Gig review- V Festival

A few impressions from my Saturday.

V festival (i.e. Virgin festival) officially started at 1 pm but I didn't get there till 4pm. Partly due to a pretty late night the night before, and partly that doing anything in a coordinated fashion with my friends is actually impossible. But that's okay because I didn't even know the names of any of the acts playing before 5pm.

It finished at 10 (finally a festival I can actually manage, without collapsing like a crispy fried chip at the end). Just incidentally - that makes it $20 per hour for 6 hours.

It was heavily branded. Those big visual spaces covering the speakers at the side of the stage were slathered with Virgin mobile advertising. There were people carrying things that looked like those little paddles people have at art auctions with "eclipse" written on them - for spotting your mates in the crowd. I think this was brand of minty chewy thing. I think there was a generic "bar" but more obviously there was a Jagermeister tent, a Coopers tent and smirnoff cocktail bar. It was a tad depressing.

Many women dress like they are going to the disco. Strapless boob-tube dresses, footwear I can only describe as "pumps", elastic belts, the lot. Just as well it stayed not raining till ten pm or there would have been a few ruined precious little shoesies in the mud let me tell you. What ever happened to shorts and docs, is what I want to know.

The highlights for me were hearing Jarvis Cocker sing "the c_nts are still ruling the world" as his closing song, the whole of the Pixies set (oh my god Kim Deal you look like you have just come off tuck shop duty but those are some kick arse riffs), and finding out the New York dolls do a fine line in blues harmonica.

I've actually officially given up festivals, so these was like a little re-lapse, based on pure pixies love. So that might be why I felt a little detached from the whole thing - onlt caught a couple of Groove Armada tracks from the very very back. Also it was a bit of a shit, because Pet Shop Boys were on 10 minutes before pixies and at entirely the same time as 2 Many DJs who are meant to do a really fun set - so I missed both. I guess this was because they has a limit on the closing time. Also Beck did a really crap set, even though he had the best visuals, with a puppet show going on and beamed onto the big screens.