Friday at Electric Picnic was less about the thrill of anticipated sets (and aside from the Total E-Lips, this year’s line-up lacked any single great money act), so much as meditating on the nature of the brown stuff: how to avoid it, how to deal with it when you discovered you couldn’t avoid it, and how to scrape it off your boots when you got back to the tent. The rock ‘n’ roll hipster uniform of the weekend was an unlikely combo of skinny fit jeans, wellies and rainslicker. Socialites and supermodels came dressed as Farmer Giles. It was almost two full days before I spotted someone foolhardy enough to wear Converse.
So, bizarre weather conditions meant a wayward soul could suffer sunburn, windburn and trenchfoot within the same hour. Flooded car parks and general muck-induced mayhem ensured that the first day’s festivities really didn’t get going until 4.30 in the pm, and even then the site looked like a frontier ghost town: empty saloons and bare stages (The Arts Council funded Literary Tent in the Mind Field lay dormant for the entire evening).
But those who did brave the bottleneck were rewarded by the splendid sight of the Michael Nyman Orchestra on the main stage, a dozen-strong ensemble in full evening dress, overseen by the maestro himself, perched on his stool and pounding staccato patterns on the grand piano, backlit by dramatic slashing violins and blaring brass.
As the stately strains of the theme from The Piano drifted across the rolling hills we took ourselves over to the Cosby Stage, where Richmond Fontaine were in damn fine form. Middle aged blokes in blue jeans and western shirts playing their guts out. Small-town stories about abandoned houses with broken windows and back yards junked with mattresses and shopping carts. Songs like ‘You Can Move Back Here’ and ‘Lonnie’: broken down beauties halfway between The Replacements and Big Star. The ghost of Green On Red haunted the psychobilly freakout ‘43’. ‘The Boyfriend’ was part Gram Parsons, part Roman Polanski. The Fontaine are beautifully offhand – they’ll get a pumping garage groove going and then willfully toss it aside for a Crazy Horse waltz. They don’t even have to try.
Elsewhere, the bush telegraph relayed polarising reports about Magazine, with various and contradictory sources citing the set as both the best and worst of the night. One thing all were agreed on: Howard Devoto is one quirky looking dude, and Barry Adamson a hell of a smart dressed man.
Over on the main stage, MGMT seemed to comprehensively scrub any doubts about their having the chops to take on the big field, blowing up tunes like ‘Kids’ to macrocosmic size, wah-wah digressions and all. The second album will tell the true story, but colour me impressed. Seasick Steve meanwhile, had the mob eating out of his hand. Who could have guessed an old geezer in a baseball cap who sounds like a crotchety cross between a Venice Beach busker and a Fat Possum electric bluesman might turn out to be such a people pleaser?
Back at the Cosby, Dinosaur Jr sound massive when they’re not being plagued with and pestered by technical gremlins, malfunctioning bass amps and a sound mix as muddy as the ground. But when they get going, Mascis, Murph and Barlow can strip paint. J’s guitar sound is a thing of raw and elemental beauty: Stooges-like slabs of noise, Neil Young primal scream therapy, Ritchie Blackmore flash. If any were needed after MBV and The Pixies, here’s a fair argument for the validity of reformations. So what if J is substantially thicker around the middle and his waist-length hair has turned Methuselah grey? For a band once renowned for slacker sloth, they play with a ferocious intensity. ‘Get Me’ was a cross between The Band and Black Sabbath, and as for ‘Just Like Heaven’, well... I think the phrase we’re looking for is ‘ragged glory’.
And so to bed.