virginfest

First we couldn’t get in. We got there before the gates opened and then we were trapped in a mob waiting to be funneled through the entrance. Meanwhile, we could hear the Stands going through their set, as though determined to demonstrate that we, the audience, were expendable. Hardcore fans cracked, leapt for the fence, and were brutally dealt with. Probably - I didn’t dare look.

Somehow we got in. What did I see? Sonic Youth, well on their way to sonic old age now but still delivering controlled chaos, wielding their guitars like chainsaws. If they’d split up back in the 80’s, and then dramatically reformed, they might even have attracted the audience they deserved. As it was, they never went away. So everyone forgot about them. Oh, and the Kaiser Chiefs were playing.

I missed Joss Stone flouncing offstage for some reason best known to her. What’s all the fuss about her anyway? A white teenager with the voice of some grizzled black soul singer - isn’t she just a freak? Her parents should have sold her to the circus. (In a sense, they did.)

Talking of freaks, the security on the Channel 4 stage seemed to have been chosen for their ugliness: truly, they were a show in themselves, easily outperforming, say, the Bravery. The Bravery are aptly named: you’d have to be brave to get up on stage when you’re that bad. ‘This is a song about kicking the world until it gives you what you want’, the singer said at one point. Or, to put it another way: this is a song about mangling the back catalogues of lots of 80’s New Wave bands until they give you what you want -a recording contract. But for how long?