Happy Days Are Here Again

Time for the annual festival update...Summer Sundae and Green Man.

Summer Sundae was first up, a couple of weeks ago in Leicester. Have to say that the headliners did not exactly get me over excited before the event, the Magic Numbers I have always thought to be over sugared and lacking in bite, and The Divine Comedy are just irritating and smug.

There was a lot to enjoy though, especially The Broken Family Band, Low, John Cooper Clarke, and Fujiya & Miyagi, who were fantastic. They are very obviously influenced by Kraftwerk, Neu!, Talking Heads etc, giving them fluid basslines and quirky vocals and dare I say it making them very danceable. Ahem. Many things are just about excusable at a festival, one of these is 39 year old white men hopping about to electropop which may otherwise be shameful to do outside the home.

Sunday night was closed by Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines, who were almost as good as at ATP earlier this year. An odd choice to close the outdoor part of the weekend though, songs about redemption through drugs accompanied by a string quartet did not really get the kids jumping, but I enjoyed them.

Malcolm Middleton was really good on the Saturday afternoon, although I did get into a minor altercation with a pinhead in a trilby who was talking loudly with his back to the stage. I asked him if he could have his conversation elsewhere, and he took exception to this, but did bugger off eventually.


Green Man was the following week, and was on a larger scale than the previous year. There were a lot more electric guitar bands than in 2006, encompassing post rock (Fridge) droney psychedelia (Six Organs of Admittance) and Sabbathy sludgecore (Dead Meadow). This was interspersed with more traditional stuff like Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, John Renbourn, Alasdair Roberts (disappointing - he seems to have ditched the stark solo arrangements on his new record, which is somewhat over produced).

Although we saw them both the previous week in Leicester, The Broken Family Band and Malcolm M were excellent, and Joanna Newsom was magic on the opening night.





I was sceptical about Seasick Steve, thinking that he would be just another white blues revivalist, but he worked the crowd better than anyone all weekend, he was bloody good actually. Rowdy and stomping slide blues in the John Lee Hooker / Lightnin Hopkins style. Jim and I are of course a bit mardy about the sudden popularity of this kind of stuff, because we have been listening to it since we were 17, but that's just rock snob elitism I guess...

Now We Are Ten

This week's Freak Zone had an interview with Julian Cope, a couple of tunes from his new LP, and a few songs from Japanese bands as featured in his new book Japrocksampler. JC is one of those people who I dabble around; I like the idea of him more than his actual records, although stuff like The Great Dominions, Passionate Friend, Reynard The Fox etc are great songs by anyone's standards. He's a very genial cove; he once came to do a signing when I was at Virgin (I forget what for) and he insisted on brushing his teeth before going to meet his public...

Anyway, the tracks played from his new LP sounded OK, though not necessarily enough to make me dash out and by it. I have bought a few cds over the last week though: Cruel Sister by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, and Now We Are Ten, which is a Trunk Records sampler (and a bargain at £4). Both are good, the latter is full of unexpected treats from Brit jazz and acid folk to cheesey ad music and weird library and soundtrack pieces. Best listened to late at night with a glass in hand, and definitely the most unexpectedly delightful compilation I've bought since the Late Junction cd a few years ago - they really need to get around to putting out a sequel to that.

Other tunes rattling around my head at the moment range from some excellent stuff on the Fujiyami & Miyagi myspace site, looking forward to them at Summer Sundae, and the Modest Mouse LP, which has taken a while to grow on me but now feels like one of my favourite albums of the year, and not just because it has provided gainful employment for Johnny Marr.

I'm still waiting for delivery of a mad old classic psych folk LP which I ordered on eBay the other week - 'First Utterance' by Comus. Demented stuff. There's a streaming version of Song To Comus on the Wire website at the moment...they would go down an absolute storm at the Green Man festival which is now only a couple of weeks away.