day two overview

Bad weather was threatening to rear its ugly head once more on the Sunday morning of T in the Park, but after a few brief showers the clouds cleared and the spirits of the T ensemble were lifted once more.

I spent most of the early Sunday afternoon trekking round the campsite and watching the bleary eyed campers ascend from their canvas coffins, clutching half drunk cans of Tennants and looking rather worse for where.

The campsite looked pretty standard as far as festivals go, with the solitary addition of a cinema screen presumably for showing movies when the music all comes to an end. It made me wonder why T in the Park could afford to place a big screen in the campsite and not bother to show the World Cup final to anyone but the bands camped out in the artist’s village.

As one festival goer had pointed out to me earlier the day before, the entertainment on the campsite is all self generated. No matter what the Scottish people like to think T is not a northern Glastonbury and if it wasn’t for the resounding party vibes given off by the festivals clientele then T would just be another V or Reading.

On paper today’s line up looked far superior to yesterday, and there was an excited buzz about the arena. Despite the amount of quality acts performing it was still very clear that this year’s T’s line-up was a little too trend orientated. The stages in particular didn’t really have a sense of identity. The NME/Radio 1 Stage is no longer the forerunner in breaking exciting new music, instead it is more devoted to providing a collection of more established acts. Across the arena the stages all have a very similar flavour of bands. The Future’s stage headliners Boy Kill Boy would quite happily have slotted onto any of the main stages and the same could be said about most of the acts on the bill.

As far as performances went Sunday was a mixture of the shambolic with the fantastic. Old festival favourites The Proclaimers had returned to march the audience through another ‘1000 miles’ and Paolo Nutini had taken to the main stage for a two song acoustic set that resulted in them packing the T-Break stage later on in the day. All in all it was a good day for the 19 year old singer/songwriter whose new single broke into the UK charts at number 5.

He wasn’t the highest charting T artist though, as Keith Allen’s daughter Lily stole the top spot with her charming ‘Smile’.

Predictably good performances came from Feeder and Editors but there were some shocking ones as well – Eels were dogged by sound difficulties, Kubb proved to be nothing other than overwhelmingly average and many of the smaller bands were largely uninspiring.

The queue for the cash machine weaved it’s way back around a cluster of amusements and disappeared into the distance – those who hadn’t brought enough dosh with them were having to endure the hour long wait.

As the festival drew to a close the tents were all crammed for the headliners. Anybody who wanted to catch special guests Kasabian’s headline set in the Pet Sounds Arena would have had to arrive early.

Veteran Mod rockers The Who closed the festival with a spectacular assortment of classic hits. It was a brilliant way to end the festival, on a retrospective trip through the past of one of Britain’s best-loved bands.

The setup at T in the Park was brilliant and as we’ve come to expect the atmosphere at the festival was second to none. If you ignore the irritating secondary crowd barrier and forget that T in the Park is not another Glastonbury than it rightly deserves its place as one of the best festivals in the UK.

Check back soon for band reviews.

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