fire and forget

Hmm. I’m awake.

How did that happen?

Even feel quite well rested. Blimey I love this festival in a holiday camp lark: a bed! A shower! I made it into the former without really knowing how, but best to ask no questions as long as you made it, I find. And d’you know, I actually feel alright? This morning is one of those mornings after that you creep around, feeling vaguely suspicious, wary of that telltale first throb of hellish hangover.

But I’m still alright. I even eat some porridge. Then I eat a sandwich. Hey, maybe I didn’t have that much to drink last night after a-

ohdeargod!whatjusthappenedtomyhead!whyismybraintryingtochiselitselfoutofmynose!

I realise now that last night I may not have been at my most discerning. I can’t have been to have actually chosen to drink that much. So maybe it’s no surprise that the driving melancholy of Magnolia Electric Company sounds better this morning than they did last night, blessed with arching vocals and a restless heart. And afterwards, I don’t feel so bad at all. Bless you, ATP.

What comes next sorts everything out. Sally Timms is breathtaking, opening with a haunting and evocative scorched faery tale, buzzing with the weight of wonder. Then a hop skip and a jump of a gearchange to a selection of fractured folk hoedowns, driven by plinky-skippy beats and whispering toys in the dark. Aside from the harsh sound that plagues the Centre Stage, the results are sublime.

Back to the daylight and arcade neon for the unsung heroes of the weekend. There’s a full and devoted crowd in the pavilion for the unassuming magnificence of Low, the dwindling silver driftwood on a sea of silence.

Later, I hear only bad things about Jason Pierces’s Spiritualised Acoustic Mainline, which makes me feel OK that I sacked it off and hit the chalet, and spent some time taking down a brew, eating pizza and watching Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. And Doctor Who. Now that is a perfect Saturday afternoon.

At least until someone took Pat Garrett off halfway through. They did that last year an’ all, an infuriatingly scant ten minutes before the end of the hangover-melting Time Bandits.

So back on the broadwalk for the man we’re all here to see. Nick Cave, the prince of darkness, his satanic moustachio, has arrived. But it’s hard to imagine the crack of doom in a carrier bag propped up into a big top and stuffed with arcade machines. Red
Right Hand has a suitably loungy, almost calypsoid feel, but as the classics keep coming, there’s plenty of sturm and drang in this storm.

After a short break, Cave is back for a romp through his Grinderman racket. Depth Charge Ethel rocks, Honey Bee squalls, Grinderman (the dirge) kills the momentum, and Get It On sounds like the Mission Impossible theme played by sex-crazed cannibals.

After that it’s hard to get excited about The Scientists‘ performance. Sure, when they’re going they’re going, a steam piston of bludgeoning blood-red blues. But there’s too much time in between songs, too much standing around.

At some point tonight, I look out of my chalet window and see Deborah sitting in the next chalet over, so I call her up and say “I can see you,” and she freaks out. Heheheh.

On the red stage, and it is red, are Youpi Youpi Yeah, black-clad gallic groovepunks. They’d even be worth a singalong if I’d ever got past GCSE French. Better still are The Drones, the first this weekend to rock the fuck out, hell yeah! Agonised, wrenching, babbling heartbreak, drenched in feedback and fury.

By now the Carlsberg is copping it’s toll on my critical faculties so the rest of this review may be a bit of a bit underdeveloped. We Ragazzi are, kind of, like, quirkpop, or something, and have the fittest drummer. See? Top critical form.

…Sleeeeepppp…

Woke up in Woking. Pile in the car. Soundtrack: Paul’s ’90s tapes. Me: Who’s this again? every song, remembering every word. I sleep through the worst.

Skinny jeans are everywhere in Tesco. How much beer can we carry? Actually quite a bit, as it turns out.

Butlins, Minehead. Lacks the faded seaside glamour of Camber Sands, spiritual home of ATP. The stages are in the Pavilion, a bizarre cross between a big top and a motorway services. Can’t get our heads round it. There’s an Irish pub. We beer up. ATP!

Ian Wadley opens the festival, although it’s hard to tell when he stopped tuning up and actually started playing. “Is this what the music will be like?” asks a bemused Butlins barmaid. Ain’t heard nothing yet love. ATP!

Then Wadley gets going, pull back to reveal it’s the end of the world, Ry Cooder wailing atop a mountain of skulls. Wadley turns his back on the crowd to rock out, then it’s back to stage front, down on one knee, things briefly go a bit Cairo. I get out.

Fuck me, Nick Cave is standing right there! As close as I am to you… Nobody believes me.

It all starts to make sense when we hit the centre stage for The Only Ones. They’re late. We forgive them. It has been 26 years.

The contrast couldn’t be more marked between Peter Perrett’s emaciated frame and the muscular sound the Only Ones belt out. Perrett’s scuttling vocals sound great, and they’re so tight. Bit weird seeing them in what feels like a shopping centre. Hairs on the back of the neck time.

Meticulous timetabling goes out the window as beers get sunk.

Art of Fighting? Art of Pillow Fighting maybe. They only seem to remember they have an audience halfway through eachsong only to then forget again. Magnolia Electric Company are a bit country and that’s it.

Snapshots: Dancing to My Bloody Valentine in a room that feels like a wedding reception. Trying to get into our chalet without a keycard. Buying another pint. Where the fuck am I? Autopilot on. All goes black…

What’s the deal with record producers popping up in music videos? The charts seem awash with fat Yanks in 3xXXL white T-shirts contributing to the energy, rhythm and vitality of the song by, er, barking their own name, or skinny Dutchmen in shellsuits pulling faces.

Timbaland may be a master of jittery, skittery beats, but in the looks and charisma front he’s no Pharrell, lurking apologetically around his own video for Give It To Me, with him and Justin Timberlake like a bizarre race-swap version of the Easy Lover video where Phil Bailey dances all cool and then makes a sweaty, embarrassed Phil Collins dance like a balding little troll.

Jay-Z’s one of the worst for dribbling meaningless nonsense over perfectly serviceable intros. On Thriller, the (terribly-named) opening track of Fall Out Boy’s latest album, he spouts some nonsense about this album being dedicated to “anyone who said it couldn’t be done.”

Um, yeah, because there were loads of haters who were convinced that a hugely successful bunch of gauche emo whiners would never conquer the insurmountable odds to punt out another album of overproduced, vaguely hummable pop-punk supposedly produced by a coasting tycoon as a cynical gimmick.

Whatever happened to the Longpigs, Bennett, and Joyrider? Where are all the indiedisco heroes?

Well, to be brutally honest, they didn’t exactly light up that many indiediscos back in the mid-to-late 90s, but they were just three of the bands on heavy rotation in my halls of residence bedroom.

I’ve forgotten more bands from that time than I could name now, but as I sit here ripping my CD collection, wandering song by song through my halcyon youth at the wrong end of the country at the wrong end of Britpop, I’m listening to the Warm Jets and lamenting that my copy of The Longpigs’ Blue Skies has vanished.

I miss the Liverpool Lomax. The first time I went there was to see Silver Sun, if I recall, and Satellite Beach, or maybe it was Carrie, or both, supported, and became the first in a line of going-nowhere outfits bashing away in dingy half-full venues to me and my going-nowhere friends. Who are now engineers and policemen.

Which is a clue: as my boss, at the Tower Bridge office where I work, is a former member of Tiger. So that’s what happens to the denizens of the indiedisco, and the lords of the pub backroom. We grow up and get jobs.

Looking back, I can honestly say that was the last thing I expected.

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Mike Mikado - Hey Mr monkey it’s Page 9: or something

Ghosts – Stay the Night: swooning, stabbing horns

The Hours (the people that brought us the couplet “Ludwig Van/How I love that man”) - Love You More: love ticks the pop culture checkboxes

Kings Of Leon – On Call: haunting stuff

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Noisettes / Foals
ICA 29.01.07

Foals are uptight-strapped guitarslingers, a doomed spiral of repetitive Bloc Party-isms until they undergo a mid-song seismic gear-shift and suddenly it’s all Cossack! At The Disco and stomping good.

Noisettes are here to teeestiiiiiffffyyyiiiiii! They’re an evil universe Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a Skynard-style barroom band fronted by the wicked fairy that all the fairies in fairy school were scared of (but secretly fancied).

Decked out in goth-Tinkerbell rags and POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS guitar strap, Shingai Shoniwa belts out ‘Don’t give Up’ and ‘Scratch Your Name’ like a whirling dervish with sugarcoated wolf’s lungs. Just when you’ve got your head round the jerky gospel punk racket the Noisettes close with ‘Pub Life’, an oompah-driven atom bomb dropped on Oliver Twist’s fogbound London streets, and they’re gone gone gone. Please Shingai, can we have some more?