Last week we saw Tripod's Christmas show at the Metro. Tripod are a three piece comedy band, or a very funny three man rock band, or something like that. They are most famous for being on The Sideshow, which is on some Australian channel or other, and doing funny songs in an hour on Triple J.

Their support act was weird. Really weird. I liked him.

Tripod themselves performed a series of songs, some of which I'd heard before and some of which I hadn't. All were very funny indeed, regardless. This one is even funny without the music. But for me, the best bits were the bits between the songs. And during the songs in one case. A chap got up to use the lavatory, prompting a "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" from Gatesy (the middle one is called Gatesy, the one with the guitar is called Scod, and the shorter bald one is called Yon). He leapt off the stage and pulled him back to his seat. Makes for a good show.

At the end of their shows they tend to do a cover. Since it was Christmas, they brought on a lady vocalist and did "Fairytale of New York". Lovely!

Labels: Australia, Comedy, Gigs

We got up, breakfasted ourselves hard, and then headed out to Byron. We sat on the beach, trying to shoo seagulls away and enjoying the sunshine, then grabbed a lunch of burrito for Elissa and sausage and chips for me. At about 4pm we made it to the festival in time for Midnight Juggernauts, a dancy Aussie group, kind of in the vein of Hot Chip. We tried to get in to see Gotye, but he'd been put in the third stage, and there just wasn't room for everyone who wanted to get in there. Everyone had been saying how well organised the festival was, until this one, but other than that they'd done a good job. And we'd seen Gotye at the Metro a week before, so we hit the nearby bar.

Labels: Australia, Gigs

Waking up on the Saturday morning, breakfast was foremost in our minds, and Elissa and I headed to Woolworths to pick up everything. And it really was everything; bacon, sausages, beans, eggs, bread, mushrooms, tomatoes, ham, cheese, croissants, butter, icecream, potatoes, apple juice, milk. When we got back we cooked a breakfast fit for a king. Well, four kings, really. We didn't plan to be hungry for the day.

Labels: Australia, Gigs

Byron Bay is about two hours by plane, or about 12 hours by car, from Sydney. The cost in fuel and accomodation for one night and the cost in airfares is roughly equivalent. The view from the car, though, is far superior to the view from the plane, and the New South Wales coast is pretty quiet in the winter, so we drove up and enjoyed a couple of beaches on the way almost completely to ourselves.

We left on Thursday morning, and pulled up in Hawks Nest at about 2pm, at Elissa's parents house. Colin introduced me to his Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs and Vivienne put on the lamb roast, apologising several times for having slightly overcooked the lamb last time. The lamb last time was beautiful, for the record. Elissa and I headed to the beach and flew the kite a little bit, and we came back and ate, and played Rummikub for an hour or two, with more than a couple of remarks about turning tiles over and using them as blanks (as that had been a strategy by one of the players in the scrabble game last time!).

The following morning we headed out at 9am, and struck out for Coffs Harbour, and the Big Banana. The Big Banana is the first Big Thing in Australia, and is one of many, including The Big Merino, which we saw on our Melbourne road trip, and the Big Prawn, just up the road to Byron, at Ballina. My favourite is definitely the merino so far. The Big Banana was pretty tiny, and though the smoothies were pretty good, I feel like they could have done better. While we were there, some people on the next table were having a meeting about door to door sales, but we didn't establish what brand. It made our skin crawl to listen to their team leader, so we left and pressed on.


The next stop was on Harwood Island! We drove past a sign that said "All of Harwood has 50km/h streets" and Elissa asked, do you want to stop and take some photos? I said no, and then thought for a few seconds and said yes... So we went to the pub, picked up a stubby holder and a lighter, and took photos by the school and the sugar refinery. If it wasn't a tiny little country town with less going on in it than in Corby Glen, I'd probably consider trying to retire here.

From there, we headed up to Ballina, and the Big Prawn. There's not much to see here, so we pulled into the car park and took a photo and then pressed on. Byron Bay was only another 40km on or so, so we were excited to get there! We got into Byron at about 5.30pm and got ourselves a pie, and headed to the hostel. The traffic wasn't all that bad, but the town was packed with crazy hippies and music fans, and there were guitars and drums being strummed and beaten all over town.

We met Candice and Jo, who would be our housemates for the weekend, and were shown the chalet we'd booked for the weekend. Jaws most definitely dropped. The place was incredible! A full kitchen, a spacious lounge, a lovely bathroom, a balcony in front of the chalet with a really comfortable daybed and a table and chairs we used for breakfast. We were impressed. And Candice and Jo had got both colours of wine ready for our arrival, so we knew we'd get on well.

Labels: Australia, Gigs, Kiting, Puppets, Travel

Today, I got some tickets to see The Police. I've been playing Roxanne badly at parties for more than a decade, and I've waited to see a Sting tour I might be able to catch for several years now. And I didn't think I'd ever get the chance to see the three of them in the same place, playing the songs they last played before I even knew what an electric guitar was. I'm almost ashamed of how excited I am about this show. And it's three days after my birthday too.

On Saturday we went to see Gotye, doing what looked like a warmup show for this weekend. He's a very earnest singer-songwriter-drummer chap who does funky electronic stuff, and he puts on a good show. There were some lovely moments where a guy next to us tried to sing along in the same octave, and sounded really bad for the high notes. A few minutes later he said to his companion "He's a good singer, isn't he?". And he is.

This weekend we're off to Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay, one of the most eagerly followed festivals on the Australian calendar. Highlights include Lily Allen (sadly) Powderfinger, Damien Rice, Bloc Party, Artic Monkeys, The Cat Empire and Hot Chip. Should be good. We're staying somewhere very cool too.

A couple of days after The Police is Big Day Out in Sydney. It'll have lots of international names, lots of rock, lots of singing and hanging out in the park. But it's still all about that eighties band I'm seeing just before that. Woohoo!

Labels: Australia, Gigs, My music

Last Thursday I went to see James Morrison. Not the British singer-songwriter (who I always took as being a bit polished and pop, perhaps unfairly) but the Australian jazz trumpet legend. He and Ambre Hammond, a pianist of high standing, were playing a double symphony written specially for them, by Lalo Schifrin, a world-renowned composer, conductor, pianist, but who is perhaps best known for the theme to Mission:Impossible! Before the symphony we were treated to the Australian debut of two suites of Schifrin's orchestral music, played by the Sydney symphony, all excellent stuff (though as someone with a limited experience of orchestral music I don't have much to say on it). Then the soloists came out, and showed some incredible skills on their instruments, and the music was at times energetic and compelling, at times gentle and emotional, and swung from the classical to the jazz to, well, all sorts of stuff. Again, it was great to see people perform who are really, really good at what they do. But my favourite bit was the encores.



James Morrison and Ambre Hammond came back on to play an unaccompanied version of Basin Street Blues. Morrison played part of the theme with one finger, towards the end, and Hammond played a jazz improv-style solo, interspersed with some big Romantic piano chord runs. As if that wasn't enough, Morrison and Schifrin came on afterwards and played Theme from Mission:Impossible to us, Schifrin on the piano (a little shaky and out of time but pretty solid for a 75 year old) and Morrison playing the melody on the trumpet. The orchestra seemed pretty ready for it.



I really like these free Opera House tickets.

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Gigs, Jazz

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Gigs

This script from On The Hour was something that kept coming back to me over the weekend (the bit at the bottom of that section from Monsignor Trebe Lopez). I went to a party out in the bush. A Doof, as the locals seem to call it. The drive there was a challenge - we had to follow complicated directions involving resetting the trip counter in the car and taking turnings at given points, it was all a bit cloak and dagger.

When we got there it was about midnight, almost 1am. It was down rocky tracks, miles from anywhere and in a basin, so the sound was well shielded. There were tents and fires, and luminous string marked out a kind of roof over the dance floor. UV lights lit up the string and, later, the words "I'm Matt" on my hand, and a large proportion of Ben's face. Dogs wandered the area with glowsticks on their collars. (Didn't Dennis Potter write a drama serial of the same name?). The music was Psy-trance, I'm assured. From 1-2am it was bearable, (I'm not a dancey person,) but then it got slowly worse. I know people who would have loved it, but I wasn't one of them and seemingly I wasn't with any of them.

So at about 5am we went and slept in the car. In the morning it was still going (it ran til 3pm) but I woke up and Elissa and I watched an episode of Family Guy on my MP3 player and then we went home. I enjoyed myself a lot more than I thought I would. But I can't see me going again. Photos should follow soon.

Labels: Australia, Gigs, Travel

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Gigs, Jazz

Yesterday, after a failed trip to Ikea, Elissa and I went to the Sydney Wildlife World. (Careful of the link, it plays sounds you might not be expecting at work). It was full of all sorts of wildlife exhibits with informative video displays and helpful guides. But if you're in Sydney, Taronga Zoo is much, much better value - it was really a bit of a disappointment. The bar underneath runs a happy hour from 5-7pm though, and is pretty pleasant. It's one of the cheaper bars in the area if you're in Darling Harbour looking for a drink at that time.

We then went to pass on the tickets Elissa had sold on eBay (we're seeing John Mayer tonight). I mentioned something about being able to step through a hole in a postcard, which, after 20 minutes of careful tearing and some cautious manouvres over the widest part of my body, earned me 50c. Then we headed to Newtown for japanese food. I had some sort of lunchbox thing with sushi, chicken, salad and rice in it, and Elissa had vegetable and prawn tempura. We shared some ginger and soy soaked raw beef. It was delicious, and excellent value - we both ate our fill and had a Coke for about $29. If I could remember the name of the place, I'd let you know so you could go yourself.

Afterwards we went to the Vanguard to see Jesse and Ella from Killing Heidi do an acoustic set. Apparently they've been around for a decade and have done something for one of the Spiderman films, but I'd never heard of them. This is a shame though, they're excellent, and this is the last time they're playing all that old material. If pushed to be critical, they weren't really doing anything anyone else isn't doing, and there are people doing it better, but it was a great way to while away a Wednesday evening.

Labels: Australia, Gigs, Travel

V has been on for more than a decade back home, so it's a bit odd to have never gone in the UK, and to make it to the first one in Australia. Elissa was working with Australian Red Cross, so I managed to blag a free ticket for a big three-stage outdoor concert in Centennial Park. The lineup included Beck, The Pixies, The Pet Shop Boys, Jarvis Cocker, Soulwax, Gnarls Barkley... practically no Australian music, but lots of good imported stuff.

I'm not going to bother reviewing the music, except to say Beck was still doing his puppet show thing, and the Pixies did an entirely unpretentious four-people-on-a-stage-with-some-lights thing, and just relied on some excellent songs and a crowd who had waited nearly two decades to see them in Australia (this was only their fourth show in Australia - they'd never played here before this month).

Generally though, the weather was fantastic, the people I met in the crowd, or friends of Elissa, or colleagues at Red Cross, were very friendly and encouraging, and everything was pretty cool. I even managed to blag a VIP pass, which just got me into a bar with a marginally shorter queue, and a larger supply of beer. Good fun.

Labels: Australia, Gigs, Travel

I was told by both people I went with, independently and together, what excellent acoustics the Esplanade complex (picture right) has. Presumably this applies to all the parts of it, but the concert hall was definitely sounding pretty good this evening. We arrived to be informed that we were moved from the circle to the second row in the stalls. "Excellent" we thought, "$150 seats for $60 a piece". Sadly the nearly-front-row seats just meant we wouldn't be able to see Chick and Gaty's hands, and the aforementioned acoustics (some of the best in the world) meant we weren't gaining anything even on the "worst" seats in terms of sound quality. We moved to the dress circle in the interval, helped by the friendly staff.

I have never seen someone play the vibraphone before, but something tells me I won' see it played like that again. Gary Burton had some spectacular solos, improvisations over complex and innovative (well done Chick) chord progressions in a variety of styles from flamenco and tango to chinstrokey jazz and just good fun bluesy jazz, and didn't break a sweat (thanks in part to air-conditioning, I can tell you). Chick, as Michelle said, made some very challenging piano playing look effortless. The sound they made got a bit tired for me halfway through, though the hardcore fans cheered every piece at start and finished and applauded every exceptional solo (all of them actually, even though good grammar probably doesn't allow that). But some life was injected into it at the end - one piece involved percussion introduction (both performers tapping the piano) and another started with the audience clicking their fingers. The last number involved both performers on the vibraphone (Chick unsurprisingly competent - if it's laid out a bit like a keyboard, he can play it), and had the crowd cheering from the start. A standing ovation for a duo who hadn't recorded an album for 13 years, from an audience crying out for the next one, at a venue I'm looking forward to visiting again on Sunday.

Labels: Gigs, Jazz, Singapore, Travel

Trafalgar Square went properly Russian on Saturday, with lots of traditional entertainment, dancing Cossacks, vodka, Baltika, Russian pop (their Eurovision entry was just as bad as ours) and some excellent music from a young woman called Pelageya, with a band of the same name. She had the most incredible vocal range, and when a few chords started sounding familiar we realised they were playing Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd, which brought a big smile to my face. It's a tricky one to do well,. but it was well within her capabilities. If the UK market ever opens its doors to Russian-speaking acts, she'll be one of the first through the door.

Labels: Gigs, London things

Tonight I went to see Keith James with Rowena. Keith was brilliant, with excellent guitar playing style, and a perfect singing voice for the material. The bassist, Rick Foot(?), was fantastic too, getting some wonderful harmonics and sounds from the bass. It was an intimate, friendly little gig in the Ritzy, in one of the screens oddly. Keith talked extensively about Nick Drake and his experience of the phenomenon that's arisen since his death. It was a lovely evening and perfect for getting over the hangover.

Labels: Gigs

I've run out of superlatives this week. Go and read someone else's review of The Flaming Lips at the Hammersmith Apollo. And if there's a single bad word to say, then they weren't watching the band I was watching.

Labels: Gigs

Last night my Shadows and Light DVD arrived, with a couple of books, and I settled down to watch it, happy that I'd finally be able to watch my favourite musician as well as listen. I was utterly delighted to see that there was a Jaco solo on the DVD! Happy though I was, it's kind of sad to think I'm never going to get any closer to seeing him live for real.

On reflection, though, I should probably have bought this. Must pay more attention.

Labels: Gigs, Jazz

Herbert "Mwandishi" Hancock, the man I and, I'm sure, many others consider the greatest living musician, played his socks off at the Camden Roundhouse last night. Kicking off at the keyboard with Watermelon Man, with a searing funk intro and a solo on one of those keyboard/guitar hybrids, the opening number left little room to crescendo, but like the consumate professional and the incredible performer he is, Herbie managed it. His guitarist was astounding too, playing a solo piece for a while where he sampled and built up his own backing, and through the wonder of modern technology, harmonised with his own singing. The drummer played some unparalleled solos, switching from straight time to offbeats to triple time and never losing an ounce of the rhythm. The bassist didn't solo, but he sang a haunting version of 'I Just Called To Say I Love You', and another couple of numbers, with a really powerful, soulful voice and some excellent vocal harmonies with the guitarist.

Cantaloupe Island was an obvious highlight, with more breathtaking keyboard solos from Hancock. When they finished a two hour set, the crowd cried out for more. We only got one encore, but no one would complain about twenty minutes of Chameleon - with the bassist pulling his inimitable jazz face, the guitarist playing lines that would put Hendrix to shame without breaking a sweat, and Herbie just being Herbie. The three of the played a kind of jazz Chicken, daring the others to go closer and closer to their limits, and pulling away just in time, for them and the crowd. I swear I'll never see a gig like it again.

If The Flaming Lips on Tuesday is anything as good as that, I may not make it to work on Wednesday.

Labels: Gigs, Jazz

Beck was brilliant. His support act, a guy with a laptop and a shellsuit, was a prick, but it just made Beck look all the better. The lights went down and came up to a small stage right in the middle of the stage, full of puppets, all playing along to recording of Loser - the crowd cheered like crazy, and then after a verse, the real band came on and took over from where the recording left off. For the rest of the show (which would have been fabulous on its own) the puppets mimicked the real performers unnervingly closely, and the huge video wall at the back of the stage showed puppet footage. Beck and his band rattled through a number of new ones, and some more familiar songs to me, 'Tropicalia', 'Devil's Haircut', 'Where it's at', and the singles from Guero. Beck did treat us to a little solo stuff, while his band sat down to a meal. Halfway through the meal they all began playing the table as percussion (which the puppets did too)! All in all, an energetic, imaginative and highly entertaining evening. With excellent company too, if they're reading.

Labels: Gigs

So then Paul, Michelle and Chris joined Claudia and me for dinner last night, and we had sausage and mash with onion gravy. It was all very nice, but I have to say it's a relief not to have to cook dinner tonight. And I'm looking forward to that leftover cheesecake.

After dinner we went to the Bedford in Balham, to watch Steve Reed play a couple of tunes. A dutch chap let me play his double bass, and I complemented their singer on her excellent vocal stylings, and the way her band made 7 time sound so natural. They really did too, normally it sounds like a 3 and a 4 stuck together, but they made 7 sound like 7!

Well, that's the trilogy over - perhaps there'll be a spin-off TV series later in the year?

Labels: Dinner parties, Gigs

1) The Strokes put on a marvellous performance, the only band I can think of who would get away with covering that 'Walk on the wild side' song. The raconteurs were excellent fun too.

2) They had the pear cider! Pear cider comes up as rear aides on predictive text. Oh, and I put some guy on the floor in a dispute about a hat

3) This post has been edited, as I think I may have mentioned my website name to someone who was mentioned in it. But I swapped numbers with a very nice young woman (whose name I subsequently discovered,) and who turned out to be just as nice as I had hoped.

4) Contrary to the blockheads....I sang acapella White Stripes songs on the way to the tube and got applause, not abuse!

All in all, an excellent way to welcome the summer. Happy Northern-Hemisphere-Summer everyone!

Labels: Gigs

I went to some folky thing last night at what used to be Dingwalls. I sampled Kronenbourg Blanc for the first time (foul muck that it is) and while Ruth, the biggest Willard Grant fan among us, chatted to the singer beforehand, I hovered and listened. He seemed like a nice chap, and he was happy to tell us which albums he was most pleased with. Then we bought a 5 litre keg of Grolsch to keep us refreshed for the evening. The band was excellent to a man (or woman) - I didn't know a single tune they played, but I enjoyed every one. Excellent solos from mandolin and guitar alike, and some very well judged bassism. Their violinist also wielded the viola from time to time, in the fiddling style (a nod to the west, it can be done...). If there was one thing I'd change it would be that I was holding a great big barrel of beer for half of the time. It seemed like such a nice idea when we bought it.

Labels: Drinking, Gigs

Last night I saw Beatallica's first UK gig. It was side-splittingly funny. Not only did the band play in the style of Metallica, but Beatles songs were rendered in the Michael Jackson style and the Lynyrd Skynyrd style. A new song was in there (at least I think it was new, the band failed to mention whether it was or not), as well as pretty much everything they have on their website at the moment. And it was just loud enough to hurt, which is probably what you want. The crowd singing along to the 'Na's at the end of Hey Dude is a memory that will stay with me forever, and when Jaymz split the audience into two and had them all chanting Hetfieldisms, I could have collapsed with laughter. £10 well spent, I think.

Labels: Gigs

Last night I watched Fight Club, and it put me in a remarkably good mood. On the way to work I thought about pushing random strangers to try to get them to beat me up. I've mentioned the 'ass or crotch' line to several people so far, and I certainly intend on describing my neighbour on the plane to China as my 'single-serving friend'. I'm still going to go to Ikea sometimes though, and I have no intention of blowing up the financial areas of London to the tune of something or other by The Pixies, nor do I intend to run my car off the road, just so I know what it feels like. Perhaps something crazy will happen this weekend though - I could do with a near-life experience.

Tonight I'm going to see Beatallica in Camden, which I'm eagerly looking forward to. Sunday's Calexico gig was excellent, compelling, emotional even, but it's been far too long since I went to see some mindless noise, and the comedy element definitely appeals to me.

Labels: Gigs

I really like jazz. But I think I like the sort of jazz that would be Steps or Westlife if it was pop. Well maybe the Beatles or Sting or someone. You know, reasonably credible, but not 'specialist'.

Waiting on Dwarfs are distinctly specialist, so we stood at the back of the room and drank lots of red wine. Some muscial highlights included a couple of very nicely executed bass solos, and discovering that the reason I thought it was a viola was because the violinist was so little - though a friend of his suggested it was because I would normally have seen him in the Royal Albert Hall, and not a little room in Dalston. The second set was more crowd pleasing, but it's all relative. If you want something challenging and unusual in your jazz, go and see them. If, like me, you want something to tap your foot to, or unlike me, something to dance to, don't.

Later, we went to the Dalston Jazz Bar, where there was much grabbing of groin, and uttering of 'J'habite'. I cannot satisfactorily explain why.

Labels: Gigs, Jazz

Aside from the lovely Braunwin visiting me for the last few weeks, one of July's highlights for me was the Ealing Jazz Festival. It all kicked off with a day by the F-ire Collective, including the obviously-talented-but-not-my-style Norma Winstone, a quartet with a french guitarist who were very impressive and Polar Bear, who I am very keen to see again. They were slightly quirky modern jazz with funny computer noises over the top, though I'm sure afficionados have a better description. Synergy topped the day off, with a brief appearance by Rhythms of the City, a samba band. By this time, I had sadly descended into gin, so I don't recall much of it.

Tuesday saw a nice septet play some excellent tunes, followed by Ray Gelato, who was as crowd pleasing as ever.

Thursday also saw a smaller ensemble playing a few tunes, and then a Jazz Orchestra playing some specially commissioned tunes. It made me realise just how far from the mark we were at UCL when the big band played. (Not to say we weren't any good, we were, we just weren't professionals...)

Sadly, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday were missed, but all looked like they had excellent lineups and would have been worth a journey. Saturday was a great finish to my week, anyway, with Butchers Brew, Tenor Each Way and the Alan Elsdon All Stars (sadly minus Alan Elsdon himself) giving an excellent demonstration of why Ealing is fast becoming my favourite festival (yes, I know, and I mean it too. You don't have to pay £125 to get in and you don't have to worry about the weather!)

It was a bit of a shame that more of you couldn't make it. Thanks to those who came, I hope you all found it worth your while. Everyone else, please don't miss the opportunity next year, you just won't see jazz like this for free anywhere else, and even when you've given your £20 to Ronnie Scott's estate, the atmosphere in Ealing is so much more laid back - it's got to be worth one ticket to Zone 3, just to see. And worth one slightly moderate Friday/Saturday evening so you can get out of bed in time to get there...

Labels: Gigs, Jazz

On Sunday at Glastonbury, the Baghdaddies played the Avalon stage at 6pm, and there you'd think it would end. But no, in Lost Vagueness they were called upon to play again at 1am. Ok, not bad, two shows in one day, but hardly backbreaking work.

But after the 1am show on Monday morning, the horn players (a trumpet, a trombone and a soprano sax, I think) wandered up to the stone circle, where their distinctive ska/middle-eastern harmonies could be heard until beyond 7.30am. Cracking. Puts me to shame that over the whole weekend, I played no shows and never went to bed later than 2.30am. Weak, that's what I am.

Labels: Gigs

And then we watched the Wailers. They played some nice tunes on the Jazz World stage, but at this time I was beginning to tire of all the noise, and the weekend was coming to an end. I turned to Chris, and commented that The Wailers wouldn't have showed up unless they were promised some serious bass. Chris replied "well, that goes without saying. They probably wouldn't even get out of bed int he morning unless the bass is serious. I mean, they probably said, Eavis, we don't care about the fee, just don't give us any frivolous bass'.

The bass was serious all weekend, but somehow the Wailers made it all the more straight-faced.

Labels: Gigs

He did make me smile when he sang:

Give me weather that does no harm
Michael Eavis, Worthy Farm
Give me mud up to your knees
Best festival in history

to Politik. Though best festival in history is probably stretching it a little. Might have been, with a different Saturday headliner.

Labels: Gigs

Coldplay are following me around. Not only did they announce their headline slot at Glastonbury after I'd decided I was going, but they conspired with Michael Eavis to ensure everyone else playing when they were was just as vapid. Then, to top it all off, I went home last night only to discover I could hear bloody Coldplay (don't know why I capitalise them, they don't deserve it) playing in my bloody street! It turns out Crystal Palace is just down the way, and they were playing there last night. I bet they're playing this evening too...

If they play Corby Glen in mid July, I shall take out a restraining order.

Labels: Gigs

Wow, what a weekend. Fantastic in places, frightful in others. Wednesday and Thursday were both so hot we could barely do anything, which was great because we didn't have anything to do anyway, and then Friday morning, after we'd been complaining how hot it was for two days, the heavens opened. Apparently one man was struck by lightning in the night, while leaving his tent to use the toilet. I assume he survived, or how would they know what his intentions were?

Pennards Field, a mildly sloped area that ends with a large bank at the foot of the slope, collected around three feet of water, and firemen searched every tent in the area, in the night, to make sure no-one had drowned, which they hadn't. Apparently only one person died during the weekend, and it was unrelated to the rain.

I myself woke up to a relatively dry tent, amazing as it was single skinned, and had already taken 5 hours of intense rain. This was at about 8am. It continued to rain for a further three hours. My boots held up well though, and I watched incredible sets from The Killers, John Butler Trio and The White Stripes on Friday, as well as half of a set I would have loved to see all of, from Doves. Jack White apologised for the rain, the mud, and for being American. And he called Meg his sister. Again. But he can't half play that guitar.

Then on Saturday, the mud still glueing our feet to the floor, we saw Taj Mahal, GLC ("I'm not like other people you might see or you might know; I made love to a BBC micro") Kaiser Chiefs (who invited an enormous inflatable dinosaur onto the stage), New Order and Coldplay (I know, but the light show was incredible, and he's such a nice young man). Sunday brought out Soulwax (not bad, but not Soulwax of 2000, to my mind), Brian Wilson (jaw-droppingly good for every minute of his set, criminal that he couldn't have played another hour or more of those songs, and wonderful to see people crowdsurfing on actual surfboards. If I have to choose 'Heroes and Villains' of the weekend, then Brian was my hero, and the weather the villain.) and some other people, probably. The Wailers closed my weekend, with that poor man having to stand in for Bob Marley, and then an hour or two of comedy (which is another post or two in itself, especially the ball-sucking audience member).

My legs ache so much from all the walking in the sticky mud, and I still feel dehydrated. I think I'll need the break in 2006.

Photos are at Paul's site, as I didn't use my camera once...

Edit: I will be posting lots more about the weekend, but there's too much to write in one day, especially my first day back at work!

Labels: Gigs