Glastonbury has been and gone for another year, so what happened?
The festival saw an eclectic line up, full of talking points, not least Amy Winehouse‘s mumbling performance and subsequent punching of a fan. Maybe he dissed the cocktail umbrellas in her barnet? Jay Z managed to stuff Noel Gallagher’s words down his throat by drawing one of the biggest crowds ever to the stage and opening with Wonderwall. He’s got 99 problems, but Oasis ain’t one. The Verve made a triumphant return and previewed tracks from their upcoming album Forth, which is out in August.
Rowdy acts were also high in number with Alice Glass from Crystal Castles getting dragged from the speaker stack and almost having her set shut down mid-show. Similarly, Does It Offend You Yeah? didn’t make any friends with the security by telling their crowd to crowd surf and join them on stage. Dizzee wasn’t quite as lucky, having to ask the crowd in front of him “where’s my rowdy crew” to get them moving in the mud.
Other highlights included Goldfrapp bringing two female dancers to the stage, getting them to show their knickers to the crowd. Elsewhere Wiley joined Hot Chip on stage who had already covered Prince during their set, Har Mar Superstar joined Neon Neon and MGMT had people spilling out of the tent.
Same time next year then?
Pendulum will be playing a heap of dates in the coming months.
A Day To Remember headline the ‘Road To Download’ tour at the Barfly tonight with Alesana and the Devil Wears Prada. It’s all of these bands’ first performance of the tour and although I miss the first two, from the show ADTR put on you’d think they were old friends of the UK even though they’ve only graced these shores once before. The room is lively from the outset and when vocalist Jeremy growls ‘Pick up your feet!’ the crowd does just that.
You know any show that Ben Folds plays will be pure gold. The only thing to debate when going to see Ben Folds live is what little tricks he might pull out of the bag this time around. Unfortunately, there was no ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit‘ at the Shepherds Bush Empire tonight. However, we had objects inserted under piano strings to distort the sound, dual synth and piano playing, a rogue tambourine man who graced the stage with his presence from time to time through the set, audience participation, piano stool throwing, anecdote telling, old-skool song playing, novelty new song playing, improvisation with amusing results… phew!
Cold War Kids have revealed a few sketchy details about the follow up to ‘Robbers and Cowards.’
Slash has apparently contacted Sebastian Bach about a top secret project.
Brother Ali, who was recently in the UK to perform with Atmosphere, gave Crossfire a few stories to keep the hip hop flames fanned.
Few things are certain in life, but one thing you can always rely on is the Melvins. For almost 25 years they’ve been consistently creating challenging, mind-melting and ear-bursting music spread across over 25 albums! Not a bad run by anyone’s standards. And the good news is, they just get better and better! Lesser bands normally run out of inspiration by ‘difficult album number two’ but not the sludge-grunge-overlords – ‘Nude With Boots‘ certainly doesn’t suffer from ‘difficult album number 26’ syndrome and picks up where 2006’s ‘A Senile Animal‘ left off.
The Academy Is, We The Kings, and The Maine will be touring the UK this September.