It’s been a long, lonely time since I was last here. The last time I did a “V” Festival - the safest, corporate festival in Europe - was one marriage, five houses, and five girlfriends ago. Three short years, yet three very long ones.

Then we were at Weston Park in Staffordshire – another stately home set in grounds of unimaginable, unattainable wealth, in a different life, and yet that time three years ago seems like … yesterday. Too close for comfort, and yet so far away.

Nostalgia’s not as good as it used to be. And three years ago, things were bleak. Twenty seven, abandoned in a sleazy suburb of Walsall, skint, and addicted to fury and self-pity, things weren’t good. And now, in a similarly self-piteous state, thirty, thinning, fattening, separated in a dying, overpriced suburb of Londoninium and addicted to rage and self-pity… well. You get the picture, and it’s a thousand ugly words long.

FFWD:

Three years later, in white text at the bottom of the screen. Cut to fields of green, clouds pure as driven snow, and bark warm with the heat of the golden sun. A car gliding along the warm tarmac of east London to Essex, heading smoothly towards an enormous stately home in the aura of Chelmsford, surrounded by trees, hills, and traffic jams.

Welcome to the “V” Festival. Safely sponsored by Virgin radio and licensed out to ITV2, widely reputed – and rightly so – as the safest, most cosseted, well behaved, of the festivals. It’s like a rich mans garden party for lovers of safe, corporate rock.

The security guards – and guardesses - look like the type of people you might find at a bar. Relaxed, twenty something couples canoodling with friends, excepting that they have walkie-talkies and flouroscent orange jackets. This is how seriously they take Security here. Tents might get broken into, but generally they don’t. People do take drugs on site, but not many, and nothing major. Even the moshing is polite. The headliners are the type of bands you could take your Dad to see, and some people do. Mums are debating bringing their little ‘uns along, Dad’s getting you an ice cream and those nice Coldplay boys are on later on. Aww.

Rockunroll.

Everything that typifies the standard festival is absent here. Godawful toilets, mud, a choice of burgers and burgers for dinner, lunch, and breakfast, tents camped over tents, cramped over other tents, scallies trying to sell you drugs and steal your stuff, and generally dodgy fuckers wandering around - all conspicuous by their absence.

Instead, you just get a bunch of lovely twenty to thirtysomethings, all with slightly self-consciously cool shirts on, some with their children, some with their Mums & dads, wandering around politely. It’s so British.

ROCKING ALL OVER ESSEX

Too British in fact. The queues are extraordinarily polite. Everybody queues, even when they don’t need to. Toilets stand empty whilst people stand waiting outside. Queues lead to nowhere and nothing, and yet grow imperceptibly longer. The longest queue leads to the on-site cash machine that charges two hundred pence for the luxury of spending your own money – and that’s after a four hundred person wait. Capitalism is a wonderful thing.

In fact, the only way I manage to rob the cashpoint is by visiting at four in the morning during a loo break. Crawling around several dozen acres of undifferentiated greenland, each acre stuffed with identical tents, armed with only a torch and a sense of confusion, trying to find a cashpoint, makes me feel as if I am in someway abandoned in a haystack the size of Colchester, looking for a needle with a metal detector. I can’t even follow a trail of people-shaped M&M’s on the floor to find my target – in this awkward pre-dawn hour, there are none, no compasses, no maps. I’m groping in the dark like a bat, listening out for the telltale beep of a plastic keypad over the sound of the wind and the snoring of the drunk.

The British are such a wonderful nation, sometimes. It’s no worry, whatever it is, we’ll just sit quietly and tolerate it. As a result, as the sun emerges, there’s some affable hangovers in the field. After a Friday evening akin to a British beach party – cans of warm lager, bad AM radio – comes the groggy morning. Thousands of us shake off sleep as if it were some form of vague treacle. Consciousness comes to slowly, in soft-focus. Queues, queues, queues and polite conversation.

Somewhere in the far distance the hugely amplified sounds of Echo & The Bunnymen, reformed like processed meat, drift over the wind. Snatches of “Lips Like Sugar” float over from …. somewhere … on their way to somewhere else. But where I don’t know. Probably the past. Through the gates, the wristbands, the queues, the burger stalls, comes the arena, the long, vast green fields, the teeming mass of people, the soft, gentle, very British rock stage is set.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, NOODLES ON MY MIND

Inside the arena, the next act is Reel Big Fish. The type of dreadful Ska-punk performed by big Americans with tattoos (lots and lots and lots of tattoos), and aided by spiv horn sections in pinstripe suits, with allegedly witty titles. You know the type of band this is – and if you don’t you’re lucky. They’re so crap the thought of The Bees (who?) is almost attractive. Almost. Sometimes I go through experiences like this to remind myself that you know, life isn’t that bad. (But it isn’t that good either).

The rest of Saturday Afternoon is veritable who’s-who mid-league, underachieving, occasionally selling out the London Forum type of bands. Next up are The Cardigans, who used to be forever doomed to being fey, slightly shy, Scandanavian indiepop of erm, ‘selective’ appeal. Now that the singer has traded her trademark blonde locks for sheer black hair, and their former Lenny-Kravitz/Phil-Lynott rawk session bassist has been replaced by some quiet Swede, it’s the Cardigans Jim, but not as we know them. The set is a complete greatest hits treat, with all those songs they do but you never knew they did, and a general wave of oh-they-did-this-one-as-well? that flows over the 50,000 slightly bored Southerners. But the problem is that whenever they play anything off their most recent album attention imperceptibly wanders off somewhere else, and you don’t even really notice some band’s playing some songs on a stage somewhere in the background.

 
It’s one of those rockunroll moments. But nothing is as rock as the absolutely astounding Hives, who happen to be more rockunroll than a rock on a roll with an electrified rocking machine. They are the Reservoir Dogs of Rock, the self-appointed Your New Favourite Rock N Roll Band In The Universe, a uniform, rockabilly beast of five identically dressed rock nutters who speak English as if it were their third language (behind the language of rock, which they speak fluently), and the most charismatic frontman ever. The first time I saw them - in a tent in a forgotten corner of the Roskilde Festival several years ago to a handful of devoted Scandanavians – they were easily the most amazing rock’n’roll experience of the year. They remain so even now. All bands should be this good. It’s like watching the world’s best comedian front the world’s greatest rock band.

Not even Robbie Williams has this kind of charm. Whoever the singer is (probably called something like Penguin Hyperbole), it’s impossible to tear your eyes off him. I’m hypnotised by the majesty of rock. Even if you can’t remember any of the songs, you don’t need to. Because this is the type of rollercoaster ride of rock where you don’t remember anything - except that it was thrilling. The Hives rule rock with the Iron Fist of wit and crunchy guitars. There’s more charm, more wit, more rock in their little fingers than in a million, drab, dull indie bands from the suburbs. And talking of drab, dull indie…. Talking of everything that music shouldn’t be…

Athelete bore for England on the other stage. Dull, fey, well-meaning indie from the kingdom of the bland. They are so appallingly boring that even the sight of the demonic, turgid Killing Joke – with all twelve of their fat, fortysomething goth fans in grey New Model Army t-shirts from the late Eighties – fail to rouse the rearend of Chelmsford from its democracy coma. That said, apart from celebrated nutter Jaz Coleman – who literally wears nothing but a binliner and warpaint whilst ranting about War and Satan, the whole band look absolutely bored to death. They can’t even entertain themselves let alone anyone else. And they resolutely fail to play any of their best songs – the roar of Pandemonium, Exorcism, Love Like Blood, Sanity, America, are all ejected from the setlist in favour of some plodding, bored middle-aged impersonation of rock music. It sounds like Rock Music played by aliens who’ve never actually heard music ever, but read a textbook about it written by a scientist.

And to think that I’m missing Ash for this. But Ash, as seen at Knebworth, reprise their greatest hits set, with all the songs from their “Intergalactic Hits” album and a couple of new rifftastic things that I can’t remember but seem to stick in my memory as being as crunchy and spiky as lobsters. I must’ve seen this band about ten times without ever meaning to – they’re not the type of band I could ever love or adore. Just the type of band I could tolerate. Oh well, I suppose it’s a rock n roll world - and The Foo Fighters are the future of rock’n’roll.

Dave Grohl is officially the nicest man in the rock. Whenever he unleashes his trademark screamy-metal-screech, he still doesn’t sound as if he quite means it. As if he’s going to break from his rock yelling and burst into a huge smile, it’s as if to tell you that it’s OK, he’s only acting, and this guitar only bites if you ask it nicely. But The Foo Fighters do absolutely rawk with big hairy balls on and their riffarama soundscapes of melodic metal nicely show the lineage between Nirvana and The Beatles. Just pop songs with big guitars bolted on. Chugga Chugga Grunch RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUURGHH! The best bits are the bits where the music transcends words and comprehension and becomes some form of odd, primal, almost joyful sense of inner release : basically the bits where he screams his head off unintelligibly.

No stone unturned. Or, if you prefer, no riff unplayed. Big silver drum riser? Check. Gigantic lighting rig with huge logos in neon disco lights? Check. Big thrilling rock songs about oral sex and planes? Gotcha. It just goes to show how good Nirvana were if even the drummer was this talented… The Foo Fighters are the future of rock. And if this is the future of rock, then, well. There are worse futures to be living in. And one of them is a land where Coldplay are rulers of the world.

Whilst Feeder are playing their frankly dull arena rock in the other field, a nation twitches in dull anticipation for Coldplay. Another band I’ve seen plenty of times without ever meaning to, Coldplay are the type of band that are so, well, bland, so inoffensive they are almost offensive. Chris Martin is some kind of dull hero that our children are taught to aspire to being. Dull, bland, inoffensive, well-meaning and frankly boring. There’s no excitement, no exhilaration, just some vague sense of community in the sadness.

Sure, you know the songs. The type of band people want Radiohead to be ; not very meaningful, not very offensive, lashing of big guitars and uplifting choruses tinged with that peculiarly British type of non-specific-melancholy. The kind of music that dumb people think is deep, and that deep people think is dumb.Unfortunately, I quite enjoy a couple of their songs – the dynamics of stuff like “The Scientist” are intriguing, but let down by generally obtuse, cod-meaningful lyrics that sound sort of deep if you don’t, you know, pay any attention. There is a reason they don’t print the lyrics on the sleeve. Can’t think what.

Coldplay are much better if I make up my own words and pretend I’m listening to a Radiohead b-side. Sure, they have the crowd eating out of the palm of their hand, and 56,000 people sweep the local air with their own off-key renditions of the frankly lyrically-pathetic “Yellow” (have you read the words? They were all yellow…), and the slightly more exciting, stimulating stuff like “The Scientist” which at least a couple of good ideas behind it, and a wonderful, obtuse take upon “What A Wonderful World”. But it’s not life-changing. It’s just another gig. Coldplay are never going to change the world, or the way people think. They never challenge. They comfort and they croon, but they never make you think, and that, by its very definition, makes them easy listening.

Apparently nme.com are triumphing these gigs as the end of an era, now that Coldplay are going to have a little holiday for a year or two. It’s no big deal. No momentous event. It’s just a Coldplay gig. It’s just a pretty tight band playing some pretty good songs, but, Coldplay are the type of band that nobody could love the way that people love The Smiths, or The Manics, or Radiohead. They’ll always be second place to something else. It wasn’t the type of event that would, or could change the world, it was just a gig, just a band, just some songs. That’s just about it.

As the crowd disperse there’s no sense of witnessing en event… no sense of lives being changed… no sense of anything, apart from the fact that it was just another event, just something that happened before the next thing. The sense of anti-climax is tangible - one can almost touch it.

Plodding over cold, faded grass at the end of the evening, with the chill of the night air, the solidified breath, the overall feeling is that sense of vague unity in melancholy. The comfort in being sad. The massed huddle of those that recognise the fact that at black and white are still colours.

SUNDAY MORNING

Sunday morning. Brushing your teeth with milk. Barbequing green sausages against hard bread. Haribo for breakfast. Grass everywhere. And not a ounce to smoke. Official Festival Virgin AM radio crackling over the field. Playing the highlights of yesterdays, and yesteryears, V festivals. For some reason, Elvis playing at V69 in Vegas is played. How very very odd.

Almost as odd, in fact as the Inspiral Carpets, who have hit the comeback trail, and who have fallen from headlining Reading in 1990 to playing second on the bill at 1.55pm in Chelmsford. They demolish their cannon of literally two or three hits quickly and easily. Each song is familiar as an old friend yet forgotten as soon as it finishes. The sight of five somewhat podgy forty somethings cranking out indie classics from the thirteen years ago, reformed like processed meat, lacking life yet inspired by money (not carpets), is thoroughly disheartening. All your favourite bands could become like this, hollow, pale imitations of whatever they were way back when, echoes of a time that never existed.

Next come Morcheeba. I’ve no idea who they are, or what they sound like, or anything about them. They’re kinda like, I dunno, that cunt Jamiuorquai, or something. Vaguely funky, relaxed, very middles-class, workouts about something. I truly get the impression, from their music, that nothing ever upsets them, that they never get happy, or sad, or annoyed, or anything, and if there’s ever a problem, they just kind of noodle out some funky bass and shake their troubles away. They’re so inoffensive they’re almost offensive. Almost. Because I can’t get passionate enough about hating them, and you know, I can grow to be angry about anything, for any reason whatsoever, whenever I want.

So much so, I spend most of the set eating a £5 box of cheap shitty noodles and not even getting angry about that. What the hell is wrong with me? I used to be Mr. Furious, now I’m merely Mr. Bored. Apathy strikes.

Now I know I’m a captive market, I mean, where else am I going to go to get food at a festival? McDonalds? Pret-A-Manger? Yoko’s Organic vegetarian Sandwich Emporium? Of Course Not. I’m going to go to Shitty Noodles, because it sounds better than Crap Chips, Burnt Burgers, and Bollocks Bolognase – and all at £5 a serving, or £4 for a burger, which consists of nothing more than bread and meat. No salad, no mayo, no cheese, nothing. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Well, sort of, and none more obviously than next. PJ Harvey in daylight. Some artists just don’t work when exposed to the sun. Some artists work best under the shroud of dark and light. Some, who mine their dark core, falter when exposed to the elements. And so, PJ Harvey, now occupying a niche of the dark queen of psychosis, respected but never-to-be-huge, tries her best, but ultimately becomes no more than a sideshow as a few thousand partake in expensive lunches and wait around patiently for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It’s a very British coup.

A few hundred yards to the right, Evan Dando meanwhile plays nothing but old Lemonheads songs with his new band, who might as well be called the Lemonheads, being as the Lemonheads had a brand new line-up everytime they made a record, and therefore this is as much the Lemonheads, as the actual Lemonheads actually ever were. Got that? Good.

Put simply, it’s nostalgic karaoke to an apathetic field of punters who don’t like PJ Harvey. But he does “Being Around” – one of the sweetest love songs ever penned – as well as a whole bunch of other songs that I can’t really remember. He probably plays “Into Your Arms”, and “Mrs Robinson”, and the other ones but I can’t remember, nor do I care. And I’m not the only one.

Next up, comes Tim Burgess, another singer from a midleague indie band cut adrift by dreams / delusions of solo grandeur. Throwing away The Charlatans blueprint of sub-Inspirals organs and vaguely baggy rhythms, he instead comes across with a hastily-assembled bunch of LA twentysomethings in cowboy hats, plays a set of forgettable ‘songs’, and is generally ignored bar by maybe a hundred of so Charlatans devotees, who spend most of the set trying to get their psyche around such slight and slender material, which is an experience akin as trying to make a dust sandwich. I sincerely hope the records are much better.

And to think that I’m missing the Queens Of The Stone Age, the latest American rock heroes. But there’ll be another chance for them, another year, another bunch of identikit American rock icons to catch up with, another set of big dumb rock songs sung by supposedly credible metallers, so there’s really no big deal in missing them. Good as some of their songs are, why be good when you can be great? And if you can’t be great, why bother?

I don’t know why David Gray bothers. He’s fucking crap. There’s no point in mincing your words here. His bland, characterless vocals are matched only by equally dreary songs with no redeeming – or memorable – features. These are songs that wouldn’t stand out in a police lineup, nor would he stand out on a Friday night at the Camden Falcon, being the King of The Dull. Even Chris Martin can’t attain that particular honour.

And so, to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. When did they become huge? I must’ve missed a meeting or something. For me, though I am perpetually stuck in 1991 according to some pubescent little twits, the Chillis are always that band that went down quite well in the back room of that dank hole known as Edwards No.8 rock club in Birmingham, and seemed to play the Hummingbird quite often, but never really threatened the mainstream. And somehow, when they decided to abandon their roots in favour of a mellower, more erm, middle-aged approach, somehow they became huge. Maybe they changed. Maybe the world changed. Whatever happened the two came together, and whilst I’m really fucking glad that Phil Collins no longer rules the world, I can’t help but feel a little let down. I really thought Nirvana would change everything, that somehow the death of the old guard would somehow make the world better. But it isn’t - it’s just the same old shit with a much better soundtrack.

Naturally I get to miss most of the Chilli Peppers set, but considering what I get instead, it’s little competition for me. Though I admit, maybe not for the vast majority of other people. In the midst of a huge field, playing to maybe two thousand people in a field ten times that size, are Underworld. The underdogs then, but rightly regarded by many – alongside Kraftwerk - as perhaps the elder statesmen of techno, the perpetually inventive pioneers who have a reputation for stunning lightshows and irresistible grooves.

Reputations are normally well deserved. After all, with a back catalogue as rich as theirs, from the origins of “mmm skyscraper I love you”, to the recent, breathless rush of “two months off” and the obtuse “dinosaur adventure 3D”, Underworld are a band that always sound as if they somehow come from sometimes in the near future. They’re pointing to a place that mankind could go, if it were brave enough to lose its fears and embrace its hopes. And even if you can’t work out that the lyrics are about something, they’re about the fractured sense of communication, the inability of mere words to express and bridge the gap between people. There is joy in repetition. Community in rhythm. Where several thousand hearts beat as one.

So what do we get? In a field of selective appeal, Underworld celebrate the victory that is being here, being alive, just being. From the opening medley of U2’s “With or Without You”, INXS “Never Tear Us Apart” and their very own classic “Rez” and “Cowgirl”, to the stream-of-consciousness, telepathic headfuck that is “Pearls Girl”, Underworld go to the other place, beyond this room, this field, this world, to the land of endless possibilities. Sure you can have thumping bass, lyrics about the Reverend Al Green and Einstein, but without the knowledge that you can only have the highs with the lows, it’s meaningless. But the thing that validates Underworld is the air of melancholy that lies underneath the songs : the fact that somehow with this music they are trying to dance through, to elevate themselves above, the air of broken sadness that they know lies at the heart of all of us. Trying somehow to dance the pain away and forge a new world.

It’s almost religious. Almost. It’s about the sense of community, about rising above the grime and dirt of the world to find somewhere else, the promised land we are drip fed in dreams and television. It’s about escape. But there’s no way that any words can truly express the beauty of music, the power of the beats, for if words were good enough, there would be no need for music.

As time draws on, as the field fills with disenchanted Chilli Peppers fans draw in by the beats, as the temperature rises and the world races inexorably towards another dull Monday morning, the last hit to the body, the last rush of blood to the head brings that Naked Lunch moment, the moment where one sees things for what they are. That this, now, is as good as it gets. There will never be another day like today, another moment like this. Seize it, take it, live it, love it. Life is for the living. And as Bon Jovi might say, I’m going to live whilst I’m alive, and sleep when I’m dead. Sure there’s tomorrow. There’s car parks and day jobs. But there’s never a chance like this.

Live for today, be the best person you can today, and history will smile upon you. For now is no time for tears, no time for selfishness, now is the time to look forward to a better future, not a beautiful past. Make it happen.

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