the vomit, the vomit
Sunday we went to the V festival. Saturday we did too, but I’m excluding it because otherwise I will go on and on about Art Brut and Radiohead and the Saw Doctors covering (very briefly) the Pussycat Dolls. Sunday started with Phil’s Range Rover being paintballed in Herongate, before we’d even got near Chelmsford. Suddenly, splashes of vivid colour splattered over the windscreen, like we’d been shat on by a psychedelic seagull. Presumably kids in a car going in the other direction had been responsible. A new craze, perhaps, which may even have a name. If not, will ‘psychedelic seagull’ do?
We positioned ourselves in the usual spot at the main stage, next to the patch of vomit with the broken sunglasses in it. We saw Kubb. I wanted to hate them because of that terrible ‘romantic’ song they did - ‘Let it grow, let it flow inside you …’ (He’s singing about his penis! Eugh!) However I could not hate them. They soothed me. (I didn’t even know I needed soothing). And since, I believe, they include an ex-member of Reef in their number, they are performing a valuable service in keeping him occupied and thus preventing Reef from reforming. Keep up the good work, boys!
My soft spot widened to include the (unashamedly nice) Feeling, so then I had to do penance by spending most of the rest of the day in the Virgin Union tent, where the more obscure bands play. This had its compensations. Paul Weller was apparently very good, but did he jump down into the crowd and sing Jealous Guy, like Davey MacManus of The Crimea did? Did he toss marshmallows into the audience like the guy from Bellx1 did? I suspect not. As for Matisyahu, I didn’t know what to expect. Japanese electronica? Novelty ska-punk (the drummer’s hat somehow suggested this)? But no, Matisyahu was, as I should have known, an Orthodox Jew performing reggae. With a side order of exhilaratingly noisy guitar heroics from the backing band. Very good too, though you wondered what his position on ganja was. To make things even more culturally confusing, this was when the crowd started pulling out glowsticks.
What would Morrissey have thought? He once said that reggae was ‘vile’. Now, his reaction would probably be along the lines of what he said when an interviewer told him that Tatu (who covered How Soon Is Now?) were ‘teenage lesbians’. ‘Well’, he said. ‘Aren’t we all?’ Not that he’s mellowed exactly. He’s still, fiercely, himself, even if he doesn’t really know what that self is, or whether he loves or hates it. It’s this sort of peculiar contradiction that keeps the fans hooked. And has everyone else fleeing in droves.
That was certainly the case here. The threat of Morrissey created what was almost a stampede from the main stage. As I cowered from the stream of well-up-for-it lads and teenagers with whistles, I reflected that, after experiencing the full-on uplift of Faithless, the last thing these people wanted to hear was that ‘life is a pigsty’. Even if, according to those of my friends who attended Faithless (which was all of them), several crowd members had provided a practical demonstration of Morrissey’s thesis, by wallowing in their own filth. And not just their own. One drunken woman pissed in front of everyone, then later got too drunk even to manage that, and as an alternative collapsed with her head in the pool of vomit with the broken sunglasses (now covered in sawdust, but still…)
What with the bulk of the punters headed - mostly - for Razorlight, it was for once not only possible to get to the front of the main stage for the headline act, it would have been unforgivably rude not to. Although naturally I stood to the side. Morrissey, patron saint of the misfit, would have understood.
We positioned ourselves in the usual spot at the main stage, next to the patch of vomit with the broken sunglasses in it. We saw Kubb. I wanted to hate them because of that terrible ‘romantic’ song they did - ‘Let it grow, let it flow inside you …’ (He’s singing about his penis! Eugh!) However I could not hate them. They soothed me. (I didn’t even know I needed soothing). And since, I believe, they include an ex-member of Reef in their number, they are performing a valuable service in keeping him occupied and thus preventing Reef from reforming. Keep up the good work, boys!
My soft spot widened to include the (unashamedly nice) Feeling, so then I had to do penance by spending most of the rest of the day in the Virgin Union tent, where the more obscure bands play. This had its compensations. Paul Weller was apparently very good, but did he jump down into the crowd and sing Jealous Guy, like Davey MacManus of The Crimea did? Did he toss marshmallows into the audience like the guy from Bellx1 did? I suspect not. As for Matisyahu, I didn’t know what to expect. Japanese electronica? Novelty ska-punk (the drummer’s hat somehow suggested this)? But no, Matisyahu was, as I should have known, an Orthodox Jew performing reggae. With a side order of exhilaratingly noisy guitar heroics from the backing band. Very good too, though you wondered what his position on ganja was. To make things even more culturally confusing, this was when the crowd started pulling out glowsticks.
What would Morrissey have thought? He once said that reggae was ‘vile’. Now, his reaction would probably be along the lines of what he said when an interviewer told him that Tatu (who covered How Soon Is Now?) were ‘teenage lesbians’. ‘Well’, he said. ‘Aren’t we all?’ Not that he’s mellowed exactly. He’s still, fiercely, himself, even if he doesn’t really know what that self is, or whether he loves or hates it. It’s this sort of peculiar contradiction that keeps the fans hooked. And has everyone else fleeing in droves.
That was certainly the case here. The threat of Morrissey created what was almost a stampede from the main stage. As I cowered from the stream of well-up-for-it lads and teenagers with whistles, I reflected that, after experiencing the full-on uplift of Faithless, the last thing these people wanted to hear was that ‘life is a pigsty’. Even if, according to those of my friends who attended Faithless (which was all of them), several crowd members had provided a practical demonstration of Morrissey’s thesis, by wallowing in their own filth. And not just their own. One drunken woman pissed in front of everyone, then later got too drunk even to manage that, and as an alternative collapsed with her head in the pool of vomit with the broken sunglasses (now covered in sawdust, but still…)
What with the bulk of the punters headed - mostly - for Razorlight, it was for once not only possible to get to the front of the main stage for the headline act, it would have been unforgivably rude not to. Although naturally I stood to the side. Morrissey, patron saint of the misfit, would have understood.
posted by martin at 12:09 PM
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