Saturday 22/07/06 Day 1 @ Truck Festival, Oxford

Truck, in its ninth year, is a bit of a local institution. Three thousand people congregate in the beautiful sunshine on a farm south of oxford for two days of sitting about on the grass with some ace music. So of course by midday on saturday there is sideways rain sending everyone cowering into the nearest barn or tent, and enough wind to blow away half the wine tent (two large gazebos) and damage the perimeter fence. But thankfully it is merely overcast for Get Cape. Wear Cape.Fly. A confident 20 year old with some nice hard hitting political ditties you can squelch your damp feet to. He's hit the right balance between articulating your rant and ensuring musical quality; as well as organising a Hokey Cokey to cheer us up. Brakes promise to clear the clouds for us, and by the time they've got through their joyous set of weird country and the occasional nine second song to 'All Night Disco Party' they've brought out the sun, good lads.

Next up, :( in the trailer park tent; pure emo with a capital yell. They are the loud version of Fell City Girl who're on the main stage at the same time. Its all good and well if you like that kind of thing, they're not bad; just neither of them are quite Brand New standard. The first visit to the barn is for  MC Lars, another Truck regular who is either actually not a very good rapper or the sound was unusually fuzzy that day. When you can hear him, his laptop built Anglophilic tunes like opener 'UK Vice Versa' get you dancing, but not today it seems. So disappointed we head to Nervous_testpilot, another regular, who passes the time with some genre jumping mixing off his laptop till its time for
the fantastic Darren Hayman. King geek rocks the suprisingly loud acoustic tent, not in those long shorts though, with a few Hefner classics; 'Pull Yourself Together' and 'The Sad Witch' get a full response. While the quality new stuff off of 'Table For One' sounds pretty much the same as the Hefner material when played with a band, but if it ain't broke...

Redjetson have packed out the Lounge tent so we can't see their pretty faces, but we can definitely hear their pretty drones that resemble a gentler Mogwai for a few minutes before its off to see iForward Russia! Somehow this reviewer hasn't yet managed to see this band, and has now had a word with themselves after being really very impressed by them. For a start the drummer Katie is ace, she plays as if she has to save the earth with just two sticks while singer Tom is throwing himself about the place to their poppy but offbeat but delicate but messy songs. That boy can give a good yelp. They're really tight live, you can see they're enjoying the gig as much as you and there's no pretence. If you haven't seen them yet flay yourself with a Birch twig till they come round to a venue near you.

Saying that, we leave them to it on the main stage to catch a bit of Anat Ben David in the Trailer Park Tent. She's one of Chicks On Speed so it was always going to be fairly interesting. So there is Anat in a jacket with just a couple of bits of strategically placed gaffer tape under it, and just a keyboard and a drummer for company, playing programmed beats and shouting a bit; to ten people in a tent. It's a good plan - the people flood in to see what the racket is about, stay a bit longer to watch the skinny woman jumping about with no top, realise it is actually quite good Berlin electro and have a bit of a dance.

The delicious banana smoothies distract us for most of Trademark but they are worth investigating if you like people in suits standing in a row making bleeps with keyboards and synths. They've toured with the Human League apparently, and apart from a failed confetti launch, play perfect electronic pop. Here Gigwise had a little boob and was fast asleep by the third Futureheads song. What this party animal did manage to hear from their set was as decent a live bands as they've always been, but not much more than that.