Sunday, 22 August 2004
The Pixies should be headlining.... you knows it. I hate people sometimes. Not individuals, not you, or me, or even most people. I hate the mob mentality that putting a lot of people in the same place at the same time suddenly reduces their intelligence. Between this seething mass of people there's probably the equivalent of one normal person's intelligence.
Shame the police sniffer dogs don't sniff out those with low IQ's and bar them from the site. But the sniffer poodle does look so incredibly cool. (and it is a geniuine, black Police Poodle).
Inside the festival it's a whole different story. The V Festival is so safe. There's no sense of it being a Festival : no inclination of it being anything other than a bunch of band playing in a really big park.
You can buy booze. Mystic tat and blankets. But you can't buy chocolate. A truly diabetic-friendly festival. And the staff are so astonishingly rude it almost sets a new record by Britain's surly standards.
After grabbing at a £20 note and muttering about how you can't fooking change that, the only appropriate response to someone who then asks if you can change it for a tenner is "Not if you talk to me like that"?
Enjoy your little slice of power, dickhead. Sure wasn't your attitude that made you a lowly t-shirt selling monkey at the grand old age of at least 50, was it?
Cant.
To add insult to injury, that useless, talentless cuntbollock Jamie "Twat" Callum is raping Radiohead's "High And Dry" with all the tact of a Sports Commentator. YER THE BESHT THING THAT I EVAH HAD.... YOU ARE... LA LA LA LA ....TINKLE FUCKING TINKLE... He warbles like some useless jazz puppet ordered at gunpoint to copy songs that the "Kidz" might have heard of, songs that he plainly has never heard let alone likes.
Fuck off and die quietly Jamie. Fuck off and die.
Snow Patrol are next on the big stage, being surprisingly not shite for a band that follows in Keane's mediocre footsteps. At least they have guitars. And tunes.
In Staffords bland countryside, they go down a storm. Dance somewhere near the back, shake your arms a little, tap those feet. Safe as fuck. A safe little life. Yeah. You knows it.
Sadly, they're on the same time as Goldie Lookin' Chain. Who are no doubt great.But they're horribly reminiscent of Bo Selector mugging The Beastie Boys 1987.

After a fabulous set by Badly Drawn Boy*, the poet laureate of not giving a fuck, there ain't much else to do for a while. Queue for an hour to take a piss, or go against the wall. Buy a £4 hot dog. With no fucking Onions. Welcome To Rubbish Island, indeed.
* and if you don't know what Badly Drawn Boy sounds like, think of him as a contemporary version of the best pub singer ever. Even if he should be on Phoenix Nights.
The Scissor Sisters steal us away. Playing to the biggest crowd of the day, an absolutely packed NME stage literally buckles under the weight of everyone's favourite camp eurodisco nutters. They do the Pink Floyd song, that one that sounds like Moby, and end with a cover of "I left my heart in San Francisco". It's all things sparkly and shiny.

Even if it does feel very New York, 1979. There aint nothin' you can do about it. This band will be huge - well, huger than they already are - this time next year. Over the over side, N*E*R*D are basically playing their very own Cypress Hill Tribute set, complete with Rock band and all. Yawn. A bunch of rappers shouting over tuneless rock backing about how the bitches should say yo and how we should all go muthafuckin crowd surfin' is lamer than a cripple with Parkinsons.
Somewhere in the distance Beverly Knight is going on about something or other. Whilst fabulous The Concretes (a Swedish cross between The Cardigans and Belly, I think) and the risible peddlers of shite known as Starsailor both profusely thank the crowd for not seeing The Pixies, The Pixies themselves return to the UK to support The Str*k*s, like they have done ever since they reformed.

The Pixies take the flaccid corpse of The Strokes into a corner and kick the shit out of the whining, daddy-boys "cool" Noo York wankers like the pussies they are. When The Strokes finally appear, the wasted lead singer, a cretin so lacking in personality I doubt he even has a name, can barely function.
Hows it feel to know you're headlining by fraud? To know that everyone went to see the support band, and not you? Get to fuck, your Strokes. You ain't bad. But you ain't good. And when you cover The Clash it just shows how shit you truly are.
Massive Attack bore. I've seen them loads of times, and each time they've been as exciting as watching paint dry.
And whilst we're at it, someone take the festival organisers and fuck some sense into them. Massive Attack playing to a sparse crowd outside? Thousands turned away from Primal Scream playing in a tent? The Strokes headling over The Pixies? The bill is picked by lottery. It must be.
Whilst Prml Scrm are, I'm assured, fantastic (and the noise coming from the tent appears brilliant) I, like thousands of others, am unable to get in. You know, the same Prml Scrm that headlined Glastonbury and Reading, and last played second on the bill on the big stage.
So instead, back to The Pixies. Back to a roaring swirl of noise. Back to great songs that seem completely isolated from everything else in the world. Back to legends that simply get up there, bash out great songs, and don't fuck about. The lineage back from every band you've discovered in the past fifteen years starts here. I can name the songs, but if you don't know them, or the true meaning of the word "Debaser", why are you here?

The Pixies were too good for me to remember what songs they played, or in what order. I just know that they did, and they left me breathless. But that's enough of the arse kissing.
The organisers here can't tell dogshit apart from diamonds. Don't you worry boys & girls. We'll stick all the good bands on in tents so you cant't see them unless you don't mind missing The Pixies, and we'll populate the field with the rudest staff known to man.
Britain has a reputation to live down to indeed. In the meantime, feted as Gods, The Pixies stand on stage, taking photos of the crowd, scarely believing their luck. The band who were never rewarded justly in their time together, now hailed righteously
The Pixies are living proof that bands can reform, come back for the dollar, and get their just desserts. Now if only someone can persuade all the shit bands to split up and stay split, good music will out once more. The night of the long knives has yet to come. Still, in a world where Depeche Mode get dropped for headling stadiums and selling millions of records, there is no justice in this world. Is there?

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i.am.cool.u.aint Written by Guest on 2004-09-13 11:19:40 pixis sucked ass. they were shyt live, so stop making fun of talented people like the strokes you loser | Written by markreed on 2004-09-17 21:32:11 *falls over laughing* |
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