A while back, someone at Uncut pointed out to me that one of the words I overused when writing about music was “feral”. He was right, too: I’d got into a habit of using the term whenever the psychedelia and crypto-primitive folk jams that I listen to so much got a little wilder and smellier, became a bit more instinctual, or at least convincingly pretended to be instinctual.
We’re back home after three days in a field by the Thames, clothes have been washed and hangovers nursed, so it must be time to discuss who rocked Uncut’s world at the Carling Weekend: Reading Festival and who rocked the boat of musical excellence…
It's been a night of being proved wrong, for me at least, at Latitude. As I'm walking across the site, I can hear The Good, The Bad And The Queen, and they sound really good. I'd previously pegged them as a rather self-conscious trip into psychogeography and musicianly fandom for Damon Albarn. But here the overworked fug clears and the elegaic true quality of the songs - and those Simonon basslines, of course - comes to the fore.
Cornbury, or Poshstock as it’s sometimes known, is like a mini Knebworth, held in the bucolic grounds of a very big house in the Cotswold country 20 miles from Oxford. There’s champagne by the bottle in the VIP bar and past Cornbury Fests have proved celeb heaven with Prince Harry, Kate Moss (she’s a local) and Jeremy Clarkson all stumping up in 2006.
No famous faces ligging here so far today but we’ll keep ‘em peeled.
Here’s how it’s panning out so far:
