When I get to Hop Farm on Saturday still blessed-out on memories of Van Morrison’s set the night before, I find it a very different place. There are as many as 20,000 more people here today than there were yesterday, possibly an even greater number than that according to some estimates. Whatever, the field that last night had comfortably hosted a significantly smaller crowd is now unbelievably packed. There are queues everywhere. You get the feeling that you’d have to in fact queue just to actually join a queue and the queue itself you’ve just joined isn’t going to take you anywhere in a rush. To get from, say, here to there or a bit further involves the complicated negotiation of many bodies, clumps of people who seem simply to have collapsed in the heat. There are vast snaking lines of thirsty folk at the bars, others desperate to get to what seems to be the only water tap that’s running. It’s all a bit of a nightmare. To make matters worse, Laura Marling is on stage, doing something that involves communal whistling. I want to flee, but there’s nowhere to run. She does a version of Jackson C Frank’s “Blues Run The Game”, so she’s obviously not deaf to a good song, although listening to her own twee whimsies makes me wish for a temporary loss of my own hearing. Whatever connections to a noble folk tradition are claimed by admirers on her behalf, what I’m listening to sounds not much more than fey, a bit too precious. The audience largely loves her, though. And given their palpable affection for the demure songstress, you wonder how they’ll take to a celebrated reprobate like Pete Doherty. In the event, they find him irresistible, his bleary charm winning them over from the opening strum of “Arcady”. He’s nattily dressed in a black suit and white short, his usual uniform, if you like, both of which are soaked through in about 10 minutes. He’s also sporting a very large plaster on his neck, just under his left ear, which slowly begins to peel off in the heat, nothing apparently under it that I can see. Two ballerinas in tutus appear as he starts “For Lovers”, twirling attractively, if somewhat bizarrely, behind him as he plays. “I’ve been dusting off me Chas and Dave records,” he announces, introducing the first of several hilarious versions of “Hopping Down In Kent”, which turns things into a regular knees-up. “Can’t Stand Me Now”, “Music When The Lights Go Out”, “Down In Albion”, “What A Waster”, “Last Of The English Roses” and a rapturously received “Fuck Forever” follow and then he’s gone. Backstage about now, there’s quite a crisis. They’ve run out of beer and just about everything else. This makes someone called Keith Hatch, who according to a sign on a tent pole is in charge of things here, almost as popular in my personal lexicon of prejudice as Seasick Steve, who unbelievably is hauling his sorry self around the festival circuit for another summer and is on stage at the moment giving the blues a bad name. Mumford & Sons, on next, sound like a firm of undertakers in a Keith Waterhouse novel involving comic tribulations Oop North, whose services it strikes me now I could probably do with, so fast is what they’re playing making me lose the will to live. What is the point of these people? They get everybody going, though, including me. After about 20 minutes, I’m gone, man, I’m out of there. Ray Davies, a while later, starts promisingly with a defiantly raspy “I’m Not Like Everybody Else”, one of many Kinks classics he revisits this afternoon with an increasingly heavy hand. “All Day And All Of The Night” and “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” – great, great songs – are somewhat boorishly dispatched by a leaden band. How much better he might have been playing them on his own, not bellowing hoarsely over their stodgy hard rock. “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” is ruined entirely when for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain he decides to play the second half of it in the style, as he puts it, of Waylon Jennings. “Many years ago I was in a band called The Kinks,” he reminds us, perhaps unnecessarily, but to huge cheers anyway, introducing an ugly version of “You Really Got Me”. “They were a pain in the arse,” he adds and doesn’t seem to be joking, instead hinting at levels of residual bitterness, an oddly off-hand attitude to a past he is nevertheless not beyond exploiting even as he may resent the crowd’s preference for these old hits (he plays “Sunny Afternoon” next) over newer material like “The Tourist”, which recounts his shooting by a mugger in New Orleans and is delivered in an excruciating American accent. “Apeman” is even worse and when he starts up with the bits of “The Banana Boat Song” that used to mar Kinks’ concerts in days of yore you simply cringe. Around the time he does “Come Dancing”, he seems to be told that he needs to cut his set short because things are overrunning. This sends him into a right strop. “Fuck you,” he yaps at someone in the wings. “I’ll play all night if I want to.” His stand would be a lot more admirable if what he was playing was more worth listening to, but by now he’s ruining the immaculate “Days”, which screams out for a more delicate treatment than it’s currently afforded. We get, eventually, “Lola”, which the crowd love, and sing along to with much gusto. But who among us doesn’t feel deflated when he leaves the stage without playing “Waterloo Sunset”? Still, we have Bob Dylan still to look forward to. He’ll be on in about 20 minutes. See you back here then.

Chances are if you’ve heard of Cornbury, you’ll know they call it “Poshstock”, an upper and middle class weekend jaunt in the bucolic Oxfordshire countryside which boasts Waitrose as a sponsor, Jamie Oliver as the chef de jour and a guest list that habitually includes Princes Charles, William and Harry, Jeremy Clarkson, Kate Moss and PM David Cameron, who showed up again this year, family in tow, bemoaning the fact that he’d missed the Blockheads. But what also makes Cornbury stand out - apart from the upper crust clientele and the culinary aspirations - are the eccentric line-ups booked by Festival guvnor Hugh Phillimore; line-ups which look suspiciously more like the maverick whims of a man inclined to put on a party soundtracked by all his favourite bands than a promoter determined to nail the sort of attractions that entice in the masses. And at a time when the homogeneity of festival talent makes it well nigh impossible to tell yer Readings from yer IOW’s, yer Glastos from yer Hyde Parks, yer Downloads from yer T In The Parks (Kings Of Leon? Tick. Muse? Tick. Dizzee? Tick. Florence? Tick) this peculiarly English eccentricity is surely to be applauded. Cornbury has served up Robert Plant, Joe Cocker and Paul Simon in the past few years, but even by its own standards, this year was extraordinary. The weekend offered three bona fide legends. '70s disco diva Candi Staton dished out a spirited and soulful version of her “You Got the Love” with which Flo, of course, has been recently wowing ‘em at the bigger outdoor dos. Then there was some proper voodoo in the shape of Dr John, the 70 year old Mac Rebennack leading the tightest band of the weekend augmented by Brit trombonist Chris Barber, ten years Mac’s senior, on some rousing N’Orleans gumbo like “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You”. And best of all and - unless there’s some kind of miracle – surely the best act anyone will witness all summer, Mr Buddy Guy, 74 years young, who took a walk through the crowd effortlessly playing blistering Hendrix, booming Lee Hooker, magnificent Muddy – all with such brain-boggling dexterity and a beaming smile that most of us were left in no doubt we were in the presence of the greatest guitarist we will ever see in our lifetime. Other highlights were Sunday’s cool Cali headliner Jackson Browne, the refurbished and well rockin’ Reef, Squeeze and The Blockheads, who both provided a jukebox set of crowd-pleasing faves, and the ten-strong Fisherman’s Friends from Port Isaac Cornwall whose a capella sea shanties felt right at home – as we all did - among the golden rolling fields of hay. STEVE SUTHERLAND

Like the many thousands who will eventually be here this evening, I’m still on my way to the Hop Farm when Los Lobos play, which is why when I get there, the band’s David Hidalgo, instrumental star of the last two Bob Dylan albums, is already in the hospitality bar, deep in conversation with a couple of confederates. Things moving to a strict schedule here and people going on surprisingly early means I’ve also missed Dr John and have in fact made it just in time for Blondie, who have just stepped out on the main stage to a great cheer. Deborah Harry looks quite magnificent in a platinum blonde wig and voluminous black frock festooned with a lot of lace, belts and chains. “Hello, Hop Farm – Blondie calling,” she yells, with perhaps more genuine gusto than you’d expect from someday who only the day before had turned 65, before the band launch into a laudably lively “Hangin’ On The Telephone”. What follows is a generous greatest hits set of slickly delivered crowd-pleasers, among them “Maria”, “Atomic”, “Rapture” and “One Day Or Another”. Some technical glitch then halts their well-rehearsed momentum and as Harry surprisingly flounders in the sudden musical lull, her patter and small talk falling flat, the air goes out of their set. When they resume with “The Tide Is High”, it’s too sluggish too breathe the same life back into it. But they’re still on their way to a hearty ovation for the closing “Heart Of Glass”, by which time I’m making my way around the edge of the crowd to the second stage, all the way over there on the other side of the festival site. Tomorrow, when there are maybe three, four or five times as many people here, it will take the best part of an hour to get this far through the milling crowd. Tonight, though, it’s actually a pleasant stroll through the cooling evening, darkness now slowly coming to this part of Kent. Richard Thompson’s already on stage. In his black beret, shirt and jeans, the shirt decorated with what look like military ribbons and medals, he looks convincingly like a folk commando in full battle fatigue, someone dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to wreak a little havoc. He’s playing a song called “The Money Shuffle”, the target of which is the international banking community whose general ineptitude has visited such economic woe on the world. He delivers the song with the venomous relish you might associate with something similarly caustic by Warren Zevon, indignation bordering on an edgy fury. An irresistible version of “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” changes the mood, which turns more reflective still with a lovely reading of “The Sunset Song”. “This is from my last incredibly successful LP,” he offers by way of sardonic introduction, a line you suspect he’s been ruefully using since he started making records. A dynamic “”1952 Vincent Black Lightning” follows and after that “Persuasion” and a snarling “Crawl Back (Under My Stone)”. “This is a song about sexual frustration, like most of my material,” he’s saying now, setting up the bleak and hilarious “Johnny’s Far Away”, whose colourfully rousing chorus the audience joins in on with such full-throated enthusiasm, it makes you wonder how many other songs about separation and serial infidelity could inspire such a mass sing-a-long. I’m reluctantly about to leave at this point because van Morrison’s due on the main stage in a few minutes. But then Thompson starts playing “Wall Of Death” from Shoot Out The Lights and as much as I don’t want to miss a minute of Van, I can’t drag myself away from a performance as compelling as this and as it anyway happens I’m back in front of the main stage just as Van starts. He’s sitting at a piano, resplendent in a white suit that probably fit when he bought it and a matching hat. He looks positively regal, soul royalty with the imposing heft of Solomon Burke and a voice that remains a thing of time-defying wonder. He’s feeling his way into a magnificent version of “Northern Muse (Solid Ground)", a sweet meandering through many familiar aspects of his music. And now, here’s a surprise: a funky, sultry take on “Brown Eyed Girl”, ungrudgingly played, as if this beautiful summer night has taken the edge off even his legendary truculence. The audience accept it as the rare gift it might actually be. And here’s something else I wouldn’t have expected, a long, mesmerising version of “Fair Play”, the opening track from Veedon Fleece, that drifts and circles, falls back upon itself, any given moment from the original script likely to inspire some digressive extrapolation, gusts of extemporised brilliance, no telling where any of this will go. His voice glides breathlessly through changing stratospheres as effortlessly graceful as something with wings riding currents of air. It ends when he decides it’s over, with the clipped instruction to someone called Chrissie to say goodnight. Van’s surlier side, whatever the weather and even on a might as magical as this, is never, I guess, that far away. And after a beguiling “The Mystery”, from Poetic Champions Compose, we get an angry “Keep It Simple” and the bitter rant of “Talk Is Cheap”. Then there’s a gorgeous “Have I Told You Lately?” which gives way to a seething “Tear Your Playhouse Down”. The extended joyful vamp of “Moondance” is perfect, of course, in this setting, a cool swinging celebration that carries over into “That’s Entertainment”, which in turn is followed by the questing beauty of “Philosopher’s Stone”. A stalking bass line introduces “Baby, Please Don’t Go”, with Van on electric guitar, the song segueing into a jumping “Parchman Farm”, which is followed by a long and unbelievable version of “Into the Mystic” that unfolds slowly, revealing itself incrementally, the few brief minutes of its original incarnation extended in the manner of something like “Almost Independence Day”. As the song drifts into silence, I can’t imagine for the moment he could do anything better. But he does, with the sublime “When The Healing Has Begun”, from 1979’s Into The Music, and then a sublime “In The Garden”, from No Teacher, No Guru, No Method. It’s also his last number, so there’s no encore either. When he walks off stage, the band still playing, he stays there. But there’s nothing - as there sometimes might be - that’s churlish about his departure. He came to do what he does, did it wonderfully and then it was time to go. Now for tomorrow and Bob.

The week’s gone by at such a clip, we’re nearly at the end of it and I still haven’t, I’ve just realised, written about this show, which was frankly too good to let pass without comment, however belated. The Gaslight Anthem had out in a great shift the day before in Hyde Park, where they were supporting Pearl Jam. But at the Academy, in front of their own fans, they are, as you would have hoped, sensational. The show is spectacular from the start. The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is blasting from the PA when the lights go down and the band come on, plug in, ready to go. As “Gimme Shelter” reaches a suitably climactic pitch it gives way in a dramatic sort of cross fade to Alex Rosamilia’s declamatory guitar introduction to TGA’s own “American Slang”, which is the title track of their new album, of course, if you’ve been on holiday or something, or otherwise distracted. It’s a brilliant piece of theatre and the deployment here of one of the Stones’ most iconic songs gives a hint of the company The Gaslight Anthem would like eventually to see themselves in, that pantheon of what there must be a more elegant phrase than ‘acknowledged rock greats’ to which they unashamedly aspire, every show they play an addition to their burgeoning reputation, another line in the legend thy are writing about themselves. Incredibly, it just gets better from here. The set that follows is a thrilling mix of key tracks from the new album and re-vamped crowd favourites from their back catalogue, which is already bristling with stuff you’d miss like something amputated if they didn’t play it. Thankfully, they aren’t stingy when it comes to the older material, which as fans themselves they know a lot of people will have come to hear, as excited as the bulk of the crowd are to hear the American Slang material making a bow for the first time live. And so blistering recent songs like “Stay Lucky”, the stupendous “Bring It On”, “The Diamond Street Church Choir”, “Boxer”, “The Spirit Of Jazz” and “The Queen Of Lower Chelsea”- over half the new album – are generously interspersed with tracks from previous album The ’59 Sound. Among them: “Old White Lincoln”, “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues”, “Miles Davis & The Cool”, “The ’59 Sound”, “Great Expectations”, “Casanova, Baby!”, “Film Noir”, “Here’s Lookin’ At You, Kid” and “Backstreets”. They even find time in a show whose breathless pace is at times staggering to re-visit a few even older songs – “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts”, from the Senor And The Queen EP, for instance, and “Last Of The Jukebox Romeos”, played as one of five encores. It’s apparently inevitable that whenever they are written about The Gaslight Anthem end up being compared for many obvious reasons to Bruce Springsteen and he continues clearly to be an influence and inspiration. But you can hear more than echoes of The E-Street Band in what they play, which at times, especially on the call-and-response vocal exchanges of “Bring It On” and the multiple false endings of “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” resembles a full-on soul revue, Sam Cooke waiting in the wings to come on and raise the roof. During a positively ceremonial version of “The ’59 Sound” I scribble something in my notebook to the effect that increasingly tonight it’s like listening to The Who in their absolute pomp. About five or six songs later, Brian Fallon tells a dismayed crowd there’s time for one last number, which I presume will be “The Backseat”, which if it, it then strikes me, has been given a completely new intro. It’s not, though. What we are suddenly listening to is a stunning appropriation of The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly”, a song as much as anything by Springsteen or The Clash that could have been written for TGA to play. And play it they do, as indeed they play everything. Which is to say, as if lives depended on them.

I was looking through an old Red House Painters file a while back, and came across a review of their debut album in which Allan compared Mark Kozelek’s songwriting to that of Dino Valente. I remembered this earlier today, listening to the new Sun Kil Moon album as I walked to work, thinking about how Kozelek has become one of those artists who seems to reference themselves far more than any other artists. The capricious, undefined shape of Valente’s solo songs remains a decent comparison, and the electric jams on “Ghosts Of The Great Highway” and “April” certainly trudged in the wake of Crazy Horse, to greater and lesser degrees. But “Admiral Fell Promises” has none of that protean thud, and seems located more than ever in Kozelek’s distinct soundworld. This time, his fourth album as Sun Kil Moon is a solo and acoustic affair, though not one that sounds quite like the solo, acoustic and often live sets that Kozelek has put out under his own given name. For a start, Kozelek often discreetly multitracks his vocals. More importantly, he plays nylon string Spanish classical guitar throughout. It seems like a mere technical point, but the difference is striking: Kozelek’s songs have historically unravelled in a way in which, personally speaking, actual instrumentation is barely noticeable. Consequently, when the album begins with “Alesund”, it begins not with the reliably reflective Kozelek embarking on one more lengthy emotional exploration, but with a meticulous guitar flourish. The heroic consistency of his songwriting is unaltered, but the shape of the songs has subtly shifted; there are passages of courtly virtuosity that punctuate the inexorable flow of things. As usual, though, the effect is cumulative. I’ve been living with this album for a good while now, loving many of the songs, but missing the drawn-out electric firestorms that provided variety on those first and third Sun Kil Moon albums. Now, as the songs really start to bed in, the tight unity of “Admiral Fell Promises” feels logical and satisfying. I’ve written before, I think, about the compelling impact of Kozelek’s music over what is now nearly 20 years: its measured, insidious power; its unwavering consistency; its role in my life and on my iPod as a calm, meditative failsafe. “Admiral Fell Promises” doesn’t disappoint. I always suspect Kozelek gathers a bunch of salient songs together rather than writes a new batch when he puts together a new record, and certainly, the title track at the very least has been popping up in his setlists for about a decade. I find it very hard to explain precisely why one Kozelek song is preferable to another – some mystical alignment of progressions and poignancy, maybe – but the standouts currently feel like “Half Moon Bay” and “Third And Seneca”. The latter, especially, is tremendous, possibly in the same melodic vein as “Unlit Hallway”, one of my favourites from “April”. Some of these songs seem to be predicated on life as a musician (“Church Of The Pines” touches, I think, on the act of writing a song). But while, in the hands of some other musicians, such pensées can come across as self-indulgences, sometimes even whinges, Kozelek handles the territory with subtlety and grace. “Third And Seneca” seems to be a kind of impressionistic travelogue, meandering around the bays and hotel rooms of North America, looking out over Puget Sound, leaving Hollywood, thinking always of San Francisco. It’s a measure of Kozelek’s vivid and persuasive art, perhaps, that he always ends up making me nostalgic for that last city; as if a place I’ve visited a few times is as significant to me as a hometown.