Sunday 11/06/06 Day 3 @ The Isle Of Wight Festival

What a feeling of ambivalence it is to be sitting in a sunny field in the Isle of Wight, knowing on the one hand you’re about to see another day’s worth of amazing music, but on the other you’re fast closing in on the last hours of an awesome weekend.  Delays are the first to push the good vibes back to the fore – and though they’re on at 13.25, you can guarantee that next year they’ll be coming on much later.  Their anthemic synth-pop wakes everyone from their morning drowsiness, with ‘Valentine’ getting the steadily-filling stage front clapping along as one.  And from stars of the future we are whisked to those of the past: Procul Harem are the only band on the bill who can claim to have been at the festival in its original late ‘60s incarnation.  When the timeless Hammond-strains of ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’ start to pump out, however, that twenty-odd year generation gap may as well be seconds.

Such is the quality of the bill later on, we choose to use the appearance of the eternally-bland Kubb to have a wander and get refreshed.  A few whirls on the dodgems and the worst samosa ever created later and we’re excitedly taking up our position for Maximo Park.  Like Delays, the Newcastle-based quintet can reasonably expect to up their profile after this performance – for, typically, these boys really seize the moment.  Paul Smith is at once the best dressed (ice white jeans – let’s hope there are no piss puddles backstage Paul) and most appreciative frontman at the festival (‘I just couldn’t get over that crowd.  Where do you go from here?’ he later gushes).  As well as the usual single and album cuts, we get two new songs in the shape of ‘By The Monument’ and ‘Four Times Five’ – both upbeat numbers with the latter introduced by Smith as being ‘about being ugly and wanting to go out on a date’.  Closing with a rousing ‘Going Missing’, Maximo Park can strike the Isle of Wight from their growing list of conquests.

The same, it hurts to say, can’t be said for Lou Reed, whose pedestrian jams really come unstuck today.  Lou himself is chirpy enough, but a killer set of classics is passed up in favour of extensive solos and less popular material.  There’s no ‘Walk On The Wild Side’.  There’s no ‘Perfect Day’, as Chris Martin dryly notes later on.  There are only a couple of Velvets tunes (one of which, ‘Waiting For The Man’, is so withered that the only man you can presume Lou’s referring to is the one who changes his bed pan), which would be forgivable if he was picking the best of his solo stuff – but he isn’t.  Of course, his fans may say that nobody else would have the balls to get up and simply play what they wanted to play in front of a crowd this big.  Well, they’re right on one front: this was bollocks alright.      

And so it’s down to Richard Ashcroft to bring this sedated crowd back to life, and it’s not a challenge he’s going to pass up.  ‘Bring the boys home, Tony!’ he yells, fire burning in his eyes at the ineptitude of England’s performance in the World Cup yesterday.  Or maybe he’s talking about Iraq, but one thing’s for sure; Dickie’s feeling very politicised these days: ‘Don’t vote Cameron.  Don’t vote Blair either – they’re all ****ing liars… …Rock and roll and politics don’t mix – that’s why I didn’t go to Number Ten when you asked me.’  Hmm, nice John Lennon cap you’re wearing there, Richard.  When he’s not ranting, Ashcroft plays a few tunes, and it’s all surprisingly very pleasant.  Admittedly, his solo material plods where The Verve would soar, and so it’s hardly unexpected that it’s two of his old band’s songs that shine out like beacons and provide us with solid gold IOW 2006 moments.  ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ is delivered stripped down to Ashcroft and his acoustic, its fragility sending shivers down 50,000 spines, while ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ lives comfortably up to Ashcroft’s billing of it as his ‘symphony to the world’.  If only Ashcroft could rediscover that populist touch with his solo output, he’d be second on the bill to no-one…