses. It would be wrong for me to throw stones at them, but they are a one song band and it was evident from their set, it was only a cursory glance up from my Guardian to see them perform their hit, Saturday. Saturday you say? Sorry but it appears Warnock has signed to Villa, carry on Welsh pop punkers. They arrived with an American accent and they left with the same accent, I was a little more enlightened about Serena Williams, thanks wholly to The Guardian and not Kids in Glass Houses.
The sound of young Wales were followed by Noah and The Whale, they of the five years time hit. They were pretty good in all honesty, they did a very laid back acoustic set, with fiddle and piano and it was pretty good to eat breakfast to it. Oddly their hit wasn’t played, but it wasn’t missed, I think that tells you something about the strength of their songs. They are a scruffy bunch though, looks like they hadn’t ironed their clothes. No discipline bands these days, Senseless Things wouldn’t dream of entering stage left without a starched collar.
Melbournes own The Living End were to follow, a three piece that I like very much and thought they would truly storm the Lock Up stage with their brand of rockabilly punk, as it goes they played the main stage and were placed higher than they should have been and as such, died a little death. Well maybe not, but it didn’t translate and any form of intimacy was gone before their sound had hit the back of the security guards head. Wrong stage, wrong time.
Some Scottish men came on afterwards, they muttered something I didn’t understand and then played a song, muttered something else and played more songs. I did not understand a single word of The View’s thick Dundee drawl. The songs were OK, well the songs from the first album were OK, performed well and enjoyable, songs from the second album were on the whole shit and a pain to listen to. I suspect they will be dropped from their label and split up within the next 12 months. And the drummer looked like Iggy Pop, facially and bodily.
Now a toss up between watching Brand New or slipping into the arms of Morpheus back at my tent to catch up on the sleep The View were trying to deprive me of. Back to the tent it was.
I hightailed it back a short while later to watch the absolutely stunning Vampire Weekend, the first real party performance of the weekend, spent in good company, great sounds and so far the best music of the weekend, drawing pretty much exclusively from their debut, and playing Mansard Roof, Oxford Comma etc, I threw shapes with the best of them and it shook me awake in the best way possible. Almost African guitars would not have sounded out of place on one of Kershaw or Peels shows. A great set, very enjoyable.
How could you follow that? Well I guess the woefully low down on the bill Yeah Yeah Yeahs could follow them, a band that I have seen before and enjoyed, to an extent, but not a massive extent. This set however was an untouchable set drawing on the best tracks from all three albums. Gold Lion, Maps, Date with The Night, Heads Will Roll etc. Maps in particular was amazing to hear and extremely beautiful, this was pretty much the first festival I had been to without my dwarfish sidekick and Maps poignancy was not lost. Karen Oput everything into her performance and the audience responded well, as I said woefully low on this bill.
Following them was Bloc Party, a band I find dull and having seen them twice before, did not relish a third visit to the buffet. I was wrong, Kele was a fantastic frontman, relaxed, charismatic and putting a lot into his performance. Just enough banter without being over the top. It seems I knew more Bloc Party songs than I thought, every one seemed familiar, do I watch too much MTV2 perhaps? Who knows, but it seems that they have earned their place as second headliners and made a great full stop to my evening in front of the main stage. I had to hightail it out of there before the maudlin fog that is Radiohead engulfed me.
A dash over to the Radio 1 stage to see AFI and for an old man, albeit one that is younger than me, Davey Havok still have some moves and performing a set that draws on an entire career, it was quite nice to watch. Lost Prophets followed them and I was a little bored to be honest, little did I know at this point it would be the last band that I watched, but they were boring, another welsh act that likes to talk in an American accent. I wouldn’t say dreadful, but I have watched them before and they were dreadful then and there has been little improvement.
Day 3 never materialised, one by one my group of friends packed up to beat the Sunday night trouble, and a scout over the line up influenced my decision to return home a day early.
In all it had been a good weekend for music, some real surprises in Bloc Party, some disappointments in Snuff but on the whole, a good weekend. Never again though.

Leeds Festival Day One

As mentioned, I took my 38 year old behind to a festival this weekend, a festival aimed at people my daughters age, I went with people who are a little older than my daughter and I sneered at people younger than my daughter. I don’t hate the young I am just jealous of their youth.
The site itself starts as quite a nice park and by the end it resembles (apologies for the cliche) a scene from a apocalypse now. The patrons famously have little respect for their surroundings, the property of their neighbours or indeed their own property.
Living at Leeds or Reading is extremely expensive, after you have paid your £180 for the ticket, you are looking to pay 3.90 for glass of cider and 4.10 for a cup of wine. Food as a minimum for a processed burger and chips will leave very little change out of 7.00.
What of the bands then, after all this is a blog about music and not the economics of dining at a major UK festival. So to the bands.
Friday started with Mariachi El Bronx, the side project of LA based punks, The Bronx. Mariachi El Bronx isn’t a comedy side project it’s a genuine outlet for mariachi music and a fine outlet it is too. The album is superb, a real must and it does reveal the more considered and melodic side of The Bronx, although they never treated us to their fantastic version of Prince’s Let’s go Crazy, they did however go through the highlights of the album, a great start to the weekend.
After them Fightstar came on, did their thing, I noted that they had gone from a rock version of Busted to MEN, Charlie seems to have grown up and forgotten to shave, it all seems a little 2005 doing the shouty rock I rather liked then. I can’t watch all of their set.
I don’t watch all of Fightstar’s set, I head over to a tent to watch a band called Delphic, a rather chilled out electronic outfit that from the two songs I watched, were quite nice all told, although they do a thing that I hate, dance music for rock fans, it’s an agreeable precursor to Spinnerette.
Spinnerette are the new band Brody Dalle the former singer in The Distillers, former wife of Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, now the mother of Josh Homme’s child. The Distillers are responsible for one of my favourite albums of all time and one of my favourite gig’s ever, the Spinnerette album on the other hand was a bitter disappointment. Not enjoyable, far too heavily influenced by Homme, a dreadful dull plodding journey through bad indie rock. Live though the album seems to have a life of its own, it grows and shakes off Hommes influence, it is closer to The Distillers sound than it is to QOTSA sound. There is a growl in her voice and a little aggression that was seriously lacking on the recorded version. Brody was however looking worse for wear, maybe the “problems” that have blighted her earlier career maybe back, I hope not.
After a very enjoyable set by one Homme connected band, it was back over to the mainstage to see my second of three Homme connected bands, in Eagles Of Death Metal, coincidentally a band that I saw supporting The Distillers, with Homme on drums at the aforementioned best Distillers gig. Today however the ginger fella was missing from the drum stool, it was some nameless man. Oddly though, you don’t watch Eagles of Death Metal (thusly named due to the fact that if they were a death metal band, they would be The Eagles of death metal) for their drummer, Jesse is a hell of a frontman, even when they are pounding out their shitty run of the mill rock blues that is a hybrid of ZZ Top, AC/DC and Jet, the frontman lifts it slight over the average mark, the only real highlight is I Want You So Hard, but I did have one eye on the time.
Next over to the punk stage for a little bit of Snuff, I caught the end of Municipal Waste, a thrash hardcore band who seemed to say “Municipal Waste will fuck you up” a lot, I made sure I stood well back from the circle pit as I wasn’t really in the mood to be fucked up, by Municipal Waste or anyone else for that matter. They soon left the stage when they saw my indifference, or they had completed their allotted time slot, I suspect the former.
Snuff, a band that were my number one band to see at this festival, after the fantastic set supporting NOFX earlier in the year I was very much looking forward to this one. I needn’t have bothered, it was a lacklustre set played to an indifferent audience. They were it seems swimming against the tide and the tide was a bit of a tsunami, it disappointed me really. When they supported NOFX, it was a perfect set, not so much at Leeds and it was with heavy heart I left the Lock Up Tent.
I like a lot of other people had heard that Them Crooked Vultures were playing Leeds, they weren’t on the programme but they had been doing secret slots at European festivals in the days before hand. Them Crooked Vultures are Dave Grohl of The Foo Fighters, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. A look in the running order told me that there was a huge vulture sized hole between Patrick Wolf and You Me At Six. Worth a punt I thought and so from one side of the arena to the other on a bit of a whim. As it goes, the whim was correct and I arrived in time to see an overhyped band knocking out sub par Queens of the Stone Age songs, so I considered my options, do I stay and listen to this shite or do I join friends watching some other shite that I at least know the words to.
Back to the main stage it was for the remainder of The Courteeners set, and on the whole it was good, I quite like them you see and they performed admirably, they have had that second album make over though that bands have between first successful album and the second one, but musically they had me shuffling from side to side like a granddad at a wedding, them’s the shapes I throw.
No time to sit around though, as it was off to see Hockey. I had heard Hockey on Radio 2 and 6 Music and I liked what I had heard, a very definite 80’s influence in the track or two that I had heard, but a good eighties influence, think more “Live it up” than Mantronix. They really didn’t disappoint, one of the most enjoyable bands of the weekend, a hell of a lot of energy and although the rain may have driven a large proportion of their audience into the tent, they stopped long after the sun had started to shine.
A small breather and luckily managed to catch only one song by the honking idiot that is Ian Brown, one song confirmed to me that he can’t sing, lacks stage presence, presents no worth to modern music and all in all one song that I heard, was a song too many.
He is gone and professional northerners Maximo Park take the stage, blimey that Paul fella bounces about a bit! He is the indie Edge though, sporting a bowler throughout I assume he thinks we don’t know he is balding, it happens to us all but it is the thought of him being the indie Edge that distracts me from the task in hand. They were however excellent and a joy to watch, turning in a great performance, better than men younger and hairier than them. An excellent addition to the bill and playing Acrobat, a truly beautiful song was a great great addition to their set.
Now at this point everyone I am with is settling into watch old men shout over their own records, or as they are billed, The Prodigy, dance music for people that like rock music, I would rather swim in the long drop toilets. Glasvegas is the option open to me, so Glasvegas it is, I am early though and its new kids on the block for me, not literally, its actually White Lies, the band that is. Not really my thing, the front man lacked any humour, very straight faced, almost miserable, however they were very very polished, very professional and I would say that within 2 years, with their Killers-lite tunes, they will be headlining a major festival in the UK.
Glasvegas then. I didn’t see them, well not properly, it had been a long day, I was tired and so I caught one song and then went back to my tent. Day one, busy as a wee busy thing, middling results.