Irfan Shah competed with whippet and pidgeon for a bird’s eye view of the firmly Yorkshire Carling Weekend festival in Leeds! Prepare to be ‘spooked’ and ‘twanged’.
03/09/2003
Part of the thrill of festivals is knowing that somewhere along the line you’re going to miss good bands – it’s like trying to hit all those pop-up moles with a hammer at the fair – it’s too much, dizzying even, and occasionally you get lost and out of sheer luck stumble into a tent just as The Thrills launch into ‘Santa Cruz or Spooks kick into ‘Karma Hotel’ as if they’ve been waiting just for you. And if the weather comes right, and you find yourself in a setting as beautiful as Barnham Park near Wetherby, then things are set for a pretty good experience – which is what the Leeds Carling Festival provided for us this year.
While on the one hand, it was still a typically generic affair – heavily sponsored, overpriced as regards food and transport, and devoid of the idealism that seemed to fuel festivals originally, it was nevertheless, working from a familiar blueprint with a huge measure of success.
Leeds, like Reading, T in the Park and the V festivals, is getting slicker than ever. Gone are the days of Jugglers for a Free Tibet, replaced now by skateboard demonstrations sponsored by Red Bull, Play Station tents and stalls for Orange phones. Gone too, seems to be the catholic tastes of the booking agents: nothing too daring, offensive, on the edge, wonderfully bad or incredibly out-of-the-blue brilliant, and yet the line up was shot through with good, hungry bands doing what they do without irony or pretence, which meant that over the three days we could get to see the Polyphonic Spree halleluahing their way around the Radio One stage like extras in a Mel Brooks musical about the KKK, and Blink 182, Sum 41 and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs barnstorming their respective stages as if they’d gate crashed the place and expected to be thrown out any minute. Interpol were as cool as The Music were impassioned. Lamb were ethereal and Blackalicious were blackalicious.
It has to be said that this being a more rock orientated three days, the dance tent felt a little token, and was peppered with acts that could easily have slotted into the larger, ‘rock’ stages, such as Death In Vegas (as gloriously dark as ever) and Audio Bullys – but when you have FC Kahuna, Blak Twang and various Freestylers on hand, it seems churlish to moan.
It’s also probably fair to say that the best atmospheres were created in the smaller tents, as anyone who saw Spooks, A Hundred Reasons and the Polyphonic Spree would attest to. Both the Radio One, and the Smirnoff Dance tents had a similar atmosphere to Glasgow Green, large yet intimate, full of happy shiny people doing happy shiny things.
It was also refreshing to feel that all the bands wanted to prove something – most have well received albums under their belts, but few (excluding the headliners) have reached any kind of peak yet, and few are genuinely recognisable as ‘stars’ – I mean, for all their glorious swagger, BRMC could still be mistaken for the Stranglers at a distance, and haven’t you ever been tempted to put on a white robe and try and pass yourself off as one of the Polyphonic Spree? Basically, the line up felt hopeful. While The Darkness, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and AFI have a manic charisma, they are still all icons-in-waiting, and this bodes well for a seemingly moribund music scene.
We also managed to get through the weekend without overdosing on ‘irony’ – we didn’t have to pretend we liked Tom Jones or have to listen to stylophone solos from Rolf Harris – and on the Saturday, the heavy metal was hand-on-crotch, not tongue-in-cheek. Metallica cracked rictus smiles (drummer Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammet going so far as to swap instruments for a while) and Placebo were the bitter-sweet grunge poets we all know and love ( well perhaps not all – Ed)
Sunday was a fitting finale to the three days. Imagine watching the sun set to a soundtrack by Doves, and then have Beck play for you, mixing his set with funky party pieces and those slower, melancholic jewels that he kept hidden from the world until the beautiful ‘Sea Changes’ album.
White Stripes were due to follow but were replaced by BRMC who managed capably on attitude and power chords. Pausing to speak to the audience between such in-your-face instant classics as ‘We Don’t Know When to Stop’, the ‘Club were disarmingly polite and almost apologetic for being there instead of the ‘Stripes – though no one seemed to mind by then.
We finished with Blur – their ‘Think Tank’ album has not spawned the smash hits that previous albums have – and yet its quieter, blissful tone, its spine tingling use of backing singers, and subtle samples of north African instruments somehow provided the perfect soundtrack to the winding down of this whole glorious three day affair. The soft wash of sound as darkness fell was punctuated by classics such as ‘The Universal’; ‘Girls and Boys’; ‘Tender’ and ‘Song 2’.
A minimalist but striking light show added to the fun – and the band looked, well they just looked happy to be there, played for over an hour and a half and left us feeling that something good had happened.
So, three days, well over 50,000 people, and the sense that there is still a load of good music out there. Not bad. And if you still are unhappy about the music scene today, stop moaning and form a band. Thank you Leeds.
Relevant Sites:
www.leedsfestival.com/
Irfan Shah for Crud Magazine 2003©