Saturday 19/08/06 Day 1 @ V Festival, Weston Park, Stafford

As Gigwise scours the festival line-up on Saturday morning, there seems to be something missing. Well, quite a few things actually. Of course we can’t wait to see the living legend of Morrissey this evening but, who else is there to get excited about? You can’t help thinking that when organisers booked this year’s headliners they probably gave themselves a big pat on the back and took the rest of the year off. So as a result we’re left with a ragtag selection of dull MOR and the usual over-the-hill acts who can be safely relied upon to prop up festival bills year after year.

Matters aren’t improved when we have to queue for so long to get in to the arena that we miss the first acts. And it’s raining buckets. The weather makes the summery ska pop of Lily Allen in the undercover JJB Arena seem an attractive proposition. And the outspoken popstress doesn’t disappoint the sizable crowd taking shelter from the rain. It’s just a shame that at just over 20 minutes, her set is so short.

None too enthralled about the prospect of enduring Kubb or James Morrison, Gigwise then trundles off to the backstage VIP bar. Amongst the Emmerdale and Hollyoaks C Listers is a man dancing to the Happy Mondays with a lampshade on his head, which leaves us in no doubt that we made the right choice. Legend.

The Dandy Warhols are a band that seem forever destined for the mid-afternoon festival slot. Bereft of any notable stage presence and armed with only a handful of genuine singalong tunes, their set plunders along amiably enough without every really exciting the main stage crowd.

Over to the Channel Four stage, James Dean Bradfield proves to be one of the unexpected highlights of an otherwise fairly mediocre day.  True, without the beanpole-like presence of Nicky Wire and his feather boa clad microphone stand the stage may look disconcertingly empty. But when the songs from the surprisingly good ‘The Great Western’ sound as ear-pleasingly catchy live as they do on record, it doesn’t seem to matter. A sublime cover of The Clash’s ‘The Card Cheat’ and a rousing ‘No Surface All Feeling’ rounds things of nicely.

Making our way back to the imaginatively titled V Stage, Gigwise is relieved to find that we have missed the majority of perennial dullard Paul Weller’s set, but arrived just in time for a jubilant, punky run through of ‘A Town Called Malice’. Result!