Rockin' all over the world Worthy Farm

Well, that was all rather jolly, wasn't it? Glastonbury 2009 passed in a technicolour blur - pretty much the only thing I can be absolutely certain of is that I had a brilliant time, as ever. Also as ever, though, I tried to keep track of the sights, sounds and (yes) smells and if I can read my barely decipherable six-pints-of-Scrumpy scrawl the SWSL review promises to include tales of rock legends and pop tarts, chance and sadly fleeting encounters with friends and fellow bloggers, headdresses and leotards, tit tape and superglue, sore heads and big bottoms, rap and crap, anarcho-punk and Tony Christie, skiffle bands covering 'Eye Of The Tiger' and not one but two versions of 'Rockin' All Over The World', body count bets and ridiculous celebrity death rumours...

Unfortunately, the write-up's going to have to wait a while, though - I'm hardly going to have time to breathe this week, and am off for a fortnight's holiday on Saturday - so apologies in advance for the hiatus.

Here's a bumper Glasto Feel Good Hits special in the meantime...

1. 'Date With The Night' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. 'Stagger Lee' - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3. 'Stonehenge' - Spinal Tap
4. 'Cinnamon Girl' - Neil Young
5. 'Rockin' All Over The World' - Status Quo
6. 'Priscilla' - Bat For Lashes
7. 'Going Missing' - Maximo Park
8. 'Fix Up, Look Sharp' - Dizzee Rascal
9. 'Mamma Mia' - Bjorn Again
10. 'Objects Of My Affection' - Peter Bjorn & John
11. 'Crusades' - Fucked Up
12. 'White Winter Hymnal' - Fleet Foxes
13. 'Ghost Town' - The Specials
14. 'Guts' - Micachu & The Shapes
15. 'Out Of Space' - The Prodigy

You can't stop the rock

No sooner is the Breeders ATP review belatedly done and dusted (below) than I'm off to another festival in a field in Somerset. May the Gods of Weather smile on myself, Nick Cave, Neil Young, Animal Collective, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fleet Foxes, Spinal Tap and everyone else this year. Well, everyone except The Script. See you in five fun-filled, sun-soaked days' time!

The real Deals: ATP curated by The Breeders - the SWSL Diary

The final installment (the first is here and the second here).

(Thanks to Marky and James for the photos, and Suresh for the video.)

Sunday 17th May

1pm
Oh I do love the smell of bacon in the, er, afternoon. I clamber out of bed feeling remarkably fresh, all things considered.

1.30pm
Raining - again. But it doesn't matter - the ducks are happy and this is one festival the great British summer can't ruin.

2.30pm
Quick, lock up your wives and daughters - and your booze cupboard and medicine cabinet while you're at it. For here, unfeasibly early in the day, are TIMES NEW VIKING (Centre Stage), who've crossed the sea (probably not in longboats) to blitz away any remaining cobwebs with fuzzbombs about a childhood in Columbus, Ohio (which must be a much quieter place when the trio are out of town on tour) and chemical self-indulgence. '(My Head)', vocalist/drummer Adam Elliott explains, "isn't about drugs, it's about being on drugs" - well, thanks for clearing that up... 'Natural', introduced as "a pop song" (and so it is, cast in their own scuzzy, trashy image), is even better. They finish up with Elliott inviting us all to Ohio for "a beer and some Hoagie's pizza", and I'm tempted to take him up on the offer.


3.45pm
Back to the chalet, and time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

4.45pm
Last November, "disgusted with and exhausted by all of the ignorant, often racist, bullshit that came out of people's mouths during shows/interviews/conversations", The Muslims changed their name to THE SOFT PACK (Pavilion). While the San Diego-via-LA foursome's music is sadly unlikely to ever stir up as much comment and controversy as that original moniker, songs like 'Extinction' and particularly 'Parasites' nevertheless have something to recommend them - even if only as a raw, garagey, bone-shaking homage to The Modern Lovers' 'Roadrunner' and The Velvet Underground's more minimalist moments. No bitter hip-hop-style transcontinental rivalry here - this is an East Coast and West Coast love-in.

5.30pm
Sunday afternoons: traditionally a time for quiet, peaceful relaxation, unwinding after a long week and recuperating before the start of the next. Shame no one told MELT-BANANA (Centre Stage), who are clearly no respecters of tradition. Or silence. At first they play in darkness which would be complete were it not for the head torches they're wearing - as if Mike Patton-endorsed noise rock played at breakneck speed and with a peculiarly Japanese eccentricity isn't disorienting enough. After a while the stage lights come on and the torches are discarded, but there's no respite in terms of the sonic onslaught, which could, I'm sure, melt something much more solid than a mere banana. Like the venue's walls, for instance...


6.30pm
If there's one 2008 album that I haven't been able to stop playing in 2009, it's Microcastle by DEERHUNTER (Pavilion), an ambient psychedelic masterpiece, a headphones album par excellence, and as soon as its opening track 'Cover Me (Slowly)' begins to unfold with slow-burning majesty it's clear the live experience is going to be equally if not even more magical. It would be ludicrous to get uppity and indignant about these Kranky-affiliated Yanks coming over here and playing our shoegaze music back at us - they're not so much trying to teach our grandmotherly selves how to suck eggs as showing that, when it comes to sucking eggs, they're in a different league altogether. In amongst material from previous album Cryptograms and (I think) forthcoming EP Rainwater Cassette Exchange, 'Never Stops' stakes an early bid to steal the show, but somehow finds itself overshadowed in the final reckoning - first by the band's collaboration with the ubiquitous Deal sisters on a cover of The Amps' 'Bragging Party' (after which an overwhelmed Bradford Cox exclaims "Wow, now I can commit suicide!" in his dorkiest fanboy voice); then by the epic motorik genius of 'Nothing Ever Happened', a song Yo La Tengo would be honoured to be able to call their own; and lastly by a blazing rendition of the alternative version of 'Calvary Scars' from Microcastle's sister release Weird Era Continued.


7.30pm
Man cannot live on shoegaze alone, so an expertly crafted carbonara in the chalet is the order of the day. How we're going to cope in December, in a dorm with no self-catering facilities and only Butlins food outlets to sustain us, doesn't really bear thinking about.

8.15pm
Legendary punk band of the weekend number two. My first impressions of GANG OF FOUR (Pavilion) aren't particularly good: old men (well, Jon King and Andy Gill, at least) bumbling their way through porridgey pub rock versions of supposedly venomous yet funk-influenced post-punk classics. But then King starts smashing seven shades of shite out of a mic-ed up microwave with a baseball bat (whether this is an act of political and/or sociocultural commentary or he's just a fan of good honest home cooking I'm not sure) and suddenly people under the age of 45 begin to take notice too - and we're rewarded for our attention with a closing duo of songs from Entertainment!.

8.45pm
Is it the cumulative effect of the alcohol getting to me, or am I suffering from deja vu - or are SHELLAC (Centre Stage) really not only playing the same set as they were 24 hours ago but doing so in the same clothes?! We turn up in time for enough of 'Prayer To God' and 'Elephant' to take a bit of the gloss (excuse the wholly inappropriate choice of word) off last night's show, but miss Steve Albini's aeroplane anecdote which swiftly seems to become the talk of the festival but which certainly doesn't bear repeating on a family-oriented website like this.

9.45pm
For a while, it looks as though FOALS (Pavilion) are set for an almighty fall, an unmitigated disaster of truly embarrassing proportions. Not only have they described themselves in the programme in punchably faux-pretentious terms, but from the moment they walk on stage it's clear frontman Yannis Philippakis is on another planet altogether. "We were all up late last night", he slurs, before adding in a comic voice, "chatting". Worse still, struggling to get his words out in the right order, he promises some new material that is unfinished "but it's ATP so we thought we'd wing it". Not sure how he's confused a bunch of musos for a forgiving crowd, but you can almost hear the sound of knives, pens and keyboard fingers being sharpened. And yet somehow they pull it off. Sleep deprived or otherwise, the quintet are staggeringly tight, every element of their hugely intricate math-dance-punk perfectly in sync; 'The French Open' and 'Heavy Water' are superb while 'Cassius' has wisely been dropped altogether; the new songs, far from sounding half-baked, build confidently and profitably on the material on Antidotes; and the finale - which sees Blood Red Shoes' Steve Ansell and assorted Jonquilites, Foals' fellow members of "the brotherhood of The House of Supreme Mathematics" in Oxford, join them for communal drum abuse - ensures they wind up pushing Deerhunter all the way for the title of the day's best band.

11pm
Talk about impressive credentials - the programme blurb for DISTORTION FELIX (Reds Bar) reads like a who's who of alternative rock. The trio have been compared to The Jesus & Mary Chain and Swans, have supported Fugazi and have been recorded by Steve Albini. Frontman Manny Nieto has himself recorded The Breeders, The Soft Pack and HEALTH amongst others, and bassist Juan Alderete is also in The Mars Volta. And yet it doesn't seem to add up to a great deal, and while their songs growl, grunt and glower with intent, you can't help but feel that in Shellac's hands they'd chew your face off and vomit it back down your throat.

11.30pm
More disappointment, when the Fuck Buttons DJ set in the Crazy Horse turns out to be a damp squib, neither as intense as we'd have hoped nor sufficiently danceable to suit the end-of-the-festival vibe.

12midnight
No offence to veteran punks X (Centre Stage), but I can't help feeling a little bit cheated by them, too. Like an ageing lothario who posts a portrait of himself in his twenty-something prime as his profile pic on a dating site, their picture in the programme is of a sharp, young female-fronted Television leaning insouciantly against a graffiti-covered wall. And so they no doubt were, back in the late 1970s when the Ramones inspired them to form - but thirty years on, they're a pale shadow of that band.

12.30am
So, no kitchen for the My Bloody Valentine ATP in December - best get used to what the food court has to offer. And, would you believe it, the cod and chips is actually extremely tasty, even if dripping with enough grease to give you an instant coronary at twenty paces.

1.30am
All we want is for DJ J. ROCC (Centre Stage) to play just one of the James Brown songs he keeps starting in its entirety, but instead we get MADLIB asking us repeatedly if we've heard of their mate, some chap called Jay Dilla. Some of the crowd - pasty-faced indie rock fans to a man and woman, lest we forget - whoop to disguise their ignorance, and the rest of us just feel sheepish, confused and rather out of place.

2.30am
Ah, this is more like it! The Wedding Present, MBV's 'Soon', 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' - no Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain track tonight (my money and hopes had been on 'Range Life'), but still the Crazy Horse disco comes up trumps. All together now: "WE ARE NORTH AMERICAN SCUM!!!"

5am
Checkout may be in five hours, but what the hell - another beer and another press of the play button for 'Surf Wax America' it is, then...

Monday 18th May

10am
Oh dear. Still drunk.

10.30am
Still drunk. We leave the site and - for the first time since getting to Minehead - head for the beach, where four of us aimlessly throw stones and our chauffeur jogs up and down the beach in an effort to freshen up.

11am
I can't say I've ever rounded off a music festival by stopping off at a local farm so friends could pick up £3.50 bunches of asparagus, but there's a first time for everything. Off comes the hoodie - we can get out of uniform, now we're heading back to the real world. More's the pity.

The real Deals: ATP curated by The Breeders - the SWSL Diary

The second installment (first one here)...

(Thanks to James and Marky for the photos and Suresh for the video.)

Saturday 16th May

11am
Oooof - hangover. Still, at least there's the consolation of discovering that during the night one of our group overheard another exclaim in his sleep: "I love you, Johnny Cool!" He sheepishly explains that Johnny Cool is his nickname for himself - as if that makes it any better.

12.30pm
Ah, the delights of ATP TV. Exhibit A: Gap-Toothed Women, a half-hour-long 1987 documentary film in which film-maker Les Blank interviews a whole load of gap-toothed women.

1.15pm
All attempts to feed the duck out of the window are foiled by a particularly gluttonous gull.

1.30pm
One intrepid voyager to the outside world returns to report that in the shop there's a mountain of Daily Mails and a Guardian-sized hole...

2pm
Have the Breeders been reading the IMDB page on Gap-Toothed Women, where it's suggested it "would make a perfect double feature with Steve Martin's Roxanne"? Because it's been followed by Steve Martin's The Jerk. Across the way we notice Tricky peering in the window of his chalet as though casing the joint.

4.30pm
Sometimes I absolutely hate football, and this is one of those times. My devotion to the wretches that pass for my team is such that, while regularly SWSL-endorsed grunge-pop duo BLOOD RED SHOES (Pavilion) are busy treating the crowd to some new songs, I'm sat in an awful Irish theme bar following the match by watching Sky Sports Soccer Saturday on mute. It turns out to be a disastrous afternoon, one that with hindsight effectively seals our relegation. The only small consolation? I get to enjoy the bar staff wince and cover their ears when Sonic Youth's 'Silver Rocket' is blasted out at high volume.

5pm
Now Tricky's doing kickboxing exercises with a personal trainer on a patch of grass. That's one way to prepare for your set, I guess.

6pm
God knows I'm in the mood for cheering up. Hooray, then, for a pint of Exmoor Gold and CANSEI DE SER SEXY (Pavilion) - that's CSS to you. Balloons all over the stage, characteristic giddy excitement courtesy of glittery catsuited Lovefoxx - throw in a slice of cake and it would be like being at a kids' birthday party. 'Rat Is Dead', dedicated to Rihanna, is an early highlight, but the Brazilians are at their best when extolling the virtues of simple hedonistic pleasures - namely 'Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex' and (of course) 'Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above'. I feel bad for Adriano Cintra, the band's drummer until bassist Ira Trevisan quit for environmental reasons - usually in a league of his own, he's been comprehensively out-moustached this weekend by his opposite number in The Bronx, Brad Magers.


6.45pm
The first of three legendary punk bands to perform, WIRE (Centre Stage) prove to be something of an enigma, particularly for someone like me hoping for a crash course in why they're frequently held up as one of the most influential bands of the late 70s. The lithe Krautrock-influenced song they're midway through when we enter the room is staggeringly good, but there's nothing else remotely like it in the set - and while the grunt and gusto of the short, fast, aggressive blasts (from 1977 debut Pink Flag, I assume) is admirable, as well as explaining their popularity with the likes of Ian Mackaye and Henry Rollins, the broodier and slightly stodgy rock songs I could certainly take or leave.


8pm
SHELLAC (Centre Stage) have played at so many ATP festivals (including the one they curated back in 2002) that they're practically part of the furniture - and indeed, when they're not performing, they're here as punters (as they were for The Jesus Lizard at ATP v The Fans the previous week). For their first set of the weekend, as always, they set up their own equipment and insist on nothing but harsh bright white light on stage before clobbering us full in the face with their precise, abrasive, minimalist bludgeon - a fusion of Steve Albini's fingernails-down-blackboard guitar (attached with his trademark waist strap), Bob Weston's subterranean bass rumble and whipcrack drumming provided by Todd Trainer, who, stick-thin and dressed all in black, looks like a character from a Tim Burton film. 'My Black Ass' and 'Dog And Pony Show' from At Action Park are satisfyingly brutal; 'Prayer To God', which ends with Albini lambasting Jesus as "a fucking bureaucrat", persuades me to give 1000 Hurtz another try; and 'Elephant', 'The End Of Radio' and set-closer 'Steady As She Goes' (definitely not to be confused with the Raconteurs song of the same name) underline just how good their last album, 2007's Excellent Italian Greyhound, really is. Of course, this being Shellac, there's humour amidst the violence - a section where they suddenly play in slow motion; Albini thanking us for tearing ourselves away from the air hockey and ten pin bowling downstairs; Weston's traditional mid-set Q&A session ("Yes, you with the beard - I know you've all got beards..."); and Albini inviting us all to their chalet for midnight poker. It's great stuff - though I feel for the half of Holy Fuck watching, who have the uneviable task of following it up later.



8.30pm
Overheard in the queue for the gents: "Yeah, did you see this really fucking weird documentary earlier? 'Gap-Toothed Women' it was called..."

9.30pm
And so to our gracious hosts. Steve Albini has made a point of reminding us we should be grateful to THE BREEDERS (Pavilion) for bringing together all the bands on the bill, and I am - but I'm afraid that, as with Throwing Muses and Kim Deal's other outfit The Pixies, they feel like a secret I just haven't been let into. Call me a heathen, but 'Cannonball' is all I'm bothered about hearing, and with that dispatched mid-set, I rapidly lose interest. Could you not have resurrected The Last Hard Men (featuring The Frogs' Jimmy Flemion, Smashing Pumpkins' Jimmy Chamberlain and Skid Row's Seb Bach - yes, really) for the occasion, Kelley?


10.15pm
So, has the kickboxing paid off? If that means has it helped TRICKY (Centre Stage) work off some anger and energy, then clearly no. But if that means has it helped him work UP some anger and energy, then it's been a resounding success - the man is seriously wired, and still topless and in his trackie bottoms as though he's just swapped his trainer's pads for our ears. Whether he's introducing us to tracks from new album Knowle West Boy, pounding around to 'Black Steel' as though he and his band are possessed by the spirit of Rage Against The Machine, thumping out a drumbeat on his chest with the mic or just standing arms outstretched conducting affairs and leaving vocal duties to his slinking, shimmying ladyfriend Costanza Francavilla, you can't take your eyes off him.

11pm
Back to the chalet for my first meal since this morning's fry-up. Anything to avoid Match Of The Day, so the finale of Eurovision Song Contest and overblown Ridley Scott epic Kingdom Of Heaven it is. More entertaining by a long chalk is a friend's tale of trying to meet up with one of our party the previous night - in his drunkenness he first stumbled into a bramble bush (and has the lacerations to prove it - I'd just thought he'd taken up self-harm overnight) and then, upon extricating himself, fell up to his waist in a bog. By looking at the map, we work out that he must have been walking in the opposite direction to the one he should have been going in...

12midnight
Best T-shirt of the festival so far and, I'd wager, the whole weekend: it's a picture of a well-stuffed sandwich with the legend "SILF" underneath...

12.30am
It's The Bronx, Jim, but not as we know them - or, at least, not as we saw them last night. No, this is MARIACHI EL BRONX (Centre Stage), their mariachi side project complete with costumes and Mexican guitar. In truth, if we didn't know any better it would be difficult to tell they're a punk band at heart - vocalist Matt Caughthran shows he really can sing, and Mr Moustache aka Brad Magers actually looks more at home with a trumpet than with a bass guitar. The Deal sisters take the opportunity to hijack proceedings and perform 'Regalame Esta Noche' from the last Breeders album Mountain Battles before a beaming Caughthran returns to claim once again what an honour it's been to play and dedicate the last song to "all the cokeheads".

1.30am
It's a simple recipe, really. Take HOLY FUCK, four people who collectively could kickstart a rave in a morgue. Plonk them on the Centre Stage at half one in the morning in front of a well-oiled, goggle-eyed, seriously-up-for-it crowd hellbent on having a blast - and watch it all blow up. It's perhaps the most inspired bit of festival scheduling I've ever had the good fortune to benefit from. It matters not a jot that the set is essentially identical to the one from Oxford just over a week earlier, nor that some of the electronic gadgetry insists on playing silly buggers (and is dashed onto the stage floor in annoyance at the end of the show). The climax to 'Lovely Allen' is the moment I'll be remembering long after the festival's finished. If there's any disappointment whatsoever, it's that I've seen them before - oh to have experienced the added bliss of those who didn't know what to expect and were subsequently blown away...

3am
A quick breather back at the chalet, where crisps and Fugazi's The Argument are the order of the day...

4.45am
... before it's back out to the disco in the Crazy Horse. Amazingly, we once again time our entrance to perfection, just as the DJ's starting up 'Gold Soundz'. Which Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain track will it be tomorrow? The difference from last night, though, is that the standard just doesn't drop - over the course of the next two hours we (and a whole host of barflies including The Bronx and Steve Ansell of Blood Red Shoes) get everything from Rihanna's 'SOS', 'Heart Of Glass' and Shirley Ellis' 'The Clapping Song' to 'Anarchy In The UK', Aphex Twin's 'Windowlicker' and, right at the end, a joyous 'The Man Don't Give A Fuck' by the Super Furries. Sad to say, but 'Cannonball' sounds better in here on record than it did live earlier - and it gets a better response, too.

6am
It may have been light when we left the Crazy Horse, but there's still booze to be sunk, music to be listened to (Japandroids' Post Nothing, the one album I'm determined to buy on my return to civilisation, and they're not even performing) and chat to be chatted...

Hang on a minute...

Mudhoney, Explosions In The Sky, Melvins, Shellac, Fuck Buttons, The Drones, Sleepy Sun, Dirty Three, Tortoise, Bardo Pond, Deerhoof, Papa M and The For Carnation all playing at an ATP festival the week AFTER the one I'm going to? Noooooooooo...

Fingers crossed some of them come over to the UK early and are invited to play a set by My Bloody Valentine rather than sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Otherwise I guess I'll just have to console myself with the prospect of seeing the curators and J Mascis & The Fog - and of course, if their MySpace page is to be believed, not one but two sets from Sonic Youth. The Eternal already has the feel of a genuine classic.

Privacy schmivacy

First Girl With A One-Track Mind, and now police blogger NightJack - both outed by the Times. What exactly does Murdoch's rag have against bloggers that makes its reporters so doggedly spiteful in its treatment of them? Quite apart from the vexed issue of whether a blogger's desire for anonymity should be legally protected, it's in no way apparent how Richard Horton's unmasking is in the public interest.

Ruling in favour of the paper by overturning the temporary injunction Horton had obtained, Justice Eady claimed his verdict was in in line with "a growing trend towards openness and transparency in such matters". Is this really the same man whose profile in the Torygraph last November described him as "defender of the nation's privacy"?

His new-found subservience to "openness and transparency" is laughable, too - since the ruling, NightJack has been deleted and with it has gone reams of insightful, honest, impassioned writing. The blog was a window looking directly into the heart of British policing, and the decision has drawn the curtain.

Quotes of the day

"i can't wait for my tea. i'm having an Indian. just kidding! i'm having a Chinese. just kidding! i'm having moussaka. just kidding!"

"i'm having sausages"

In an attempt to get Down with the Kids and convince them fascism is for all ages, it seems Nick Griffin's got himself a Twitter account...

(Thanks to Jonathan for the link.)

Know Your Enemy

"I don't read music magazines and I have nothing of worth to put in one. The fact is that I have to write this because selling records is a struggle and getting stuff in print for me to promote an album is even harder...

I've lost respect for music with its over-saturation and textbook marketing. The next teen movement will have to be so violent and shocking in order for my generation to really get what it deserves for being so shit and complacent. We didn't have a war so we wore our combat trousers to the pubs and to the concerts. Our anger was never directed, it was just snide and sarcastic and cowardly."

Malcolm Middleton is offered The Fly's Free Speech soapbox and proceeds to pull precisely no punches.

Lakeside larks


A bit bizarre to confess this, particularly as a native Northumbrian, but until last weekend I'd never been to the Lake District (something to do with my parents always preferring to take us to Scotland on holiday to avoid the crowds). But three nights in Keswick turned out to be a brilliant way to lose my Cumbrian virginity, particularly as the Wordsworth episode of Owen Sheers' A Poet's Guide To Britain was still fresh in the memory.

I'm still not sure what was best: the amazing weather (rather like my first holiday in Wales, there's the very real danger of having got a false impression...); the place we were staying in (Berkeley House, a self-catering guest house on The Heads which we'd hired in its entirety and which looked out over the pitch and putt and gardens of Hope Park); or the Dog & Gun Pub (great for so many reasons - the environment; the range of real ales, including two or three from the town's own microbrewery; the dog friendly attitude; and the chef's speciality goulash). Oh, OK, it was the pub...

Mention must also be made of the white piano that plays by itself inside the cafe of the Lakeside Tea Gardens (come in after a few bevvies in the sunshine and you might be forgiven for thinking the Invisible Man's having a tinkle) and the "10 items or fewer" sign in the local supermarket Booth's (none of Tesco etc's grammatically incorrect "10 items or less" nonsense, oh no).

So thanks to Ang for organising it (and for the photo) and Phil for having such a well-timed 30th birthday - and no thanks to the Lodore Falls Hotel for charging £3.25 for a pint of syrupy Coke and to the guests in the hotels on either side of Berkeley House who complained about Sunday night's barbecue. Seriously, who doesn't like the smell of a barbecue?! I'll chalk it up to either jealousy or a severe case of killjoyism.

There'll have to be a return trip some time - after all, we never got to go to the Cumberland Pencil Museum...

Know Your Enemy

"Dear Mr Griffin,

We couldn't help but notice that there was egg on your face (and on your suit jacket) on the day after you were elected MEP for North West England.

Please don't leave egg on ours.

You wore a Poppy lapel badge during your news conference to celebrate your election victory. This was in direct contravention of our polite request that you refrain from politicising one of the nation's most treasured and beloved symbols.

The Poppy is the symbol of sacrifices made by British Armed Forces in conflicts both past and present and it has been paid for with blood and valour. True valour deserves respect regardless of a person's ethnic origin, and everyone who serves or has served their country deserves nothing less.

The Poppy pin, the Poppy logo, and the paper Poppy worn during Remembrance are the property, trademark and emblem of The Royal British Legion.

For nearly 90 years, The Royal British Legion has pursued a policy of being scrupulously above the party political fray. It is vital that everyone - the media, the public and our beneficiaries - know that we will not allow our independence to be undermined or our reputation impaired by being closely associated with any one political party. This is more important now than ever.

On May 27th, 2009, the National Chairman of The Royal British Legion wrote to you privately requesting that you desist from wearing the Poppy or any other emblem that might be associated with the Legion at any of your public appearances during the European Parliamentary election campaign.

He appealed to your sense of honour. But you have responded by continuing to wear the poppy. So now we're no longer asking you privately.

Stop it, Mr Griffin. Just stop it.

Regards,

The Royal British Legion"

The British Legion splat BNP chairman Nick Griffin with a well-timed egg of an open letter. Wonder what they make of the "Real Battle for Britain" rhetoric of the pre-election flyers?

(Thanks to Darryl for the link.)

Feel good hits of the 15th June

1. 'Hopelessly Endlessly' - My Latest Novel
2. 'White Dove' - Sleepy Sun
3. 'Summertime Clothes' - Animal Collective
4. 'Antenna' - Sonic Youth
5. 'In The Backseat' - The Arcade Fire
6. 'Supernatural' - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
7. 'Our Time' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
8. 'Kaz Hayashi '01' - Oxes
9. 'Waterloo Sunset' - The Kinks
10. 'Soon' - It Hugs Back

Notes:

1. Deaths And Entrances = set phasers to epic!

2. Click here. Enjoy.

3. One of my favourite songs of the year so far. No matter how much Panda Bear and co might try to disguise it beneath clever-clever instrumentation and artsy production trickery, there's a classic pop band in there.

4. First impressions of The Eternal? Yet another storming album - but then you knew I'd say that. Having been at their poppiest ever last time out with Rather Ripped, this album has a real fire in its belly.

5. Four years on, has time judged 'In The Backseat' Funeral's best track? Maybe, just maybe. But the competition is so very stiff.

9. When The Kinks were good, they were very, very good. But - as listening to their whole Singles Collection underlines - when they were bad, they really were fucking awful.

The real Deals: ATP curated by The Breeders - the SWSL diary

Over three weeks on and I think I just about feel normal again. Time to relive the first festival of the year then, methinks...

(Thanks to Marky and James for the photos, and Suresh for the videos.)

Friday 15th May

2pm
We're off - destination Minehead. And how better to warm up for the musos' music festival than by spending the journey listening to a Tony Williams album. Late 70s jazz fusion - nice!

3.45pm
Hang on a minute lads, sod all this rock 'n' roll malarkey - let's go to the Bakelite Museum in Williton! I'm overruled and we press on.

4.15pm
At the airport-style check-in (what cheeky cards Butlins are, trying to fool us that we're on holiday somewhere exotic!), we look around and realise it's like looking in the mirror - hooded tops, scuffed-up trainers and the facial fuzz of the Plan B reader as far as the eyes can see, and that's just the ladies (arf).

4.30pm
Talk about falling on your feet. Our four-person chalet is a far cry from the grim hovel we had to make do with when I last came to an ATP event, when Mogwai curated at Camber Sands nine long years ago which boasted one bedroom plus fold-out double sofa bed, intermittent TV reception, a broken handrail in the bathroom and a permanent column of ants marching across the living room carpet. This one is not only a decent size, with a well-appointed kitchen, proper separate lounge area and two bedrooms, it's clean, tidy and (best of all) less than a two minute walk to the Pavilion Stage. Plus we have a friendly limping duck to feed bread to out of the window.

5.15pm
Note to self: all the weird sonic loops, all the dots, squiggles and patterns interfering with the scheduled programming on the chalet TV are intentional, just the Breeders and ATP monkeying with our minds - so remember not to switch on later tonight after a few drinks when it's likely to be terrifying rather than just disorienting.

5.30pm
Better to peruse the pocket festival guide instead. Several names on the bill who had meant nothing to me start to sound worthy of investigation: The Bronx, Distortion Felix, X. Plus there's a Fuck Buttons DJ set on Sunday night - hurrah! And the winners of the Most Pretentious Self-Penned Programme Blurb are ... Foals! "Foals is a band formed from the brotherhood of The House of Supreme Mathematics: a communal studio, armoury and living space in the south east UK. Foals were birthed through the desire to make ecstatic, technicolour music to deny power to that evil eye, the dry casques of departed locusts, the threat of violence, the hollow heart, the meat contractor and ossifactor, the croak of kulchur, the obstructors of knowledge". Like, yeah, man.

6pm
You'd have thought a band called GIANT SAND (Pavilion) would be perfect for a festival held within a stone's throw of the beach. But it's Friday night, they're the first band of the festival and Howe Gelb's mob's slow, dusty, desertified blues fails to grab the attention, being essentially wank fodder for Uncut subscribers, and what's more feels faintly ridiculous in the context - beneath a great big canopy, surrounded by pseudo-Mediterranean bars and a Burger King (who says ATP isn't a commercial festival?!). Perhaps as the weekend wears on, seeing bands playing on this stage will come to feel less odd - I certainly hope so.

6.30pm
Now this is more like it. Call me predictable, but a bit of punch and volume and I'm already halfway to being won over. THE BRONX (Centre Stage) may have their roots in LA hardcore punk, but they certainly ain't straight edge - as is evident from cock rock cocaine blizzard anthem 'White Guilt', the one serious misstep in their set. Apparently (quelle surprise) it's their first time in Minehead, but "it's nice to playing by a body of water", says giddy bulldog of a frontman Matt Caughthran. Kudos for getting the moshpit churning and the plastic pint pots airborne before 7pm.


8pm
Musical blind spot alert! Can someone please explain to me why THROWING MUSES (Pavilion) are worthy of the adoration they're getting? Certainly the songs are uniformly uninspiring - though they're hardly helped by the fact that the sound is poor (Kristen Hersh's vocals are hardly discernible and Bernard Georges' bass is nullified to the point of non-existence in the mix). Before long the only reason to keep on watching is to see whether David Narcizo's drumkit, wobbling around like it's made of jelly, finally collapses.


8.30pm
A first sighting of Kim Deal. Hey Kim, thanks for inviting us!

9pm
A first festival regret - that I hadn't only stumbled across YANN TIERSEN's set because I'd come up to the Centre Stage to brave its peculiarly vomity aroma and get myself a quick unimpeded pint. More than a few minutes and I can guarantee his whooshing, droney impressions of M83 and spoken word epics would have seduced me.


9.30pm
It's safe to say that I'm not immediately predisposed to enjoy BON IVER (Pavilion). After what felt like months of bombardment from friends, websites and even the odd magazine, I finally bought For Emma, Forever Ago in December - and was disappointed. Americana isn't usually my bag, and for me (and, I suspect, others) the album was totally overshadowed by Fleet Foxes' spellbinding debut. It doesn't start well, either - Justin Vernon's sat down, and I'm thinking if he can't even be arsed to stand... But what he and his band - make no mistake, it's a genuinely collaborative effort - actually achieve is to make the intimacy of the album work on a big stage. There's a confidence and boldness I hadn't expected, and none of the Autotune nonsense buggering up the Blood Bank EP tracks that I had. The likes of 'Skinny Love' and 'Lump Sum' take on a whole new resonance, but it's the singalong finale of 'The Wolves' that really clinches it and, mid-holler, I can feel myself filled with the zeal of a new convert.


10.30pm
Everybody needs good neighbours. Turns out ours are Deerhunter, Tricky, The Soft Pack and Dianogah. Who should we go and try to borrow a cup of sugar from?

11.45pm
Back in the chalet again. Eating: falafel, cold. Drinking: cocktails consisting of Zubrowka bisongrass vodka and apple juice. Listening to: 'Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind' by Yo La Tengo. My idea of fun.

1am
How many discos might you go to before you came across one where the DJ plays 'Cut Your Hair' by Pavement, followed by 'The Wagon' by Dinosaur Jr, followed by 'Da Funk' by Daft Punk, followed by 'This Charming Man' by The Smiths? Quite a few, I'd imagine. Unfortunately, though, it deteriorates from there, and the queues at the bar mean we wander off, imaginary gladioli discarded on the Crazy Horse floor.

2am
Co-ordination at a premium naturally means fiercely contested games of air hockey are a must. I fight back from 4-0 down to record a heroic 7-4 win, cheered on by a bunch of youngsters apparently unaware that I'm struggling to see straight. Result!

* * * * *

Next time: Steve Albini, Johnny Cool and gap toothed women.

Surviving the quiet

Twattish NIMBYs who have moved into new flats in full knowledge of what was in the vicinity whining to the council, forcing a pre-existing music venue to undertake extensive and expensive soundproofing work and ultimately close down - sound familiar?

Well, to regular readers of this site, it should - that's what happened to the Point in Cardiff. And now, it seems, what is happening to the Rainbow in Digbeth, Birmingham. (The story's quite old but I only found out about it via the Facebook group set up as a show of support for the venue.)

Don't let Them win...

Quote of the day

A "glancing splattering".

What BNP leader Nick Griffin claimed to have suffered at the hands of egg-lobbing Unite Against Fascism protesters who disrupted a "press conference" outside Parliament. Would that it had been a dog egg. A nice squishy one. Right on the nose.

Old dog, new tricks - sort of

You're never too old to try something new. True enough, though to that it should be added "and discover you're really bad at it".

Thus it was that I took it upon myself to sign up for our work cricket team this season, having never played a competitive game at any level and gleaned pretty much all I know about the game from the glorious Ashes summer of 2005 which was spent largely in front of Channel 4.

Our first fixture took place on Wednesday evening, against one of our fiercest rivals. Thankfully I didn't get the opportunity to embarrass myself with the bat (I had the good fortune to be pencilled in at number ten but only three wickets fell in our allotted 20 overs), though I did a pretty good job of it in the field: one smashed four that a bit of alertness and an outstretched right forearm would have prevented and two misjudged attempts at catches, the second a skied top edge that I contrived to run underneath only to forget how to back-pedal when it became apparent it was sailing over my head.

Still, at least I wasn't fooling anyone by actually looking like a cricketer (the black tracksuit bottoms were the giveaway) and I did make one useful contribution, running out their best batsman for 49 (though this only delayed the inevitability of their win). In any case, I didn't have quite such a bad evening as my friend Tim - in the course of batting a handful of overs for the opposition, he managed to split the end of his bat, lose the sole of one of his shoes and suffer the even greater indignity of the elastic in his batting pants snapping...

Will I be doing it again? Quite possibly. Any sport that involves a large amount of standing around doing nothing is alright by me.

Is it just me...

... or is it a bit weird that there were representatives from a local firm of solicitors handing out leaflets headed "Ten reasons to make a will" in the gym last week? Hardly inspires confidence in the fact that exercise is good for you, does it?

Just a phrase I'm going through

Off on your travels this summer? Here are some invaluable phrases to help you get by. I think my favourite has to be the Finnish "Oho! Tota noin ... Eihän se vaa ollu' sun ajokoira?", which translates as "I'm awfully sorry ... was that your ferret?"

We're off to France next month and somehow I doubt the only two French phrases Jen can remember will be that useful: "Ou est le sandwich? and "Pour verifier l'huile?"

(Thanks to Matt for the link.)

Hard times: new Roman?

This Thursday will see the country go to the polls in the local and European Parliament elections. Well, OK, some of the country - probably more than would have gone before the expenses scandal, in any case...

The flyers and newsletters for the various parties have been dropping through our letterbox steadily over the last fortnight. Perhaps we could have saved the campaigners and ourselves the effort and asked them just to put their offerings straight into the green recycling box out the front.

However, one flyer to come through the door did catch my eye. It's for the Roman Party, whose candidate (and, as far as I can tell, only member) is a chap called Jean-Louis Pascual. Let's take a look at some of what he says...

"All the candidates have driving licences but I think I am the only one who can take you entire family to Brussels and Strasbourg."

As opening gambits go, it's certainly an interesting one. To be honest, I'm not sure being a taxi driver with a capacious car qualifies you for a political career.

"I studied EU and English law, business studies and German at Thames Valley University. Also I am multilingual."

But what did you get in your GCSEs? A few A*s and that could swing it.

"I want you to vote for me for many reasons. I am not corrupt, I am reliable, proactive, hard worker and confident. I thrive on challenges; have a positive attitude and thoroughly enjoy dealing with people."

Come on now - this has just been lifted straight from your CV, hasn't it?

"I am seeking for a challenge where I can make full of my knowledge and experience working for public transport and also use my languages skills French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish."

Ever thought about being a tour bus driver?

"My work experience includes companies like: Heathrow Airport, John Lewis, Panasonic, Ferrari Shop Formula One, Battle Hospital, Post Office etc I did diverse jobs like decorating, cleaner, waiter, selling, marketing and other."

An impressive list, to be sure. But what's with this "other"? A bit coy all of a sudden...

"I have never received any money from the state to be a candidate in the last four National Elections. Again this year I will use my own money to be part of it ... This year I took a loan to participate in the EU Election."

An experienced campaigner, eh? In the current climate, it's a good move declaring you're whiter-than-white - unless you've got duck houses and gold monogrammed well covers paid for by the public purse in your closet, that is.

"I gained thirty three (33) votes last time and I will be very happy if I can improve on that number."

I bet you will - and I'm sure this flyer will be winning over a lot of floating voters. I really like the use of both numbers and words here - it's rather like the football videprinter when a team scores seven or more and the number's written out in full just to make clear it's not an error (while at the same time riffing more heavily on the beaten side's pain).

"This job is to challenge other States in the European Government to support projects and sign approval with a necessary amount of money. Some of my ideas are building a bridge, repair roads and generate jobs improving standards of Reading."

I'd quite like to know where this bridge might be to before casting my vote. The south of France, perhaps? That would certainly make Reading a more attractive place to live.

"To be effective successful in this job you need the power of communication, languages, appropriate skills and charisma other wise you will be lost in translation."

Er, you said it mate.

Oh, I know - this is all rather mean-spirited. He's clearly a passionate and well-meaning chap, if also somewhat misguided, and you have to admire his dogged determination.

Incidentally, good to see Searchlight and the Observer smashing a gaping hole in the BNP's claims to be a moderate, mainstream party by underlining the fact that they're actually a bunch of nasty, violent, racist thugs.

The word on the Street

Betty of the marvellous Betty's Utility Room has a new side project blog called "I Don't Like Them", Sed Ian. It's the place to go if you want sharp, witty commentary on Coronation Street - there aren't many places you'll find Mary written about in terms such as these:

"Mary reminds me of the kind of 70+ women who go to BHS on a weekday morning and have an enormous dump which stinks the toilets out for the rest of the day. I think they get a lot of enjoyment from keeping a regular habit. It gives them something to do other than watch This Morning and besides, it means that they don't leave any unpleasant aromas in their own bathroom."

Quote of the day

"A story is not like a road to follow. It's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the rooms and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows."

Alice Munro, recipient of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, as quoted in yesterday's profile piece in the Observer.

I've had a copy of Runaway sitting on the shelf for a couple of years now - must take a look.

Haway me duck

When a Welsh friend sent me Jim Crace's condensed version of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, part of his Digested Classics series in the Guardian, in the post recently, I was impressed - aware of my study of D H Lawrence in a former life, he had obviously thought of me when he came across something relating to one of Lawrence's most obvious spiritual descendents.

But no.

Turns out he actually sent it because he thought it was the best written representation of the Geordie accent he'd ever seen. Er, will you tell him, or shall I?

Not Wavving but drowning

So I won't be going to see Wavves at the Jericho Tavern later this month after all, then... Sounds like the Primavera crowd witnessed a spectacular implosion worthy of The Brian Jonestown Massacre in DiG!...)

What comes after Plan B?

"Sad news", as they referred to it themselves: Plan B magazine is no more. By the sounds of the statement, times are very tough and they just weren't prepared to compromise or cut corners so have very honourably decided to bow out now:

"We’ve come to this decision after a lot of deliberation. The current economic climate, combined with the situation of the music industry - to which, whether we like it or not, the fortunes of a commercial monthly music mag are inextricably linked - has made it ever harder for us to continue producing the magazine the way we want to. To keep going, we’d need to make cuts in staff, content, size, frequency, print quality - and we’re not prepared to do that. We’re still above water, we’re making some beautiful magazines, and we are quitting while we’re ahead."

While I did buy it occasionally and toyed with the idea of a subscription, I never got one, so should probably take a share of the responsibility for its demise. Hopefully it won't be too far in the "not too distant future" before they're back "in some other form", because the number of decent British music magazines has just plummetted to 0.

It's a wrap

"I have been a fan of both Roy and clingfilm all my life. Roy, I cannot say why, perhaps just because he has a mysterious and enigmatic quality. Clingfilm has always fascinated me from a small child, it is supple and sensuous, clinging and yet transparent. To put the two of them together just seems to me at once the most natural and the most desirable thing in the world. Something in Roy seems to call out to me to be wrapped."

Ulrich Haarburste explains the reasoning behind his genius Roy Orbison In Clingfilm Website.

(Incidentally, a bit of link-following has led me to discover the man behind Ulrich, Michael Kelly, has also written a much-needed parody of misery memoirs called My Godawful Life under the pseudonym Sunny McCreary. Sounds sick, wrong and very, very amusing...)

(Thanks to Chris for the link.)

Only in Oxford...

... would you find yourself approached in a pub by someone handing out flyers for a dramatic/musical performance called Stilettos In The Key Of G, which is described as "a gripping story, loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, which recounts the happen-chance encounter between a pianist and a sculptor at a concert".

Any other city the sort of people who approach you in pubs in that way are offering dodgy cigarettes or stolen DVD players. Or half-inched beef.

Quote of the day

"There is nothing as it stands to stop the BNP from acting in this way and there is nothing that the performers can do to prevent it. If a moral right came in you would then be able to test how far you could stretch it. Billy Bragg, for example, could find his track 'New England' for sale on a BNP website raising money for something that he has spent his entire musical life campaigning against. We would like to think that there should be a framework in this country sufficient to prevent something like that happening."

Er, yes, agreed Mr Nigel McCune of the Musicians' Union.

There ain't nuthin' like good ol' out-of-context musical appropriation. I suspect Foo Fighters and Heart would sympathise...

We are the champions...

... of binge drinking.

Ahem.

I'd try to deny it but, having just rolled in in something of a state, wouldn't do a very good job of it.

(Thanks to Matt for the link.)

Psyched

Q. How do you go about making yourself feel like you're on a rocket-ship to Mars in the company of Black Sabbath, Julian Cope and a bunch of Grateful Dead-loving hippies?

A. Listen to nothing but Sleepy Sun's Embrace and Comets On Fire's 2004's album Blue Cathedral all night.

Highly recommended...

Yeah Yeah YEAH

Thank you Mr Eavis. Just when I needed a crumb of comfort (if you want to know why and don't mind protracted hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing, head over here), he's only gone and released news of a rather spiffing Glastonbury line-up.

Headliners Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Blur were already confirmed, but now the additional presence of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, Dizzee Rascal, Jarvis Cocker, The Soft Pack, Bat For Lashes and - yes - Spinal Tap amongst others has also been announced. The only fly in the ointment I can see is the potential direct clash between Neil Young and Animal Collective, but hopefully it'll be possible to work around that.

Electioneering

With the BNP once again in the news over the possibility of party leader Nick Griffin getting to enjoy cucumber sandwiches and glasses of Pimms on the Buckingham Palace lawn, let's analyse the leaflet for their latest recruitment drive, which dropped on the doormat of a friend in Cardiff recently.

1. Apparently, the BNP are engaged in "The Real Battle For Britain", and, to prove the point, invoke the names of other glorious British victories: Trafalgar, the Somme, Dunkirk, D-Day and the Falklands. Yes, that's right - the Falklands. Anyone sense some straw-clutching going on?

2. On the back are photos of a couple of people under the heading "We're voting BNP". One, dressed in a white coat and purportedly a doctor, complains about the effects of immigration on the NHS. Funny, that - I could have sworn it was "foreigners" who are propping the NHS up... Interesting too that his name isn't given - presumably because he's a figment of the BNP's imagination played by an actor.

3. In the section where you can fill out your details, it's evident from the tick boxes for "Title" that they're aiming high - the first two options are "Dr" and "Rev"... What's more, while they claim to stand against political correctness (and that opposing this and mass immigration isn't racist, just "common sense"), they include a tick box for "Ms". You've got to love the irony.

4. Down in the bottom corner is a recyclable symbol. Nice to see them appealing to your average tree-hugging fascist, isn't it? Reminds me of this book...