Glastonbury Festival Glastonbury Festival 2000
Chemical
Brothers
Pyramid Stage
22:50 23rd June 2000
We
came in our hundreds/thousands/millions, and all in various incarnations-
stoner students, festival families, ageing hippies and err… blokes
in cardigans coughing up unfeasible amounts of phlegm. We came to see
those big sell-outs, the Chemical Brothers.
Tom
and Ed sold their souls for thirty pieces of silver and wrote a piece
of dance music that claimed they were “Superstar DJs”. It was
loved by indie children nationwide and further established them as the
thinking person’s dance act. And now they were here at Glastonbury…
and on the Main Stage! How dare they “betray their roots”, threaten
the Ibiza generation with something vaguely approaching tuneful and at
the same time become that fearful word “mainstream”?
If this is the sound of dance music selling out, then could the likes
of Basement Jaxx and Artful Dodger take heed? For it appears that selling
out makes you one of the most exciting live acts in Britain, and means
you can make music as evolutionary to its genre as four young men from
Liverpool did 40-odd years ago (any nay-sayers should listen to the superb
“Sunshine Underground”).
They open, inevitably, with “Hey Boy Hey Girl” it’s great.
We knew it would be. But it is slightly eclipsed by “Music:Response”
and its kitsch electronic beeping rhythm, which even roused a little bit
of a sing-along to it. The Chems are so good you sing along to the little
beeps, for god’s sake! In linking from this to “Block Rockin’
Beats” one of the greatest moments of the festival arrives. THAT
bassline gets progressively louder in the background… the lights
dim… and silence and darkness for about two seconds. Then the vocal
“Back with another one of those block rockin’ beats!” smacks
you full on in the face. And the crowd start moshing! This is dance music
we’re talking about, right?
From
hereon in, the mass crowd are privileged to see two people doing something
that no-one else in the world can touch them for. We are treated to fabulous
“Surrender” tunes “Under The Influence”, “Out
Of Control” “Got Glint?” and the aforementioned “Sunshine
Underground”, which seemed as glorious as music can possibly get.
“It Doesn’t Matter” from the “Dig Your Own Hole”
album makes a brief appearance, as does a slightly disappointing “Setting
Sun”. But if your interest wanes away from the music, you can watch
the amazingly trippy visuals whilst trying not to blink (a game that should
be played in moderation, kids).
The Chemicals wait till the encore before they totally blast us away.
“Brothers Gonna Work It Out” is immense fun, but the track that
makes even the most cynical cheer with amazement is “The Private
Psychedelic Reel”, the musical (and visual) equivalent of having
your brain removed from your head, kicked around a bit, given a good wash
and placed back in, backwards.
It
seems to last about 15 minutes, although by then people have forgotten
the concept of time. It ends in ridiculously overblown fashion, and alas
there is to be no more. Yes, apparently gigs have this thing where they
end, though from the amount of people who remain in the field afterwards
you’d be hard pushed to believe so. Tom and Ed, then, conquer Glastonbury
and acquire the biggest crowd ever amassed at the festival. Not bad for
a couple of sell-outs.
review
submitted by:
Ian Boutle
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