Saturday overview

The V festival has died. Some may argue that it never was alive in the first place but one thing is certain – it really is dead now. Let me explain…

For many years the V Festival has suffered heavy criticism for its obsessive love of anything that promotes the commercial stigma, and to an extent those criticisms were a little unfair as V never promised to be anything other than what it was. But now the main downfall of the event has to be its lack of interest in evolving and it is this languid attitude that is signalling the untimely death of a festival well placed enough to put on a spectacular show.

For us (and many like us) the initial struggle between man, machine and mud infested field began with a ten hour slog from our home in Yeovil, to the festival site at Weston Park, Staffordshire. A trip that RAC route planner estimates to take around 2 hours 54 minutes.

Thanks to a brilliant piece of off site organisation the traffic was all being funnelled through one route, bestowing Stafford’s lovely country roads with a mix of petulant locals and cantankerous festival-goers. To quote a certain well-known band – I predict a riot.

Swearing, gesticulating and mad dashes down the hard shoulder ensued to create a chaotic pre-festival atmosphere. We were all fed up by this point – my navigator seemed to be coping by spontaneously adopting a frantic form of tourrettes syndrome while our other companion was pre-occupied with fears that his bladder may actually erupt at any given point.

I switched on to the forever helpful Virgin Radio who were giving handy festival tips – for example, if you want to get to the front to see a band then enlist the help of a well built giant and get them to push through the crowd while you sneakily follow behind them. Great advice chaps, I’m sure everybody will appreciate that.

When we were finally herded onto site it had just gone midnight and we were looking forward to being thrown into the lively, spirited, adrenaline-boosting environment that is the V Festival campsite. However, my positive preconceptions about the campsite were severely trounced within 5 minutes of arriving. Where was everyone? I can only imagine that the unspoken early night curfew that exists at V had forced everyone into their tents with a night cap and a hot water bottle.

From the outside the arena looked bigger than in previous years, which meant it took even longer to circumnavigate the bloody thing. The people still arriving (and there were a lot) were all exhibiting the classic tell tale signs of being extremely pissed off – and there was a mixture of glum, depressed, tired, worn out and downright fed up faces in the crowd. Some people were making an effort and there were hints of life here and there, but that was generally swamped by the depressed massive heading towards the aptly titled grey campsite.

Saturday morning arrived and we were greeted by the Virgin God of Rain’s early morning wake up call. The site was rapidly deteriorating and Weston Park was quickly turning into a giant mud pit. It wasn’t quite on a parr with Glastonbury mud but it was certainly getting there.

First act of the weekend to grace the main stage was singer/songwriter/pianist Gavin DeGraw, performing his own style of bland American soft rock. It’s predictable but catchy and had the sun been out it would probably have gone down a great deal better. The chart pulling “I don’t wanna be”, which projected DeGraw to fame after it was nabbed for some American teen soap, was the obvious highlight. Degraw clearly has talent and an ear for a great pop song, but appears to lack any real depth – and I couldn’t stick it out for too long so I went in search of something a little less insipid.

Dogs were opening the newly designed Channel 4 Stage, which had been spun around with its back to the main stage. Unfortunately this lead to a rather dispersed crowd, instead of the channel you tended to get with the old stage. It only dampened the atmosphere slightly, and was only really marred by the fact there tended to be a pool of people collecting to the right of the stage while the left was fairly crowd free. Dogs produced a stirring set, far better than the past few times I had seen them and the band are clearly coming into their own. They were followed by Cockney rockers The Rifles, one of the few bands to appear at V this year with real stage presence. I didn’t realise it at the time but The Rifles were quite possibly the best band of the weekend, but that says more about the quality of the other acts than it does about The Rifles themselves.

Despite the V organisers doing a great job of getting a huge mud caked field and a nice perimeter fence for everyone to urinate over, they had forgotten to book acts with any real talent, diversity, or ability which is where the festival fell to pieces. The Sugababes sauntered on stage to perform their back catalogue of hits and I gave it about 15 minutes before I couldn’t take any more static pop stars waving awkwardly at the fans with the biggest flags. I made another quick exit to find something else a bit more inspiring. I found The Feeling.

I used to sell T-Shirts for The Feeling. Well sell is a bit of a misgiving word as I never actually managed to sell one T-Shirt for them – which I always figured was as good a measure of their potential for stardom as they were ever going to get. But amazingly their sickening Supernaturals style pop has actually broken into the charts and now we are in the midst of being subjected to constant radio play of songs that go ‘b…b…b…baby, you’re driving me c…c…c…crazy’. Believe me, that’s not even their most irritating song. Summery, feel good pop it maybe but they take it all a bit too seriously for me – give me The Young Knives any day.

Thankfully, I was saved from slipping into post traumatic music depression by the virtuoso Delays, who have proved on numerous occasions to perform to a consistently high level. Immediate similarities with The Feeling can be drawn, but Delays manage to craft a pop song in such a way that it refrains from becoming too nauseating while allowing you to tap your foot and bob your head with appreciation. The older material is still far superior to “You see Colours,” which is even more electro tainted than their debut. Although it’s unlikely they will ever release anything of the same standard as ‘Long Time Coming’ or ‘Nearer Than Heaven’, songs like ‘Hideaway’ and ‘Lost in a Melody’, with its haunting synthesised backing translates brilliantly to a festival crowd.

By this point I was almost fooled into thinking the festival wasn’t going to turn out that bad after all, but then Hard-Fi came on. We’re all “Stars of CCTV” apparently, at least that’s what lead singer Richard Archer says in one of his “I’m a cockney – I can talk like an idiot – therefore I’m cool” rants, I’m not quite sure if he was insinuating that we’re all petty criminals or not. Despite ‘Harder to Beat’ and ‘Living for the Weekend’ both going down with the crowd extremely well Hard-Fi’s stage presence was limited and Archer’s attempts at motivating the crowd were cringe worthy at best.

One of the finest acts of the weekend, Paul Weller took to the main stage for a fantastic set that stood out despite the lack of material from Style Council and The Jam. Ocean Colour Scene guitarist Steve Cradock was on hand to provide some fantastic guitar solos as Weller put on a show that put other acts to shame. His biggest solo hit ‘Changingman’ was a notable highlight, but the show was stolen by a rendition of the classic ‘Town Called Malice’. No ‘That’s Entertainment’ this time around but a performance that proved that Weller can survive on more than just hits from his old bands, and it really did beg the question ‘why wasn’t he further up the bill?’.

The Charlatans are one of those festival bands that got famous on the crest of the Britpop wave and then managed to stick around to paddle at the waters edge for a few years while more and more people stopped caring. Tim Burgess’ solo project never really got off the ground either and it was quite obvious that the more new material The Charlatans played, the more they would alienate their audience. New songs were met with blank unforgiving stares whereas classics like ‘One to Another’ and ‘North Country Boy’ spawned hoards of eager pogoing Britpop migrates. The sad truth is The Charlatans are stuck in a time warp and no matter how hard they try their new material will never live up to their old stuff, regardless of how good it is. People just don’t care enough.

Now I was faced with a tough decision – do I stay put and endure Johnny Borrell’s egotistical strutting – (you just know he’ll take his shirt off), do I wallow in a depressed slumber as Morrissey ignores his Smith’s past and guides a confused crowd through a set of songs nobody knows, do I check out one of the smaller stages, or should I just hit the sack?

Eventually Groove Armada was decided for me, for no other reason other than it was the only place I could think of that I didn’t want to avoid. It was a fairly entertaining set but certainly wasn’t headline material. The JJB Tent was packed though and the atmosphere was one of the best of the weekend. I wondered how many people had bothered to turn up for Morrissey when band of the moment Razorlight were gracing The Channel 4 stage.

All in all a disappointing start to a festival, spoiled by horrendous traffic jams, crap atmosphere, poor site layout, a bad line-up and overcast weather. Admittedly you can’t blame the organisers for bad weather – fair enough – I’ll just blame them for everything else then.

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