Super Sonic Summer Sonic

 The time of year comes when all you want to do is get yer flip-flops on and get sunburnt. And what better way to do it than with some loud guitars in a big field. Yes, another year and another Summer Sonic.

After last years’s arse up with the buses (either traipsing miles to find one like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow or rubbishy queueing systems provoking even the meekest of polite J-people to get rrriled, grrr) all was redeemed on the transport front.

Buuut! Booo…who on Earth came up with the scheduling this year? They go and put the best two bands of 2008 on at the same ruddy time. Grrr again! So it was a toss up between Vampire Weekend and MGMT. Gutted I missed the latter, but very chuffed I chose the former. They were bloody ace. I went with my fellow music-obsessive pal, Maki-chan, and half-way through their set, we spontaneously decided to form the Rostam Fan Club. Any Vampire Weekend fan worth their fangs will know exactly why.

Moving on, The Ting Tings looked quite a bit older in real life than in the airbrushed videos, but were worth a quick bop to.

Hoorah, I finally got to see my old bandmate Ty in her fab new band, New Young Pony Club. We went out for a spot of okonomiyaki until the wee hours the night before, but no sleep deprivation or jetlag was ever going to compromise one of the genki-est performances of the whole weekend. They rocked in a 4-4 disco (heart)beat kind of a way and yey, yey, yey, yey! Plus, they have the best girl drummer I’ve ever seen. Apart from my beloved Bangle, Debbi Peterson, of course.

I’m not kidding in the slightest when I say Super Furry Animals sounded exactly like Status Quo.

And then the headliners, Coldplay. Hmmm, Coldplay. I used to quite like them around the time of ‘Clocks’, and had no idea that song would become a such karaoke classic with my friends all those years later. Completely lost interest after the unanimously-agreed rubbishy third album, but everyone quite liked what they dished up for Summer Sonic. A mix of greatest hits coupled with some rather nice stage ideas, and the gimmick of playing two songs on a raised platform right in the centre of the huge crowd where me and Maki were. Somehow we ended up at the feet of Chris Martin, to which were we a bit indifferent, but it was all rather sweet nevertheless. He seemed like a rather affable chap, bless him. Give us Rostam any day of the week, though!

The second day kicked off with Los Campesinos! Generally, I don’t like bands with anything over five members, and this was no exception. Very genki, granted, but the songs were, like, half an hour long each, and without any memorable choruses I don’t think I’ll  be chasing the album in a hurry.

I had high hopes for Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, as I loved the debut single, ‘Lucio Starts Fires’, and it complied completely with my ethos of ‘the shorter the song the better’. I can’t put my finger on it, but something just wasn’t quite right. Why should it be? After all, I love anything doo-wop and vaguely 60’s-ish; I like a nice bit of raucous racket sometimes; and I like a provocative front person. Yet I was somehow left disappointed. Maybe it was because there was no interplay between the members, it was like they were all on their fixed agenda to get to the end of the song first. Joe Lean was a great performer, though, you can’t take that away from him. Thesp, very thesp. Dressed in his frills and drainpipes, he wouldn’t look amiss in a local production of ‘Hamlet’. Could he ham(let) it up any more?!

Next…hold your breath…

…came highlight of the weekend…

SANTOGOLD

OMG, I’m still foaming at the mouth after it. The most exciting and original live performance I’ve seen in absolutely aaages, the earth moved and I was literally left shaking. She was sooo coool! And her band were sooo coool tooo! They were all dressed in 1950s American diner uniforms a la Fonz, complete with two avant garde dancer/backing singers in frilly waitress outfits doing jerky robotic movements in synch with the music. Santogold is a complete natural onstage and she has the most gorgeous ニコニコ smile ever, I wanted to take them home with me.

Anything after that would only pale in significance for the rest of the day. Which is why I left after a song and a half of The Kills. Yawn.

The same could be said for Panic(!) At The Disco. Thought they might be on the better end of (ex-)emo, but a bit of a letdown in all honesty.

Only The Verve could redeem us, then. Ressurected for the third time or somthing stoopid, Mad Richard saved the day. Believe it or not, they were the very first band I ever saw back in 1991, when they were simply called ‘Verve’. They were supporting Ride, of all embarrassing things. I must admit, though, I did have a soft spot for Ride around the time of their debut album, ‘Nowhere’. It was like The Byrds meets white noize! Anyway, yes, The Verve. They used to be sooo shoegaze back in those days, too. The first album was such a trip, it really was. My favourite was their second album, ‘A Northern Soul’, especially the song ‘On your Own’. The emotion, in his voice, oh my. You knew he meant it. So many people used to say the chorus in that song is depressing, but he is just stating a fact. Sad, but true, and you have to love it. Anyway, they never even played it! Their set was rather beautiful, though. Obviously, they have some top tunes to whip out of the hat, and also they have a really special chemistry together. Something weird happens when they play together, almost supernatural. And the sun set just as they were playing ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, and set the sky ablaze a million different colours. It couldn’t have been any more perfect.

Which is more than I can say for the Sex Pistols. The idea of them reforming in the first place was bad enough (stinks of a cash-in, no?…very un-punk, I must say), but in the flesh it was even worse. Why? Because if sounding polished isn’t the biggest contradiction in terms I’ve ever heard, then I don’t know what is. For the mother of all supposed punk bands to end up sounding like Bon Jovi is nothing less an insult. I genuinely felt offended.

Me and Maki stormed off halfway through their set (along with half of the audience, it seemed) and instead plumped for the Prodigy. From dinosaur punk to dinosaur rave, from bad to worse. Call me a prude, but it sounded evil. Plus, I don’t want anything to do with a band that refers to women like they did in that deliberately controversial song.

What was left? Paul well I never Weller. On to dinosaur MOR, then. Oh dear. Still, at least an early departure meant no yucky bus queueing nightmares. 

Me feet’re still killin’ me, but blimey Charlie, what a super sonic Summer Sonic!