Makes The V Festival look like World War I.

Somewhere in the world, no matter the time, there's a 'festival' happening right now. A corporate sponsored selection of bands playing in the pissing rain, a couple of faux-liberated hippie escapist tents, some overpriced t-shirts, a Carling beer tent, some mud, and wa-hey! A festival.

A belated bastard half-brother of Move, Wireless is an suburban, concrete Reading without any of the bad nu-metal acts. A safe piece of corporate entertainment. And despite all that, it's not bad. And I like the idea of a festival where you be in your own bed an hour after the show is done. At a certain age, you get a feeling that it would be criminal not to use modern inventions like electricity and toothpaste.

And this is the inaugural night. Which may explain the pisspoor sound, the absymal timeplanning which sees Moby's set slashed to 35 minutes by talentless buffons overunning, and the ever changing ticket deals.

"Talent Leaves Blur" was how at least one website described the start of Graham Coxon's solo career, and on the basis of tonights performance, they were spot on. Would you rather have unintelligable cartoons prancing around over bad hip-hop, or this? A short, economical set of spiky, melodic British indie-hardcore, Coxon shows that without the rough edges, his former bandmates are doomed to a lifetime of mediocrity. Consisting of a largely Greatest Hits set (i.e. songs from the latest album) and new stuff including the fantastic "Life, It Sucks", Coxon shows that the well is far from dry, and whilst he'll never headline Glastonbury, he has more talent in his retro specs than Damon has. It's the old cliché, two lovers grow apart, but I prefer to think that one has grown up, the other grown down.

Nature is not so kind and offers a verdict of pissing down rain, which gets us in the mood for The Bravery. Tony Hadley's secret love child on vocals, and half of The Clash's stunt doubles in the backing band, offer an empassioned but unoriginal set. The singer stalks the stage like someone whose been practising in his bedroom a little too much, the band churn out sub-Pulp, semi-Blondiesque songs, and a sea of umbrellas shrugs in it's guilty, middle-class way.  Some of the songs are quite good, but I can't remember anything about them now, barring the fact that the singer started with an immacultaely groomed quiff which, 10 minutes into the set, looked like someone had thrown seaweed at him. To some people, this may sound like something new and original. But I remember 1979, and so this is derivative bollocks. The bit where the bassist falls over a fence into the crowd and fucks his bass up is the best bit, and that's never a good thing, laughing at some dyspraxic bassist as he tries to look cool and fails.

The rain stops. All the New Order t-shirts have sold out. And you can't buy fags or chocolate anywhere. Just safe plastic bottles of booze and noodles. Now that's rock n roll. About as Rock N Roll as Moby. Or the pensioner playing air guitar in pink star shaped sunglasses and toting a soggy cigar.

Miles away from Moby's headline slots, his 35 minutes in London is a like a brief, almost pornographic, frenzed shag : first this then this then that, then this one, oh my, it's full of hits. The Greatest Hits set is just that, a barrage of melancholic disco that always works best in darkened rooms. As a pre-emptive taster for New Order, Moby's set (in effect dance music for people who can't dance), goes down a storm. Even if he does take an ill-advised detour into a 30second thrash metal. But ultimately, and despite his best intentions, Moby's set is all foreplay, and over before it starts. What there is though, a 9 song set of singles, is tailormade to selling records and getting a field to jump up and down, and it works. "We Are All Made Of Stars" is still the best song about atom theory and human consciousness, and "Lift Me Up" is still, by any standard, a wonderful uplifting piece of meaningless psychobabble.

New Order meanwhile, are an entirely different and less predictable option. Notorious for being either brilliant or awful, their determindedly retro set follows the now predictable path of three songs off the new album, a handful of Joy Division hits, and a barrel of greatest hits elsewhere. Despite playing pretty much the same songs in the same order since for about fifteen years, "Regret" at the beginning, "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "True Faith" in the middle, "Temptation" and "Blue Monday" at the end, and a shambolic rendition of something when the equipment goes wonky (tonights lucky choice, "True Faith"), the band show that not only do they have one of the strongest catalogues in modern music, but also that they are determindedly unpredictable. They shine with a passion and a vitality that would shame bands half their age and with half the ideas.

The new stuff ("Krafty", "Jetstream", and "Waiting For The Sirens Call") sits comfortably in the set and already sound like Greatest Hits. But, as their output has halved in recent years, beset by solo projects and inertia, the set can't help but feel like a history lesson. Down the front meanwhile, it's a different story.  Dads and indie kids frug like children, sing along, and somewhat oddly, the atmosphere is akin to a school carnival. And I've never heard a field full of people sing along to a keyboard part before.

Songs are dropped or changed at the drop of a hat (due at the whims of Korg Sequencers and SG guitars), extended and reworked as the band go on, setlists ignored in favour of a spontaneous and fluid set. The only thing that rankles is their determination to play so many Joy Division songs, which is now introspective nostalgic stadium cabaret from a quarter of a century ago. Good as the songs are, they should be laid to rest in favour of the enormous amount of songs they now neglect. 

Under the pissing rain, the field huddles to the sense of hopeful melancholy. Songs are dispatched with a mix of sour-faced joy, British reserve, and   technology. These are some of the greatest songs in the world. Some bands deserve the title of legends, though they would scoff at the thought. They'd rather have a yacht or a beach-house.

The world would be poorer without them.  They were - and are - fucking brilliant at showing that age does not mean apathy or irrelevancy. In their hearts, New Order still are the young men.

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