Isle Of Wight Festival 2011: Full Review Part 2

Saturday 13^th June 2011

Acts @ Main Stage: Lissie, Stornoway, Hurts, Mike & The Mechanics, Seasick Steve, Iggy & The Stooges, Pulp.

Lissie

This relatively friendly seeming country rock singer created an enjoyable early afternoon atmosphere to ease me into the events of the day.

She was also amusing enough to punctuate the typical new album plug with a; “buy it because I get 60% of every album sold!”. This was a figure I have wondered about for a while, so I was grateful for this information.

Best Song: N/A

Awesome Moment: Getting the answer to that record sales question.

Overall Enjoyment: 5/10

 Stornoway

Celebrated by newspapers for this festival performance, I have to be honest, I just looked straight through this band as an uninteresting indie by numbers set up. This may be slightly harsh, as my main reasons for not enjoying this set was an agonising drop of suntan lotion accidently rubbed into my eye, leaving me half blind and irritable for the whole set.

Sorry guys, blame Ambre Solaire for this bad review, but expect big things for Stornoway in the future maybe?

Best Song: N/A

Awesome Moment: Stornoway’s plug for Isle Of Wight’s local Owl & Monkey Sanctuary. Even by name alone this place sounds great.

Overall Enjoyment: 4/10

Hurts

Enter Hurts, with their polished up interpretation of Depeche Mode’s Fly On The Windscreen sound, complete with Evernescence backing stage (black cloak, white roses pomp).

This duo, so clad in black they make The Sisters Of Mercy seem colourful, with their full funeral arrangement orchestra, opera soloist, and serious faced yet saucy Scottish Widows type dancers, had an air of the ridiculous about them. Their music is far from abominable, sharing revival kudos with the like of La Roux, but with all that tosh surrounding them, it is difficult for the tinny, almost miserablist songs to get lost in the mix. There is a good sound in there somewhere, and with my eyes closed (from the continuous sun tan lotion agony) it was easier to appreciate, and felt well worth listening to. My god though, was the emo/ Twilight crowd well catered for.

Best Song: N/A

Awesome Moment: The lead singer reminding us we would later be seeing Pulp.

Overall Enjoyment: 6/10

Mike & The Mechanics

Beware of this changeling band! Turning into Genesis halfway through, Mike & The Mechanics failed to excite me at all, seeming to be a bizarre anomaly on a day of cynical, moody music.

Clad irritatingly in Burton menswear, the band suddenly decided to play Genesis songs, probably for Mike Rutherford’s pleasure (Rutherford being Rutherford or “Mike” a connection I failed to make at the time). This just emphasised how limp the band on stage were that day.  Asking the pointless “are there any Genesis fans out there?” question, just seemed like a quick focus group to see if it would be worth Genesis reuniting again.  If it would sound anything like this I would say no.

Possibly the limpest and definitely most pointless act of the weekend.

Best Song: Looking Back Over My Shoulder

Awesome Moment: When I misheard the keyboardist say “great crowd...pfft...crap crowd”. He apparently said “great crowd” twice, but i still maintain my superior, hilarious version of events.

Overall Enjoyment: 3/10

Seasick Steve

First allow to get this picky qualm out the way first. Why is this guy so amazingly popular with students and young people. His music style has been done many times, for many years, yet there is no “Legend” status for the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters with your average 17-20 year old.With that confusion out in the open, I will now celebrate this excellent, highlights loaded set.

Arriving on stage to instant audience appreciation, Seasick Steve brought out the ace up his denim clad  sleeve; Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones on bass guitar! This surprise addition paved the way for a rollicking set, which included a girl from the audience being personally sung to by Seasick Steve, who throughout the set revealed an array of increasingly bizarre homemade guitars.

Seasick Steve’s breakdowns of his makeshift guitars and entertaining anecdotes making a fine companion to the stomping, surprisingly heavy, blues rock.

Best Song: All sounded relatively similar, but the life story type one, chorused with serious guitar shredding was a definite highlight.

Awesome Moment: The rumours being true; John Paul Jones turning up to make a brilliant part of the scenery.

Overall Enjoyment:7/10

Iggy & the Stooges

Iggy Pop didn’t so much put on a show as make an appearance. Arriving, causing havoc with the audience and then effing off.

Whipping the crowd into an a frenzied aggressive mob that never quite calmed again for the rest of the day, Iggy’s stage invasion rally may have been a failure, but his overall affect on the crowds behaviour was undeniable. Iggy Pop being well on the loose, security obviously broke a sweat.

Admittedly despite Raw Power being one of my favourite albums, I was hoping to hear a few of Iggy’s solo hits of albums Lust For Life or The Idiot, the majority of Stooges material just blending into one blitz of noise to soundtrack Iggy Pop going mental up and down, on and off stage.

Highlights included: Iggy spitting at the irritating Sky TV cameras and giving it the finger, saying “fuck TV”; Iggy swinging the mic around with about eight feet of slack, Iggy denting speaker by stabbing it with the microphone, Iggy getting nervous VIP’s to dance on stage, Iggy inviting a stage invasion and Iggy strangling himself with microphone chord.
Bizarre, nerve wrecking stuff; a performance more survived than enjoyed.

Best Song: God knows what he sang. No Fun was in there somewhere.

Awesome Moment:  Dave Grohl being amongst the awkward VIP’s dancing on stage with Iggy like he had a gun to their heads.

Overall Enjoyment: 8/10
 

Pulp

My most anticipated act of the weekend, one of their first shows in Britain in a long time, the classic Pulp line-up delivered an outstanding ninety minute, filler free set list (although for me, Dishes and The Fear would have been more welcome than This Is Hardcore or Sunrise).

Jarvis Cocker proved to be as entertaining when just talking, resembling a zany university lecturer, with all his bizarre observations of the audience and beyond, musings on the stage set up, throwing half eaten grapes and a tangerine to the crowd.  Each line he spoke in that trademark voice sounding like a line from the verse of a mythical new Pulp song; the “Should I another bar on the fire?” line sounded like something straight out of a song like Pencil Skirt.

Delivering in every way, the crowd were massively appreciative, with the chorus of Common People sounding like as much a war cry as it was originally intended.

This set felt so raw, so wanted, so amazingly necessary, there were actually times where I felt the hairs on my neck stand to attention, and (seriously) tears well up in my eyes.

Best Song: Between Common People or the absolutely aching performance of Underwear

Awesome Moment: Absolutely for myself, that would be shaking Jarvis Cocker’s hand. Other highlights included the eerie I Spy “spy camera” moment or the wonderful “bar on the fire” discussion.

Overall Enjoyment:  10/10. From start to finish this show was awesome.

Sunday 14^th June 2011

Acts @ Main Stage: Jeff Beck, Pixie Lott, Two Door Cinema Club, Plan B, The Script, Beady Eye

Acts @ The Big Top: Public Image Limited, Manic Street Preachers

Jeff Beck

A treat of a special guest, if only to hear his guitar playing on this consistently rainy day. Beck kept the talking to an absolute minimum, leaving a very glum yet excellent display of guitar playing.

I have come to expect this attitude from these frowny British guitar masters (like Eric Clapton as well as Jeff Beck), however, audience acknowledgement at this time of the day was nearly a worthy sacrifice for some stunning blues guitar.

But just a little more love for those standing in the rain may have been nice.

Best Song: A Day in the Life (instrumental)

Awesome Moment: Seeing Jeff Beck play guitar

Overall Enjoyment: 6/10

Pixie Lott

Read this performance as primped, photogenic, pop princess shows her midriff in the rain.

Most entertainment for me derived from the groups of guys in the crowd discussing which of their number they believed she was eyeing up, or whose eye line “she just clocked, man”.

This circus of ego providing sweet distraction from this dull, by numbers performance.

Best Song: A depressing “ooo no, it’s raining” performance of Boys And Girls

Awesome Moment: A girl in the crowd standing next to me, assuming Pixie Lott was crying as she sang Adele’s Someone Like You. She wasn’t.

Overall Enjoyment: 3/10 (4/10 if she hadn’t worn that bizarre eyebrow glitter)

Two Door Cinema Club

Or rather Three Man Sixth Form Band. Making Mike & The Mechanic’s seem like they had been The Rolling Stones, this set dragged on like a session of torture. Two Door Cinema Club proved to be a real hot lot with the largely teenage, early Sunday audience...Maybe college friends, turned up to show some support?

Whatever, I hated them.

Best Song: None

Awesome Moment: Their last song and them leaving. I whooped and clapped at this; my girlfriend mistook this for me liking the song. Nooo....

Overall Enjoyment: 2/10 The worst of the weekend.
 

Plan B

This set had two golden elements; great stage layout and an awesome beat boxer (Faith SFX is it?).

Call me a cube, but this was all let down by Plan B’s yobbish, lame attitude. Be this asking “Who smokes facking weed?” to a crowd of school kids and demanding the crowd start a moshpit to a song that hardly warranted it.

Noticing that some of these youngsters in the crowd were mistaking moshing for getting really angry and punching each other, I moved my girlfriend to my safer side. That’s right Plan B, you and your yoof crowd put old fogeys like us in serious danger. No wonder Michael Caine kicked your arse in Harry Brown. In all fairness though, there was some good stuff in here.

Best Song: She Said

Awesome Moment: That beatboxer, showing off some really impressive beat boxing.

Overall Enjoyment: 5/10

The Script

First things first, this is not my scene at all. I think The Script have a cheek to call themselves anything above a boy band in terms of their sound. I think their singles are generally shit.

But as much as I would like to really slate The Script here, I am not going to.

I was bored and irritated throughout this set, yes. But for thosein the crowd who would like this kind of dross, I could tell The Script had put on an amazing show.

Kissing audience members, taking Twitter pictures, coming down to the barrier, letting the rain poor onto him off the stage roof while making boy band pose, goofing around playfully with other band members in an “aww cute” kind of way, The Script’s lead man pulled out all the stops to make this show really memorable for their fans.

Although that certainly does not include me, I think their visible appreciation and gratitude for their fans deserves the same from me here.

Best Song: N/A

Awesome Moment: When the lead man approached a girl at the barrier, sang to her the final line of his song and kissed her on the cheek. The ecstasy in the girls face throughout was like he was threatening her with torture.

Overall Enjoyment:  6/10

Beady Eye

My most anticipated act of the day, and possibly second most anticipated of the festival.

On paper, Beady Eye, the new Noel-less version of Oasis almost struck me to be worthy of a headliner slot before I seen this show.

The new album is pretty good, so with a few Oasis classics thrown in surely good times would be had?

No such luck. Beady Eye performed 90% new album and a couple of covers. No Oasis songs at all.

Even when looking past this and taking the show on Beady Eye songs alone; the sound on stage was abysmal, sounding more like a cheap ipod dock that risked being blown away by an acoustic set at Garden Stage.

So for me, what should have been a headliner worthy show, was actually a quiet, weak, lazy affair, which performed as it was would have fitted nicely between Pixie Lott and Plan B earlier.

With all the video preamble of a Union Jack clad Liam Gallacher swaggering his way passively to the stage, just eventually felt like ridiculous pomp and a huge let down.

I still think Beady Eye have more to show in the future, but here there was just something missing. I would say maybe another thousand in the crowd and a few notches of volume.

Some people in the crowd seemed to argue what is missing: is Noel.

Best Song: The Roller

Awesome Moment: Seeing Liam Gallacher for real. Like if you were to see a mythical creature in real life, you would be in awe of how it was just like it is on TV and all? Well. Liam Gallacher is like that. The arrogance, the image, the complaining, the rows with the crowd. It is ALL. FOR. REAL.

Overall Enjoyment: 5/10

Public Image Limited

Moving over to The Big Top, the rain finally laying off for a brief moment, we went to check out PiL.

Providing everything you could want from a PiL set; John Lydon screaming and scowling, complaining and talking enough shit to fill a Country Life Butter advert.

Throw this in with a generous offering of Public Image Limited’s ridiculously mixed bag of songs (in terms of style and quality), all with the backdrop of the marvellously laid back Big Top and I had a really great time.

Best Song: Warrior

Awesome Moment: Lydon listing the problems he had with the stage set up. (He’d apparently left the stage in anger at one point too)

Overall Enjoyment: 7/10

 Manic Street Preachers

After the disappointment of Beady Eye, the indulgence of Public Image Limited and the absolute shitness of some acts I had seen earlier on Main Stage, I needed something good to end the weekend on a high.

And Jesus Christ did the Manic’s end my weekend on a high. Having already seen them at Glastonbury 2007 in a daytime slot, I was expecting good things, but nothing prepared me for this.

Performing a totally flab free, all your faves and then some set, Manic’s provided everything I could have wanted from a Main Stage headliner; let alone one in The Big Top.

Showing Beady Eye that you can bring a headline audience an amazing show with just the band and a modestly decorated stage, the audience seemed delighted with this performance.

The key phrase that I felt applied to this show was “value”. In just an hour and a half you get to hear all those amazing songs , performed by this seriously under acknowledged, legendary band in such a way that roars passion and dedication to their music. Responsible for at least six great albums, of which, three are certain classics, I had my own personal desired set list built in my mind. The band played all the songs the audience were expecting, plus some neat little surprises that were just as loved.

On leaving the stage, they left the audience salivating for just any more possible scraps of performance, (and it would have been too, they had already performed so much, feeding a totally electrifying five minute encore call.
Disappointingly, this was unresponded to, so this show was literally an encore away from being what I expect to be the best show of my life.

Yet even without it, it still may be.

I hear that over at Main Stage, Kasabian pulled off something special, but I don’t care.

Manic Street Preachers at The Big Top, Isle Of Wight Festival 2011, was an absolutely remarkable show.

Best Song: The Everlasting, Suicide Is Painless

Awesome Moment: James Dean Bradfield’s stunning solo acoustic performance of The Everlasting.

Overall Enjoyment: 10/10

That is me, centre front. Singing along to Pulp. A great festival.