V97. Not my first festival, but I still had an aversion to camping at this point, so took advantage of the much missed Argon Events coach to the Saturday date in dirty Leeds. In retrospect, this was madness as the Sunday was pretty good (pretty good? Daft Punk! Beck! Foo Fighters! Placebo! No Way Sis! Ahem...) but I was really only going because I wanted to see Blur again if I'm honest. In those days the northern leg of the V Festival wasn't really settled, starting the previous year in Warrington's Victoria Park, but as that was a bit tiny, so they shifted it across the Pennines to the vast grounds of a stately home at Temple Newsam just outside Leeds (where the Leeds Festival is now held yearly). The V Festival is now seemingly enshrined in it's northern-ish home at Weston Park near Shifnal.
Look at the bloody price. £28.50!!! That is mental. To think the price now in 2014 for a day ticket is £89.00 before booking fees and other sundry charges. Still, the value depends on what you're seeing that day. What exactly did I have to look forward to? On paper, lots, but as ever with these bloody things, acts on various stages overlapped and you'd never get to see everything you wanted, but might see some bands you'd rather have not. Hence the headline standoff between Blur, The Chemical Brothers and Ash. Well it had to be Blur, obviously, that's the reason I came. Ash were, judging on past experience seeing them live on the tellly, what they call in the business as "ropey". Tim Wheeler's singing was always a bit weedy, so despite loving their singles I'd give them a miss. It would have been good to see the Chems live, but a choice had to be made.
The rest of the bill though was, looking back, bloody average. having got there a bit late I managed to avoid non-league AC Acoustics and Linoleum, and being mad into what they called "Britpop" back in the day (and what a damning tag that was to become) watched a bit of bottom of the bill Division Two popsters The Supernaturals. You remember them. Of course you do. (Tumbleweed moment). They had a hit with the annoying "Smile", which was used in an advert for the bank Smile.co.uk. Which I'm shocked to find is still going. Anyway they were passable, and I always had a soft spot for "The Day Before Yesterday's Man", and their later single "Sheffield Song".
Next up was a trot over to the NME stage. I say a trot, it seemed like fucking miles. This was when I first began to realize I needed to factor in the walking between stages in my timing, plus stop offs for overpriced beer and giant Yorkshire Puddings. Don't remember anything about Symposium or Silver Sun, and I think it might have started raining along the way so there was a quick nip in to see Jimi Tenor in the Musik Magazine/Virgin Hi-Energy Dance Tent. Just to keep dry. Virgin Hi-Energy was some sort of drink if I remember, and Musik Magazine was a rival to Mixmag. Both those none-more-90's products are long gone, as is the memory whether Tenor was any good or not. Poor the Jimi.
So having had an ice cream it was time to venture out over to the NME Stage for Yorkshire's own Embrace. The band that wanted Oasis's crown. Alas, they had fantastic songs, but Tim Wheeler-disease afflicted singer Danny McNamara as he couldn't hold a tune in a bucket. At that point I may add - I've seen the band many times since and the singer has improved immensely, and the fact that they've just released a new excellent EP earlier this year after a long lay off proves they have some fire after all this time. Still, despite the bad singing Embrace had the crowd on their side, and with songs like "All You Good Good People" and "One Big Family" you can't go wrong.
Now Teenage Fanclub weren't playing, despite what the billing says. And I wasn't bothered about Pavement despite Blur's endorsement. So it must have been Monaco I'd watched next. And I was down the front for them. Being a long time New Order fan, going to see Peter Hook's new band was a no-brainer. I'd seen them that year in Manchester where they were great, and I really liked their debut album "Music For Pleasure". Don't think they won the crowd over but I was happy. No New Order or Joy Division tracks played though. Booo.
Fortunately watching Monaco led to me missing the likes of Reef and Dodgy. Ah, what was it about one word band names in the mid 90's? And why were the majority of them crap? However, I digress. The awful scheduling meant in order to get a good position for Blur, I'd have to miss The Divine Comedy as I'd have to trek back over to the main stage, thus also missing Mansun who I liked a bit. Bah. This also meant stumbling upon the latter half of the Kula Shaker set, who were on before Blur. Now Kula Shaker and I didn't fully get on. Yeah, "Govinda" and "Tattva" were quite good, and anybody who doesn't like their cover of "Hush" is a bit suspect in my book.
But their debut album wasn't all that if we're going to be honest, and lead singer Crispin Mills had one of those faces I could never tire of slapping. His ill-advised comments about swastikas that year didn't help in that respect. So I stood stony faced through 20 minutes of their self indulgent rock wankouts whilst the sun dropped behind us. Ironically, some years later at one of the later V festivals, they were low down on the bill, and sounded great - unfortunately never got to see them as we were just making our way in to the festival site that day, and could only hear them wafting across from the stage on the other side of the fence. Ah well.
But their debut album wasn't all that if we're going to be honest, and lead singer Crispin Mills had one of those faces I could never tire of slapping. His ill-advised comments about swastikas that year didn't help in that respect. So I stood stony faced through 20 minutes of their self indulgent rock wankouts whilst the sun dropped behind us. Ironically, some years later at one of the later V festivals, they were low down on the bill, and sounded great - unfortunately never got to see them as we were just making our way in to the festival site that day, and could only hear them wafting across from the stage on the other side of the fence. Ah well.
Blur were as ever, magnificent. This was the first time I'd seen them playing anything off their most recent album, the eponymous "Blur", and from the opening notes of the recent number one single "Beetlebum", they could do no wrong. I've seen them seven times and never experienced a duff performance. It wasn't exactly a safe setlist though, with many album tracks getting an airing. I suppose it says a lot about how popular they were at this point that these tracks were as well received as the singles.
Look at this setlist:
Pretty much perfect. Plus the return of "Sing" to the setlist, long forgotten until Danny Boyle resurrected it to maximum effect in his movie "Trainspotting" the previous year. And of course crowd pleasing double bill of "Country House" and "Parklife".
Here's a gig of their's from the same year.
They think it's all over... but no. Blur's set ended at 11.00pm, but over on the NME stage, Ash were still playing. So it was only fair to give them a go, and traipsing off I went to the other field, where I could here the dulcet tones of Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy singing... He'd come onstage with Ash to give his own unique take on their hit single "Oh Yeah". Which was... interesting. But it rounded the day off nicely.
A quick stop off at the t-shirt stall on the way back to the coach and that was my first V experience over. not bad all in all. I might go back the following year, I thought.
But that's another post entirely.
