fatandconfused

As ever bad preparation and severe illness meant that at best we were always going to be late, not packing until your estimated time of departure is also not recommended but such is life and such is the way that I am and probably always will be.

Being the good people we are it only seemed right to pick up some hippy hitchhikers along the way who had broken down, thus adding yet again to our time and meaning that by the time we finally arrived Dirty Three were well along in their first hour and a quarter set. After being spoilt stupid last year at Camber Sands, staying literally 20 paces from the Queen Vic which also means 5 paces from the swimming pool and 25 paces from both stages, with a green outside our chalet and a team of Belgians dying to take us on at a game of football (interestingly to be filmed by BBC culture show and shown later that summer) I was really always going to b let down by Butlins at Minehead. The main stage that I would come to appreciate much later looked more like it should have been at Reading (not that I’ve been to Reading or ever will do, but as a long time lover of the smaller venue it seemed horrifically big with a sea of disinterested looking folks) encased in Fish & Chips shops, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Jumping Jacks, yes Jumping Jacks for crying out loud!!!! I manage to half sleep through Art of Fighting’s set and am mildly impressed as I drift in and out of sleep, exhausted from the trek down and from generally over doing it in the weeks preceding the festival. Jumping Jacks is empty, Crazy Horse is slightly better and I conclude that I hate Butlins and go off to sleep.

Saturday is much better thankfully, first some challengers at football, they’ve been playing for a while already so a good opportunity to show off some silky skills and generally mess around before indulging in the swimming pool. If you’ve been you’ll have been instantly drawn to the slide you see as you walk in, it goes upwards!! Surely worth queuing twenty minutes for, surely, well not really, instead the Black Hole is the one, though despite being amazingly fast and dark it is also a bit of a cheese grater, not friendly on the old back and a decent reminder as to why you should never go down a waterslide topside down. I realise I haven’t bought any trousers to change into and have the humiliation of walking back to my chalet in just my pants…nice!

Saturday is a day that I’d been looking forward to musically, sadly I missed Felix Lajko and in fact everyone on Reds that day, Faun Fables and Digital Primitives two that I had been looking forward to. However a recent love affair has begun between myself and a little known band called Low, a band that I had dunked my musical biscuit into previously but never been too moved, now I can’t see why I didn’t love them from the very start, each sing is executed so perfectly, the latest albums drum machines are replaced by Mimi’s simplistic drumming and are refreshingly different for it. Its mainly material from Drums & Guns but they sneak in a few favourites like That’s How You Sing Amazing Grace and Laser Beam that are moments that will likely stay with me the rest of my life, and band to treasure, cherish and hold close to your chest.

I catch the end of the Drones set, like I have on each of the three occasions I’ve seen them previously, they are exquisite as ever, making an awful racket and doing it really very well. I’m not sure how it would translate on record or over the length of the set but they put on a good three show song for me.

I had been in some ways been quite let down by the line up after the early names had initially instantly drawn me, a name that did bring a smile to my face was the last minute re-inclusion of Nina Nastasia, her recent album on FatCat had found a fond place in my heart, tonight however she was showcasing songs from her forthcoming collaboration with Dirty Three drummer and Tom Jones look-alike Jim White. This started well but it seemed Jim used all his tricks in the first two songs which featured some breathtaking drumming, then ran out of ideas. The rest of the set was rather flat but for a rendition of my favourite song of hers Our Day Trip.

Sunday and I’m sacrificing a swim to see David Pajo, or Papa M as he appears this afternoon, one of his many monikers. I’m not disappointed, you see I’m left in awe wondering why this man, this man with the silky voice, like a more perfect Elliot Smith has spent so much time at the back of other bands, his song writing is of such a high quality, tender and heartfelt, countermelodies contrast with bass lines played simultaneously whilst he plays glockenspiel with his feet, simple but its all that’s needed to compliment these pretty sonnets.

Dirty Three are back on in the Pavillion, Warren Ellis is a man I can’t decide what I think of. In one hand he reminds me of Billy Bragg in the way that you wish he’d just shut up and play more songs instead of talking for so long in between songs, how can an instrumental songs be about such deep subjects that he claims they’re about, I don’t know perhaps they are, maybe I’m being shallow minded. Anyway this afternoon he is thoroughly charming and captivating, a funny story for each song and some memorable banter with the crowd, seemingly quite awestruck by the fact that he is picked the bill for this weekend and here he is again stood on the stage with a couple of thousand people watching each and every kick he gives out like a post rock  

Michael Flatley, it’s a good show though I sneak out early to make sure that I’m fed and watered before A Silver Mt Zion take the stage, bumping into Joanna Newsom and Bobby Gillespie along the way…which was nice.

A Silver Mt Zion are all I wished for, all I expected. I’ve kind of long since resigned myself to the fact that I will never see perhaps never see one of the most influential bands, one of my favourite bands Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a live environment (I respect them for quitting (if that’s what they have done) when they did, they’ve done just about as much as they can within a limited genre and left a template for a hundred bands to imitate, expand and improve) so perhaps this is the closest I will ever get, Efrim the founding members side project that has now become a full time project and after today in my eyes perhaps one of the most important bands on the earth today. You see they’ve taken everything great about Godspeed, the vast instrumentation, the climaxes and crescendos, the political extremism and turned into into something new. People go on about Joanna Newsom and rightly so, but A Silver Mt Zion have created something of equal importance, songs that build and grow, songs sung by the worst singer in the band, but songs sung with passion and belief, songs sung in unison, at times there are six people singing in harmony building walls of hope and light at the end of the tunnel. I’m amazed at how the violinist to the right of Efrim has a constant smile. I’ve often wondered what these people look like, who they are, if they are depressives, one would be led to think so by the political dissatisfaction they portray in their epic songs, it would seem to be to the contrary. It strikes me as being refreshing the way they are arranged on stage, there is no importance as to who is at the front, so whereas Efrim is clearly the “front man” in the band, he stands nearer the back, I like these people…a lot.

The price paid for seeing A Silver Mt Zion is missing Joanna Newsom and it seems as though we’d miss her to the second time around, queues going on for seemingly miles, anyhow its sometimes not what you know but who you know and we get in, only to find that its far from full and curse Health and Safety for their strict rules that mean so many people will miss a true spectacle in Joanna tonight. She is ridiculously cute, her mannerisms, her little introductions to the band members, sickly so at times, perhaps the kind of thing that would grate over time but tonight she is simply enchanting both in person and musically. The harp being such an unusual instrument amongst the kind of crowds that are associated with such a festival, its mesmerising to see her fingers twinkling up and down the strings and that voice, so heavenly and never more so on the glorious new song Colleen. I must say I was a little dubious at the announcement of a new song, I really thought that she had peaked with Y’s and that any further material would be surplus to requirement and that she’d fade into obscurity much like Vashti Bunyan, fortunately I’m wrong, and its not the first time this weekend. Butlins has grown on me though I can never imagine it being quite so perfect as Cambers Sands but if you make the most of it you will be rewarded…bring on next year!