Curlymynci's Journal - Green Man Festival 2008 Postmortem!

Day One

The weekend started out with sunshine and short skirts. There was much optimism and eagerness to get started. We got ourselves the obligatory £1 cup of tea and £3 bacon roll and after consumption, headed over to the Folkey Dolkey tent to catch the first band of the day. They were Booger Red and had won a competition to be the opening act. Bless them, but no actually don't. They were kind of psych bluesy rock. Very Black Crowes. Also very predictable. So very predictable. Exactly the kind of music that could hold the attention span of the average internet voter without making too many heavy demands on higher functioning or virtual memory.  The internet music revolution is a many headed beast.

So we ran away to the main stage as Gemma's eye had been caught by Cats In Paris. This proved to be a much better experience and we got to witness some originality. They were off the wall, geeky, friendly, lovely people playing stupidly weird music.  It brought a smile, which is always good. Good enough for me to buy a CD anyway. My suggestion was Mugstar, and this proved to be not so good. Lots of Ozrics influenced loopy stuff and some gorgeous 70s organ but no follow through. I wish these bands would figure that out. You can have all the trippy prog psych riffs in the world but at some point the song needs to actually kick in. Like Gong's Masterbuilder or, you know... all those other songs. Maybe I just need to start getting stoned again.

It took us exactly that much time (around 4 hours) to answer the call of Pieminister. We munched our way through the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir and felt satisfied in both belly and soul. They rocked. Well worth a look if they end up in a town near you. Kind of like the bastard offspring of Tom Waits and Seasick Steve in fat, bearded, bluegrass form. What's not to love there? They were followed by Fight Like Apes who were young, punky and oh so boring. I think once you've grown up a bit the whole teenage fury thing just seems a bit predictable and uninteresting. But yey! Go kids and all that.

We caught One Little Plane who was a cutesy little waif folk woman with gawky hair clips and simple light tunes. Stood in the main field for a little bit of James Yorkston. I'm always a little awkward watching him as I've talked to him a few times while rather drunk. He's seemed reasonably unimpressed by this but has been patient and polite (this only serves to make my awkwardness worse).

By far the resounding success of the day was O'Death. They were a big gypsy punk rock pirate band. All half naked despite being in varying degrees of condition and mashing around on stage with the kind of wild abandon you only hope that musicians still have. The whole crowd obviously found this break from introspection a glorious relief and embraced the experience whole-heartedly. The band looked utterly touched by the reaction they got which made us all love them even more. They had to come back for an encore (for a mid-afternoon band that's really bloody good). I want to cook for them. As long as they're all still half naked. And I'm drunk on whisky.

The late evening was spent in the Green Man Cafe. We struggled to hear Lou Rhodes through the bad sound mixing and rowdy Brighton Dads. Ben Ottewell (from Gomez) was good and was accompanied by my other regular drunken stalking victim, John Smith. He was, as always, excellent.

Day Two

God I find Cate Le Bon boring. I don't know why I end up watching her so often. Pretty face. Not a lot behind it though. Average voice. Average songs. Average average average.


Saturday was the day of rain so we stayed in tents as much as possible, along with the other 10,000 people who had come along. Hence the suffering through Cate Le Bon. Again.

I stayed and watched The Drift Collective out of some misplaced loyalty to my first boyfriend (they are from his town in Devon) and that managed to lift itself up a notch slightly. They are a mish mash of lots of groups on an indie-folk label down south. The first girl who sang for the group was excellent but she was followed by a tool in a blazer. The rest of the band were unnerving as one of them looked like that short ginger doctor from ER and the other was a dead ringer for Alexa Chung. Over on the main stage Jennifer Gentle were disappointingly shit and the North Sea Radio Orchestra were exactly as you'd expect, which is always nice.

There was a real treat in the afternoon as James Yorkston, King Creosote and the Pictish bloke played a mini-gig in the Literature Tent. It was absolutely packed and stupidly uncomfortable but so good to watch. They obviously hadn't done an awful lot of preparation and were taking the piss out of each other and making bits up all over the place. I haven't loved King Creosote before but after this performance I am going to make a concerted effort to listen to him properly to see if he's good. Because by gods he can sing. The only bit that fell a bit flat with me was when they did a song with the chorus "I'm happy, happy, happy, happy, happy" etc. because they obviously aren't. I wonder if it was meant to be ironic.

Gemma and I were totally sick of the rain so decided to return to the tent to get dry for a while. Unfortunately the tent was just too dry and warm and comfortable so our power nap ended up being 4 and a half hours long. We woke up at 21:40 just in time to catch Super Furry Animals. This was a proper gig from them. Which is great after the total let down I had seeing them in Oxford. I guess being on Welsh soil does something magical to them. They played lots of songs I like (Man Don't Give A Fuck, Receptacle for the Respectable, Zoom! etc.) but no Welsh tunes, which I thought was totally amiss of them.

Day Three

After a busy busy weekend of sitting about listening to music and drinking beer, we decided to spend most of Sunday in the Green Man Cafe listening to music and drinking beer. A number of little acoustic charms floated past us as this took place. The Gentle Good were pleasant and folky. Most notable was Beth Jeans Houghton who was a little sailer girl with vocal loops and a very beautiful voice. Newcastle based for those of you that are up that way. Pete Greenwood supposedly had a song based on Fear and Loathing, but if he did it was a Fear and Loathing with all the fun, debauchery and any sign of a personality sapped out of it, much like the rest of his mumblings. City Reverb were similarly awful. We got our feminist socks all in a pickle over Jane Weaver's women folk act thing, but then she totally pissed on our parade by being absolutely talentless. Still, one and a half brilliant discoveries at the Green Man Cafe isn't bad.

We popped over to the main stage for Laura Marling who inspired me to wear my new smock, then back to the Folkey Dolkey just in time to catch the end of the monstrosity that was The Peth. My god, what a bloody awful thing to experience. They got a massive crowd because they're frontman is Rhys Ifans of "I'm an actor in Notting Hill" fame. He was swaggering back and forth on stage with a London tweed hat and pair of aviator shades, smoking and drinking and generally hanging his tongue out of his mouth. What a bunch of arrogant cocks. So abundantly talented they had songs on their setlist like "Shit-faced" and "69 Fanny St". Cultural sewer material.
 

But anyway, onto lighter things. To finish off the festival there were two of the acts I'd waited all weekend to see: Nina Nastasia and Pentangle. Gemma and I got to the front row of the Folkey Dolkey tent as payment for enduring the end of the Peth's set. She was absolutely excellent, an amazingly powerful voice. Just gorgeous through and through. If you haven't checked her out before I recommend either the Dogs or The Blackened Air albums.

Finally Pentangle. Pentangle is probably the first music I remember hearing (well either that, Yellow Submarine, Madonna or Five Star). As a small child I would sit in front of the record player, listening in horror to Cruel Sister; a pleasant little folk ballad about family murder and self-playing music instruments made of human remains. This is the first tour they've done in a good 20 years or so. Jacqui McShee's voice has mellowed beautifully and Jansch and Renbourn still defy belief on guitar. They played lots of my favourites: Light Flight, Let No Man Steal Your Thyme, Bruton Town and of course, the aforementioned Cruel Sister. Having them tie up the festival left you feeling like you'd seen one of the major inspirations for everything that had preceeded it during the weekend. They are true legends and I'm so happy I've had the chance to see them play together.

With that closing the night, we sloped off back to the tent through the rain and mud. I was very happy and kind of shocked that this is the first year I've remembered to bring wellies.