22.25, Carling Stage

If Damon Albarn seems to pick up political causes as and when it suits him and his profile, then BILLY BRAGG certainly couldn’t be accused of doing likewise. This is a man who has over the years exemplified a passionate belief that music can unite people, it can give hope, it can rouse people into consciousness and action, it can change things. So, striking a defiantly outspoken note at the close of the festival, he declares his intention to play several miners’ benefit gigs next year, the twentieth anniversary of the miners’ strike, before proudly performing ‘There Is Power In A Union’; he talks about the changing face of the Left and his commitment to a ‘Socialism Of The Heart’; and, to widespread cheers, he rails against the machinations of the British and US governments in the invasion of Iraq in ‘The Price Of Oil’. By no means is it all dryly serious political rhetoric, though. Indeed, for much of the time Bragg is more like a stand-up comedian than an impassioned left-winger stood on a soapbox – at one point he tells us: “Even folk festivals are getting hardcore these days – the other day I saw a morris dancer smash a bottle and carve ‘Real Ale’ into his arm…” ‘A New England’ finishes off a superb set. At what is now a heavily corporate festival, Billy Bragg is a genuine and articulate dissenting voice, and the sort of authentic rebel most of the weekend’s lank-haired and tattooed monkeys can only dream of being.

Bands or artists I would have seen in an ideal world but missed due to clashes / rearranged running orders / my own sheer laziness or stupidity: Beck, The Streets, The Agenda, The Sleepy Jackson, The Buff Medways, 2 Many DJs, Funeral For A Friend, Thrice, Whirlwind Heat, The Bandits, Stellastarr*, The Cooper Temple Clause, Junior Senior, Pennywise, Turbonegro, Boy Sets Fire, Poison The Well, Gold Chains.