V Festival 2008

Another year and, once more, the Wing-Commander and I find ourselves at the V festival. Ahhhh… the joy of it all.

However, there are some definite changes this time around. Firstly, the festival is now much bigger than it was two years back. Much, much bigger!!!! The second stage is now where the main stage was, and it still holds that huge capacity crowd. A larger space has been gathered for the main stage, which – as it is on a flat as opposed to the bottom of a hill – means the site lines aren’t as good. The JJB tent is about twice as big as it was last year (which means four times as big as it was the year before). Thus, to move from one stage to another, means an awful lot more walking as the distances are far further apart. Oh, and of course there’s a lot more people.

The bill is also far more commercial than it used to be. Because of the size of all the relative stages, there are bigger bands being booked. Thus you end up with Muse headlining the main stage and The Stereophonics supporting them (surely a band whose popularity means they could headline in their own?). This is at the same time as The Prodigy headline the second and Ian Brown is on at the JJB. The bill is also littered with pop acts who, a few years back, you wouldn’t have imagined being booked. And when I say pop I mean Will Young, Sugababes, Adele – really mainstream chart acts. And whilst the smaller Virgin Mobile tent thankfully remains the same size, the addition of railing about twelve feet from the stage, to give space for bouncers (?) and photographers, meant that even there you are kept at a distance from the act whereas only a couple of years ago, you could rest your elbows next to where the guitarists feet were.

Plus, of course, there are the punters. In recent years the plethora of festivals that have sprung up, and their popularity, means that (as the Wing-Commander pointed out) events such as V and Glastonbury have almost become part of the summer social calendar for many (in a way that, say, Ascot and Glyndebourne is for toffs). This results in an awful lot of attendees who are there to get pissed and have a knees up with their mates, not to actually listen to the music! This was something I noticed when I went to the Lovebox festival last month; the place was full of people chatting while the acts performed which is really annoying when (as with Goldfrapp) the set is predominantly quiet acoustic numbers.

Now I’ve no objections to people talking at gigs: you pay your money, you make your choice. If you don’t like the person standing next to you talking, then move to somewhere else. That’s normally not an issue. However, when the majority of those around you are doing it (as opposed to just a few), and their conversations have nothing to do with that is taking place on stage, it does become bloody annoying. And the reason they do it is because they are not interested in listening to the music they have paid to see; all they seem to care about is ticking off the acts on their little mental lists and having a good old chinwag with their mates.

So, despite having said all that, we did see some good acts and we did have an enjoyable day. When we arrived at 1:00, the place was already full (unlike previous years, campers are now allowed to pitch their tents on the Friday, thereby ensuring that those at the bottom of the bills actually have people to play to). Having stopped for coffee and doughnuts, our first port of call was the VMobile tent where The Dodgems were on playing their lively rock noise for the second year running. We wandered on past the main stage to where we thought the JJB tent was (they’d moved it) and instead found a new small tent, the Sound Stage where we encountered the first treat of the day, The Hazy Janes. Great young band, with good songs and lovely vocal harmonies. “The album’s out in January”, they said. One to watch for 2009. We then walked back to the C4 stage to take-in a spot of 90s nostalgia with Shed Seven, passing the enjoyable pop stylings of The Futureheads en route.

The Sheds, as I believe their fans call them, were always BritPop division two in my book. In fact, the only time I’ve seen them before was supporting The Inspiral Carpets at the Astoria just after they’d released their first single. My lesbian ex was a big fan, as indeed was Jon Bon D, but they were not the only ones because the second stage arena was crowded in the extreme. There’s an awful lot of twenty-somethings to whom the Sheds obviously mean a great deal but the fact they didn’t switch the PA on till half-way through their opening number (‘Going for Gold’), and the swathing wind left their second track almost inaudible (‘She Left me on Friday’), the WC and I headed over to watch Beth Rowley in one of the tents instead.

Ahhhh… little Beth. One of the wave of female singers getting deals in the wake of Amy Housewine’s huge success. She is neither as sixties retro as Duffy nor as obviously soulful as Adele, and all the better for that. She has a tremendous voice and whoever is arranging her material clearly has a few Tom Waits’ albums in their CD collections. She was much more confident than when I saw her at the back in January at the CherryJam in Paddington, but then she has gigged like crazy this year. The WC was enchanted and took many photographs which, if he ever mails them to me, I’ll post one here.

After the joy that was Beth we moved back to the C4 stage area which, by now, was virtually deserted, as The Hold Steady bounded on to do their Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty/Graham Parker thing. Bearing in mind how much press there’s been about this band in the last year, the fact that they played to an audience of about 10% the size that the Sheds had says more about the average age of the gig-goer to V than anything else. A very lively act with one of the most entertaining keyboard players I’ve seen in ages (he dances, he claps, he twirls his wax moustache). Good poppy tunes but not my musical bag (all a bit derivative, in a Ryan Adams/Jesse Mallin way); entertaining to watch but I’ll pass on the CD.

The WC and I held our ground, with tea and muffins for refreshment, and waited for the next turn on this stage, Amy MacDonald. Probably the most Scottish sounding musical act since The Proclaimers, MacDonald’s maturity as both a singer and songwriter, whilst also dealing with themes that relate directly to her peers (she’s twenty and most of the her songs were written as a teenager), meant that she appeals to both crusty old farts like myself as well as the younger folk who want something with a little more substance than Lily Allen. Her performance was strong, although a little workmanlike in places, as she ploughed through the best tracks on her album and threw in a solo rendition of Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’ to boot.

After MacDonald, we moved to the VMobile tent where we saw a bit of The Dykeenies (guitar pop with eighties electronic overtones) before attempting to watch Maximo Park on the main stage. I say attempted because even though it was only late afternoon, the throng was so huge and we were so far from the stage, that there seemed little point. We then returned to the C4 stage where we saw the most elaborate stage entrance I’ve witnesses in recent years when The Hoosiers came on (two out of a magic wardrobe; a third from a giant test-tube – I kid you not). If only their music was as interesting and not third rate power pop which left me thinking them akin to The Pleasers. Oh, and getting people to dance on stage while wearing superhero costumes… do you think no-one has seen The Flaming Lips?

We then moved over to the largest tent, the JJB, were cheeky faced rappy songsmithery fellow Jamie T was doing his cockney, wide-boy, “it’s a little bit chavvy” thing. He certainly gets his crowd going that’s for sure; they loved him! But being the only people over the age of twenty meant that after a few numbers it began to feel like we’d gate-crashed our children’s school disco, and everyone wants to get on being trashed without having two disapproving Dads standing in a corner, shaking their heads. We left, strolling past the acoustic warblings of Newton Faulkner (I know a lot of people like him; I don’t) in order to return to the VMobile tent and secure a position for the number one nostalgia act of the day, Siouxsie – she of ‘the Banshees’ fame.

I’ll confess I hadn’t heard anything from her debut solo album, ‘Mantaray’, which came out last year and the only time I’ve seen her was way back in the early eighties when the Banshees were promoting their (now classic) fourth album, ‘Juju’. I was therefore delighted to hear the smartly attired band, all black suits and silk ties, strike up the opening bars to ‘Israel’ as Siouxsie, 51 this year pop-pickers, sauntered on in a tefal-esque silver cat suit looking, to all intents and purposes, both uncannily like her younger self (no weight gain here, lucky cow) and – in a rather disturbing way – somewhat similar to Dorian from ‘Birds of a Feather’. Eek! For a woman whose stage presence and reputation was always of that of the icy dominatrix, she seemed extremely chipper. In fact, I’d go as far to say, quite possibly pissed, as she worked all the moves and hand gestures that she deployed thirty years ago (for indeed, as she reminded us just before she played it, it was thirty years this month that the Banshees debut single ‘Hong Kong Garden’ was released). In fact, the overall affect was more akin to your drunken auntie at a family wedding: “come on kidsh, look at thish. That’s how we did it my day”, and then promptly swinging her foot above her head to show that age has not only failed to wither her, but she remains as bendy as ever. Nice!

As Siouxsie left her enraptured audience of smiling middle-aged men and curious youngsters, we walked past the distant main stage, ignoring the professional but uninteresting Stereophonics, to see what was brewing in the small tent in the corner of the field and boy were we glad we did! I’d never heard of the Infadels before but, crumbs, what a great live band. The atmosphere in the tent was the one thing that had been missing throughout the entire day: that of excitement. They were a pulsing act, mixing modern beats with catchy choruses and thumping rhythms. As the Wing-Commander pointed out, the whole band revolved around the drummer and – in particular – his loud-as-fuck bass, pounding bass drum. [Reading about them on Wikipedia the following day I learnt that the drummer is Bill Bruford’s son, Alex]. Top turn! And they had their own monkey boy, thumping synth drums, pummelling keyboards, and eventually throwing himself into the audience for the last number. Ahhh, it was a pleasure to see!

So it was time for the headliners and we traipsed down to the enormo stage to see Muse and their big-time, stadium rock act. Now whilst I quite like Muse, and they clearly put on an impressive light show what with the massive satellite dishes and lasers and what have you, but to be stuck half a mile away from the stage surrounded by a claustrophobic hoard (which I don’t mind if I’m somewhere small and sweaty but not when the people I’m watching are the size of stick insects)… well, you’re better off at home on the sofa with a dvd. Nonetheless, we watched 40 minutes (for the majority of which the video screens weren’t even functioning correctly) before shuffling over to the VMobile stage for the final act of the day, Richard Hawley. Now I quite like Hawley’s restful retro sounds but the Wing-Commander thinks he sounds like Pat Boone and is not only the antithesis of rock music but he finds the way his MOR warblings are so highly praised by the smug-faced, ignorant music media, to be a personal insult. Still I liked him and, on the closing number, ‘Oh my Love’, he went into an extended guitar solo, reminiscent of his days in Radiohead wannabies LongPigs. Lovely!

And so that’s that. On reflection, I think this will be the Wing-Commander and I’s last V. It’s just too big now; it takes too long to walk between stages, there are too many people attending, and the acts they pick are too popular and commercial. Compared to Lovebox, which I went to last month, V is just overblown, bloated on its own success. Still enjoyed the day mind you, and have ordered both the Infadels and Siouxsie’s albums from Amazon, but for 2009 I think we will have to find somewhere else to have our festival day out.