Tanked up and turfed out, James Berry bows out of Glatonbury 2004.
21/07/2004
65 x 2 = Wicked & Weird
We’ve been here for days, for 4 in fact. Even though they’ve passed so rapidly it feels more like a handful of disjointed hours and snatched moments. We know that can’t be the case – our head’s holding a dull pain captive, eyes hang sticky with sleep, our skin’s developing a unique new shade, and a stale fragrance stalks us to most corners of the site. Trying to hold it together with a cupful of caffeine and sugar on the wooden floor of the Guardian Lounge, possibly our finest Glasto moment comes and finds us, handing the final day a renewed spring in its blistered step. Any previous experience of Buck 65, either recorded, in print or performance has been wickedly entertaining, a maverick hip hop artist trapped in hobo skin, drawing influence from almost anywhere but. Still, we weren’t prepared for he who shone so brightly before us today. Matching the mood, he slumps on a stool with laughable plastic bags over his trainers, backed by a drummer and guitarist who seem to be winging it as much as him, rambling sometimes off the cuff, sometimes from the small notebook he clasps. He finishes with a Woody Guthrie song from the 40s, every line uttered as if it were a new moment discovered right there, each expression amplified exuberantly. Later in the New Tent, with his full band’s UK debut, he epitomises the spontaneous, carefree, inspirational spirit that everyone came here looking for. Some call him the hip hop Tom Waits – just let him be himself, that’s good enough.
A Trick Of The Light?
Don’t think we’re undermining the Super Fence’s impenetrable authority here or anything, but this year’s most successful (only?) gatecrashers were without a doubt obstinate Camdenite/Swede indie-mongrels Razorlight. Who let them in anyway? More importantly who gave them permission to steal the day away before we’d even had our first lot of doughnuts? The following day they go on to break another presumption, releasing one of the year’s most vital debut records, but most in attendance don’t know that yet. If they know anything it’s their opinion on cocky front-loudmouth Johnny Borrell and the words to ‘Golden Touch’. But such self-belief can only turn intoxicating when you realise he’s telling the truth, and it does. They make a lethargic, sticky and sun-kissed audience sway, shout and above all smile with some victorious simplicity. They deliver super-charged Londoncentric candy-sweet new wave like they invented it, they bring on inflatable letters to spell ‘love’ (which they do for about 6 seconds) and even a friggin’ gospel choir for the final 3 songs, like being second on the bill is going to stop them playing like they’re second from top and out on a bid to upstage the headliner. They needn’t have brought the inflatable letters though, quite apart from the fact they didn’t work, there was enough of that heading their way by the time they closed with a devastatingly direct and roughed-up ‘Rip It Up’. We’d say you can stop referring to them as hopefuls from heron in then.
The Odd Couple (Of Hundred)
Stood in a Somerset valley sporting mucky wellies, watching the third act of opera’s Ride of the Valkyrie on a mammoth pyramidal structure over the shoulder of a dreadlocked hippie with a spliff behind her ear, at lunchtime on a balmy Sunday in June – not a tale I thought I’d have in my cannon for the grandkids. But this is Glastonbury, things like this can and do happen here. Some of them are even real, in so much as the bloke next to you insists he saw the same thing (we could tell you about the silver pirate ship we ‘saw’ drifting quasi-supernaturally through the crowd at Orbital in 2000, but we’ve never had that verified). This is real though. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes awe-inspiring, but very real. Never before have so many people graced those boards simultaneously – fact! There are over 120 of them up there (that’s not a challenge, Polyphonic Spree), and they’re certainly not short of grace. Such a complete sound emanates lushly from the stage, uber-relaxing and skin-tighteningly intense, heroic and inspiring. Yes, all those things. Next to the comparative superficiality and minuteness unfolding elsewhere on site it’s incomparable. It’s probably the best booking Michael Eavis ever made. Shortly after recuperating from their set we see a peculiar bowler-hatted gentleman scurrying through the hedgerows by the Acoustic Stage with the X-Files theme music seeping from his tatty briefcase. This almost seems normal.
Tantrums & Twig Tiaras
It ain’t all peace, pipes and reasonably-priced love round these parts y’know. Take hundreds of primadonnas out of their fishbowl, drop them onto a plot of turf, add intoxicants at will, the law of averages will do the rest. Liam Gallagher obviously sees himself leading the charge, having already got the back-stage bust-up rumour mill grinding. He skulks around up there in a ridiculous full-length fake-fur coat like the kid who thinks he’s got the biggest knob in his class but can lay claim to little more than a superiority-complex. “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, Glastonberrrry,” enunciates he irritably, “and I’m the only fookin’ one ‘ere!”. It’s funny, but alas for the wrong reasons. We knew I Am Kloot lurked on the more abrasive side of the acousticity, but still. They launch into one final fluttering burst of heavy-handed pop, only for the PA to be pulled. The stage manager enters, meets a puffy-chested John Bramwell and is ejected violently to select cheers. A second try simply finds power cut completely. Won’t be seeing you next year then. Making the end of Badly Drawn Boy’s set we learn the boy Gough is well peeved at only getting on the bill as replacement for Jet and has thrown a couple of his squeakiest toys out the pram, surely moving him down the list for a return invite too. You have to point the barrel away from you Damon. Hope Of The States make gnarly noises on Saturday night about some gripe or other, but they’re nice boys at heart and are more overwhelmed by the occasion, battering through a sometimes scrappy, sometimes sensational set. So bollocks to this fighting then, eh, who wants a drag on this?
Last Nite
Everyday is not like Sunday at Glasto. Sunday night has its own unique sense of gravity – especially where the Other Stage is concerned, you can’t avoid the feeling that such immense care is taken. Previous Sundays have seen heroic sets from Sigur Ros, Mogwai and Spiritualized. This year though the final strait is so oversubscribed we’re forced to discard GLC and Moz before it’s even begun. Buoyed through late afternoon by a persistent, ravenous Six By Seven, inoffensive meandering from Belle & Sebastian and bursts of joy from The Raveonettes, the evening starts proper with an extraordinarily resolute BRMC. They astound even your scribe (a veteran of 20ish gigs) with the fire in their belly tonight, following the Virgin split it’s as if they’re greeting every day as their last. The weekend’s most beautiful sunset as a backdrop to the most devilishly honed ‘Salvation / Heart & Soul’ segue we’ve yet heard? That’ll do. Happily we make Stellastarr* by a whisker, they’re offering a near-capacity New Tent elastic abandon and look like they may just snap during ‘My Coco’. They’re your fantasy band, they’ve got everything, you bow down. But we were en-route to Muse (sorry Orbital, maybe next time – doh!) who initiate their own campaign to prove they have more of everything than anyone who preceded them (English National Opera obviously exempt from calculations). They succeed. Unexpected hit of the weekend by a country mile, they’re the only headliner with nothing to rely on but their innovation. The only headliner who really mattered in the end. And who could deny that after 6 years this was their finest moment? A turning point. They finish, there are fireworks and then it’s all over. Which is only fitting.
Relevant sites:
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk