Month: June 2003

review thingy in progress.

So it was all in all awesome. The weather was in general pretty damn good. Arrived on the Thursday to sweltering heat. Sweat was actually dripping off me as I put up my tent. It was almost too hot. So as soon as that was done, there was a need for a cold drink. As I was there with a number of people from Somerset, there was only one place to go, the Somerset Cider Bus. Yes, it’s a bus with cider, and it was really nice. Proper cider for those of you wondering, none of that fizzy stuff. So that night there was a lot of drinks and a few smokes leading to a nice hangover on Friday morning.

Sleeping was all in all pretty good. We had a really good camp site and there was enough space for everyone. Woke up cold a couple of nights to throw on a jumper but that was about it. A bit of rain on Friday afternoon for about an hour lead to a bit of a bad time but this was soon shrugged off and a good mood began.

Friday
David Grey was allright I guess, thinking that while I like White Ladder, he is less and less my kinds of music these days. The cover of Whiskey in the Jar was funny but that was about it. As he finished the crowd surged forward. I found myself at least 10 feet closer to the stage and it had already been crammed!

The R.E.M. set list:

‘Begin The Begin’
‘Imitation Of Life’
‘Drive’
‘Animal’
‘The One I Love’
‘Daysleeper’
‘Bad Day’
‘What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?’
‘The Great Beyond’
‘Fall On Me’
‘Losing My Religion’
‘Finest Worksong’
‘Electrolite’
‘She Just Wants To Be’
‘Little America’
‘Walk Unafraid’
‘Man On The Moon’

Encore
‘Everybody Hurts’
‘Final Straw’
‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’

A strong performance with the crowd well behind them.

Saturday

The Flaming Lips
The pit was in a word scary. I was up there from the middle of Supergrass as I wanted to be close for the last two acts. It was a little cramped for the Flaming Lips but easily bearable. They played a great set and do a wonderful live show. So very much worth seeing.

‘Race for the Prize’
‘Fight Test’
‘The Gash’
‘Yoshimi part one’
‘Lightning Strikes The Postman’
‘One More Robot’
‘She Dont Use Jelly’
‘Do You Realize??’
‘Waitin For A Superman’
‘Happy Birthday’ (this has to be seen to be believed)
‘Breathe’ (Pink Floyd cover)

Radiohead. The pit for this was scary. I was well up the front and it was crammed to hell. I was standing there pretty much unable to move and then it started. Boy did it start. There There is such a great show opener. But as soon as it kicked into high gear, so did the crowd. I was quite worried I wasn’t going to be able to stay standing, the movement was madness. By the end of the show I had moved at least 15 feet to the right and back and forward all night. Once I just went with it, it was all fine but to start off it was scary. A great set tho 😉

‘There There’
‘2+2 = 5’
‘Lucky’
‘The National Anthem’
‘Talk Show Host’
‘Where I End And You Begin’
‘Climbing Up The Walls’
‘The Gloaming’
‘No Surprises’
‘Fake Plastic Trees’
‘Sit Down Stand Up’
‘Go To Sleep’
‘Sail To The Moon’
‘Paranoid Android’
‘Idioteque’
‘Everything In Its Right Place’

Encore 1
‘Just’
‘Karma Police’

Encore 2
‘Street Spirit’

The first encore was introduced by Thom walking up to the mike and very shyly saying “rock”. Well the did just that. The second encore was brought about by Thom singing a couple of lines from Karma Police acapella to get the crowd going as they left the stage. This just kept going and after a few moments the lads returned again to do a blinding Street Spirit.

Sunday
Sigur Ros. This was stunning. The best live performance I have seen ever. Full stop, end of story. There was so much power and so much beauty behind this, it was just stunning. ‘Hafssol’ in particular was mindblowing. Actually I’m wrong, it was beyond stunning.

‘Untitled 1 (Vaka)’
‘Untitled 3’
‘Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa’
‘Olsen Olsen’
‘Hafssol’
Untitled 8 (Poppalgid)’

Doves weren’t bad, but they didn’t seem like a headlining band. There good stuff was good, the rest was blah. Perhaps it was simply following Sigur Ros killed them but it just didn’t work.

Posts to follow about the Spree, the fantastic Jimmy Cliff, The Frames plus many more.

I’m back and I am now clean. Seeing my bathroom tonight was a beautiful thing.

Some quick highlights.
Sigur Ros | nothing better. Best band in the world playing the best music in the world.
Radiohead | I was in the pit about 10 rows back for this. Unforgetable.
R.E.M. | Another one I was in the pit for. Good crowd pleasing set. Michael Stipe said “this is your song, we just cover it” before jumping into Loosing My Religion. It was a magic moment.
Jimmy Cliff | Reggae legend performed what can only go down as a legenday set. I’m not the biggest reggae fan but this just blew me away.
The Flaming Lips | WOW. Now that’s what I call a performance.
The Frames | part of an Irish session on Friday afternoon really hit the spot.

Lots more to come tomorrow after I sleep and sleep and sleep. I’m a little sunburnt, of course the only place I forgot to put sun cream was my nose and it’s quite burnt. Other than that very tanned.

I’m not hungover…well I probably am but it’s been a permanent state since Thursday and my throat hurts like fuck from smoking too much.

The last time I saw R.E.M. was in Lansdowne Road in 1999 with about 70,000 people. Tonight was Brixton Acadmeny with just 4,000 people and me right up the front. It was suffice it to say awesome.

The setlist was:

1. Finest Worksong
2. What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
3. Welcome to the Occupation
4. Animal
5. Reno
6. Daysleeper
7. The Great Beyond
8. She Just Wants to Be
9. Begin the Begin
10. These Days
11. Fall on Me
12. Cuyahoga
13. I Believe
14. Losing My Religion
15. Bad Day
16. So Fast so Numb
17. Imitation of Life
18. Walk Unafraid
19. Man on the Moon

Encore:

20. Everybody Hurts
21. Final Straw
22. Carnival of Sorts
23. It’s the End of the World as We Know It.

I’m gone to Glastonbury. I’m back in London late on Monday. I shall spend most of the evening in the shower.

Motherfuckers at QJump appear to have cancelled my train tickets to get to Glastonbury two weeks ago and not told me about it. I rang to find out where the hell they were and I’m waiting to hear back.

Fuck
Fuck
Fuck
Fuck
Fuck.

The Iraq team have been getting some of the biggest cheers at the games to date.

This is security welcoming them to the arena.

What a fucking great photo that is.

“Don’t doubt it, know it. Do a google search”

I love this show.

It’s funny sometimes how transient friendship can be. I don’t even know how to say anything other than that.

I finished Redemption Ark and enjoyed it a lot…with a few reservations. It didn’t feel like a full book, and perhaps it’s not intended to be. The ending was very open and presumably the next book will pick up where it left off. Nobody seems to die. Wait, I lie, they do die. But there is the technology to bring them back with little or no loss. Everyone died in the first book and were promptly brought back. In this book two major characters die and are brought back. The death of one is a big character point for another and at the end of the book it’s reset. Hmmm. Still I eagerly await the next book.

Damn a GM Safari and a developers preview of Panther out today. With a bit of luck I’ll have both of them tomorrow.

Work today started about as well as a Monday can, with a massage.

Soundtrack is Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips.

The picture to the right is the BBC webcam for Glastonbury. As you can see it’s all starting to take shape.

I woke up very early this morning and I didn’t wake up well. I hadn’t slept all that well and I was a little groggy when I woke up. But there was a very loud noise overhead. We are pretty close to the Heathrow flight path and so there is quite a bit of air traffic around. I rarely notice it and when I do, it does not bother me.

But this morning was different. It was so loud and so close for a few seconds I was sure it was in trouble and was going down. That kinda woke me up quickly.

American Apology shirt