I was just Googling the line-up of All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2001, curated by Mogwai (whose still-exhilarating debut album, in deluxe reissue format, was playing five minutes ago). Looking back, I must have been in hog heaven: Godspeed You Black Emperor, Stereolab, Super Furry Animals, Labradford, Ligament, Shellac, Papa M, The For Carnation, the great and good of post-rock and, notoriously, Sonic Youth.
OK, so now it’s 101 degrees and the crowd is crawling from patch of shade to tented shelter, the mass influx of Hollywood types and music biz bigwigs (them that’s left!) arriving in limos when the sun goes down.
I am the proud owner of my late grandmother's radio. It's a Ferranti, bought, so my mother tells me, around 1950/1, from an electrical shop in Tattenham Corner in Surrey, where my grandparents lived at the time. Radio enthusiasts note, it's a 215 model, with a walnut-finish cabinet and, according to a quick Google, would have cost £27 back in the day, very expensive in a post war world of rationing. It carries Long, Medium and Short Wave and, sometimes, there's a rather eerie whistle running underneath the programme when it's on, like the ghost of electricity moping around in the ether.
