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...