Glastonsunday, Worthy Farm

We Have Band

June 28, 2009

Sunday: a day spent mainly at the Pyramid. This means a walk up to The Park for Micachu and The Shapes is out of the question and we’re stuck watching Status Quo. This won’t do, we decide not to wait for their hits and head back down to John Peel for We Have Band, winner of the festival’s Emerging Talent competition. We are glad to see them play to a healthy amount of people and the three way sharing of “Oh, oh, oh” on ‘Oh!’ is some of the best fun we have had all weekend.

Later Tony Christie is on the Pyramid doing ‘Amarillo’, a conga weaves past us and man, woman and child are grinning like simpletons. We are still buzzing though after hearing the masterful ‘Walk Like a Panther’ in person and wanting to seek out last year’s Made In Sheffield which we never got round to hearing at the time. It’s then back into the Guardian Lounge for more cake, tea and newspapers and the relaxing aural soundscape of The Penguin Café Orchestra. There’s no rousing of anyone from the floor this time, though.

We had the pleasure of seeing Sir Tom Jones play in Las Vegas last year and raved to people how much oomph and power he still had in those lungs of his. Though we can barely see the screens through the massed throng of Welsh flags, let alone the stage (and none of the flags are a hundredth as funny as the ‘Fist Me Jesus’ one from last year.) and sound problems mean the first few songs are lost into nowhere. I would recommend the Tom-Jones-in-nightclub-setting over outdoor festival if you get the choice, as good as it is to hear ‘Delilah’, ‘Kiss’, ‘It’s Not Unusual’ and ‘She’s A Lady’; they don’t sound quite right out here. His cover of EMF’s ‘Unbelievable’, a nod back to when he last played the festival in 1992, will never sound right though.

One final visit to the John Peel Stage for Ladyhawke and we are a little surprised to see more people than at Jarvis last night – even though she clashes with Madness and Bat For Lashes. Probably enough to fill the bottom section of Brixton Academy we’d wager. The crowd are very up for it and it feels like they are singing along to everything. The last three tracks of ‘Back of the Van’, ‘Paris Is Burning’ and ‘My Delirium’ send them, bonkers. Interesting times await Pip Brown I feel, was she just too early to get on the Sound of 2009 hype train?

Last year we saw Mumford and Sons play in a tee-pee to about 20 people well after Jay-Z’s headlining set. This year, at the Chess Club/Mi7 stage, there’s closer to 300 under and around the tent. We proudly sing along as they play highlights from their early EPs, including ‘White Blank Page’, ‘Little Lion Man’ and ‘Roll Away Your Stone’. ‘The Cave’ is also sounding as massive as anything we’ve heard so far. The album is finished, they announce mid-way through from the stage, and we can’t help but feel it’s going to be very impressive. We hang around as long as we can during Laura Marling’s set, gathered masses straining to even see her. They have problems hearing her sing too as the whole crowd seem to sing along, softly of course, to ‘Ghosts’ and ‘My Manic and I’.

And then it’s Blur - and they’re masterful, no doubt about it. As they work through a chunk of earlier material including the popular with me if no-one else ‘Tracy Jacks’, ‘Jubilee’ and ‘Badhead’ from Parklife and delighting the crowd with a thrash through ‘Girls and Boys’. Graham is looking as cool as ever, Damon is losing years with every song, Dave is Dave and Alex chuffs away on a fag, looking more like heroes of our youth and less like an opera composer, solo guitarist, politician and cheese maker. They give everyone annother sing-along to ‘Country House’ which has superb backing vocals despite what anyone may say about it. Phil Daniels and Damon wrestle over the microphone for ‘Parklife’, though as fun as these all were, the real highlights are on the slower numbers. Damon breaksdown in tears with the full force of emotion at the climax of ‘To The End’, and we get something in our eye as the solo to ‘This Is A Low’ roars at us. The crowd sings a capella to ‘Tender’, never a song I thought was that popular with the public en masse. They even “oh my baby” to call back the band an encore. Twice. By the time ‘The Universal’ dims, we wonder if a band so tied to a press-driven music scene did free a back catalogue of some of the best songs of the 1990s. Yes it really, really did happen,