A nation gasped with interpolation during the final minutes of the England game between Poland. Thoughts racing through every male in the UK questioned the outcome from the penalty round. If England managed to beat these Polish swines they would be just one game away from the final. Just think about it, 1966 could repeat itself and World Cup Final day 2006 would be incredible. There was only one thought going through our minds, a sense of non-patriotic, selfish and immoral justice which went along the lines of, 'If England qualify for the final, we will be in Scotland and hence could well be physicality attacked by 700,000 Scottish Yobs who bloody hate the English. On top of this there was the added worry that the game wasn't going to be shown on the festival site. Plus, even if we did find a TV screen showing the game we would have to jeprodise watching The Who because they were playing alongside the final,. We needed had worried though. As England screwed up for the umpteenth time on penalties the nation hung their heads in sorrow and we booked our plane tickets to Scotland with a clear conscious that we could at least enjoy a full weekend of live music without any football related distractions.
SATURDAY
The Feeling
had just started playing their track 'Fill My Little World' to the Scottish
field moments after we finally erected our tent in the disabled campsite.
The band are busy playing at most of European festivals over the Summer
and their latest release, 'Never Be Lonely' will ensure that their forthcoming
tour this Autumn will be a benchmark to larger venues this year. Their
Summery vibe would cast a beaming ray of sweltering sunshine on a cold
winters night. Whether they have enough hits in them to continue this
high standard is yet to be seen, but this band should be making chart
singles for at least the next year. The band were performing on the Radio
1/ NME stage alongside newcomers The Cribs, Wolfmother, Bell X1 and Humanzi.
All of which we can't really be bothered to go into detail with, but check
out their websites for more info. (That's pretty obvious! - Editor)
Following in similar footsteps of the Feeling, but making a short detour
with the road leading to 'Trendytown' The Kooks played next. They are
this years NME favorites behind the Antic Monkeys which, incidentally
played the main stage on the Sunday.
The impressive thing with T is the lineup. Making it extremely difficult
for us to capture all the action, but we tried our best. We will be honest
and list a few acts we were unable to catch, but to compensate we will
give you a review of their performance at a previous gig and the reason
why we missed them.
El Presidente.
Missed them because - Trying to sort out our camping. We applied for our
weekend press accreditation, but retardarly forgot to tick the box indicating
we needed camping. So when we arrived with our tent at the festival being
told we couldn't camp our only option was to hike down a buggy and pretend
we needed to check out the facilities in the disabled camping compound!
It worked - luckily!
Review from - Sommerset House 2005 supporting a band which we have completely
forgotten, could had ben Keane! They are a very hi energy band and we
are a bit baffled why their debut single, 'Turn This Thing Around' hasn't
made them more ruddy famous, despite being released on two separate occasions.
Maximo Park
Missed them because - We were in the artist garden which had table
tennis, (where Radio 1's Colin Murray became a commentator on Sunday!)
a huge bloody TV (Showing the World Cup Final) and a bar with free beer
all weekend.
Review from - NME Awards Tour earlier this year in Bristol. Paul Smith
certainly knows he's in a leading indie band. They manage to pull out
all the live tricks in the book, but still with a unique style and image
which keeps the band fresh and exciting to watch.
Placebo
Missed them because - Checking out the funfair at the far end of the
festival. The reverse bungee jump which has now become part of the T furniture
was doing great business and the ride we went out squashed our stomach
like mad - good fun though!
Review from - IOW Festival 2006. The Placebo may have taken an extra long
break, but Brian still has the persona of a mysterious rock star and each
track teases it's audience in before making you realise just how bloody
good they are.
Pharrell Williams
Missed him because - We were doing our nails!
Review from - Well, just read our Wireless review!
Corinne Bailey Rae
Missed her because- We were engrossed with the advice tents at the festival.
How depressed are the Scottish? There were tents from the Scottish Samaritans,
drug advisors, homeless - a row of tents from these kind of organisations
could be found near the fairground. The drug advisors were useless though
- they had no idea where we could find any!
Review from - Well, nowhere in fact. We missed her at the Radio 1 Big
Weekend and couldn't make her performance at Sommerset House this year.
What we did see on Saturday was the most thrilling Franz Ferdinand set
ever. Not only did the lads play a home coming gig, but they were also
joined on stage from member of the Kaiser Chiefs (Ricky) and headline
acts, Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Chad). Their new stuff is just as good as
their classics and had it not been for the American superstars the Franz
would had easily claimed victory for the best band out of the whole day.
Kaiser Chiefs themselves had a standout moment when Ricky skidded across
the damp stage, fortunately he landed safety on his knees and there wasn't
a repeat of last years injury.
It was the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who gave the best and most memorable
performance of the day. Their 90 minute set was, of course, pretty damn
rocking and coincided with the UK leg of their tour. As we were lucky
enough to watch the guys from the side of the stage we were one of the
very few to see Flea (dressed in an extremely camp outfit) to shout 'Cup'
to the sound guy. We had no idea why he wanted a cup for and thought we
may had misheard. 'CUP', he repeated, well shouted on this second occasion.
All became clear when he urinated behind the speakers on stage! Earlier
on we spotted the guitarist jogging around the artist compound, maybe
he had a bad body fluid day! Despite the leakage that was the only piss
take which happened as the crowd enjoyed the greatest hits and as the
first night came to a close we had another full day ahead of us. Today's
artists traveled to T's sister festival, Oxygen over in Ireland and we
stumbled backstage to catch the last remaining minutes of the free bar.
DISABLED ACCESS
The disabled access at the festival was extremely, well - accessible, but poorly kept. The positive side was the fact that the disabled campsite was well situated near the Radio1/NME stage so there wasn't much walking/ wheeling involved. The area was quite secluded but and it's a big but, extremely poorly managed. Two people in the portacabin were hardly there and the loos on Sunday wouldn't had looked out of place at Glastonbury! The platform itself in the main arena wasn't bad, although - once again similar to most other events, too far away from the stage.
SUNDAY
We Are
Scientists, The Go! Team, Eels, Zero 7 where the blazes do we start with
today's lineup? The four mentioned bands could be classed as today's 'warm
up' acts. When you are placed alongside some classic bands then it's inevitable
your band will be scheduled down the bill. The burdens of this are that
you play when it's broad daylight, most of the crowd are blooming hungover,
but worse still is that some reviews only bother to mention your name
the once then disregarded your existence at the festival and within a
few words of their following paragraph have the audience to start raving
on about a more well established band before you can say 'Oi Mr. Journalist,
give us a chance and write...'
Editors are gradually becoming our new favorite festival band. Seeing
as lead singer Tom is bedding Edith Bowman we weren't surprised to see
the couple backstage in the evening. Their performance was brilliant and
part of that is the passion coming from Tom and his erratic movements
on stage. Defiantly a band which will fill arenas next year.
What the Editors do need to be cautious of though is to not be too over
publicized or they could add up just being a 'number'. Or even a 'Magic
Number' which makes us extremely nicely and some may say pathetically
link to the next band under our watchful eye at the festival, The Magic
Numbers. Having played almost everywhere last year the fatties are now
nothing special and becoming a very average band. What we needed was something
fresh and exciting so taking a break from the mainstream acts and even
giving some Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes the cold shoulder we made our
way to the King Tut's tent which was fairly empty except for some fans,
Larrikin Love fans!
Once again we need to stress how fantastic Larrkin are, Michael the lead
singer now has a plastic fake hand attached to instrument he beats. (Notice
how we cunningly concealed our lack of musical knowledge about what the
instrument was actually called!). Their songs, 'Six Queens' and 'Happy
As Larry' could well become rightfully well known after the band embark
on their first proper UK tour in September. Do yourselves a massive bloody
favor and go and see them!
We would like to point out while we have space that it was a troop of
Scottish music fans coming over the hill and not indeed a monster. Hope
this has cleared up the confusion during the Automatic half hour set at
the festival! So can everyone now refrain from chanting the question at
every open air gig from now on. Thank you!
With that out the way (We love the Automatic!) we didn't have time to
see Lily Allen 'Smile' during her first festival outing, we will however
wait to Bestival and give you a smirking report then.
Before we wrap this review up there's just time to describe the standard
hospitality area. We made an extremely brief visit there (c'mon if you
had the artist luxury area would you bother?) and can quickly report it
was a huge marquee and a press village with the bog standard journalists
pretending to look busy and munching on a very basic standard buffet.
HA HA HA!!
The Who were the last band and more or less repeated their performance
at last weeks Hyde Park Calling. All the hits, preview of the new stuff,
plug for the forthcoming album etc. The Scottish fans witnessed it all,
what they didn't witness however was another little gem which, as journalists
go, only we saw. Just as Flea peed into a cup we saw Pete Townsand loose
his temper off stage. His guitar had gone up the creek and the sound guy
was frantically attempting to fix the situation. As Pete walked off he
angrily threw his towel at the bloke and muttered a few words to him.
Also witnessing this diva strop was Strokes drummer, Fab Moretti and his
partner Drew Barrymore who had more difficulty then us accessing the stage
to watch the band. HA HA HA!
The festival came to a close by the only way a Scottish festival could
- a bloody big fight, JOKING! A bagpiper Churning out the Scottish anthem
(probably!) on the main stage.
This years T was one of the most enjoyable live Summer events we have
attended this Summer and tickets for 2007 are already being swiped up.