I only became aware of the existence of this festival a couple of days beforehand, and didn't decide until the actual day that I would make my way up to Manchester, hence any attempt to compare the magnitude of this event with the Reading Festival three weeks later is a non-starter. In fact I am not sure if I should even count it amongst the great festivals on these pages. Probably not, but enough happened of merit to make it worthy of a review and I enjoyed my day out so I guess that's all that matters! I'd put in so little effort in planning that even on the day I changed my travel arrangements several times, journeying there by train then back (on the same night) by coach, as the National Express had already sold out the outgoing journey. I pushed the forefront of technology by receiving a txt for my coach ticket and ventured out later than I'd planned, wearing typical festival attire and feeling amazed that I could attend a music festival and still have a full day to myself on Sunday! In fact I was wearing the same shoes I was taking to Reading, using this as a chance to see if they are suitable festival footwear, which I think shows excellent forward planning. If I recall, I may have worn my old raincoat and V99 T-shirt also in an attempt to "recreate" the clothing donned at V2000!
I packed almost nothing and got a free train ride to Crewe, whereupon I jumped on a smelly local train filled with drunken maniacs (at midday!), but as the journey out cost me only £6 I can't complain. As the train I'd caught wasn't mentioned on my route planner I arrived earlier than planned and had a free hour to wander around Manchester. Since I had first moved there in 2001 the city centre has changed beyond all recognition: practically everything has been improved and finally it doesn't look like a building site. When the last part of the Arndale centre opened a few months later you could finally say that the city may even be "finished"! I then met up with my good friend Jon and his mates, had the first couple of beers of the day at the nearest Wetherspoons and pigged out on a bowl of nachos. Although the heat wave had supposedly been and gone, it was still far too hot and I felt uncomfortable all day. We walked down Deansgate towards the festival site, which was somewhere I'd never seen in my Manchester life: just beyond the Science & Industry museum and the enormous (and now nearly completed) Beetham Tower, which was absurdly tall and thin and seems far too top heavy for its own good (although it looks very impressive!).
As this was basically a sponsored event (that nearly runs out of money each and every year), the entrance fee was an insanely cheap £2 "donation" in return for a bright orange festival sticker. I don't think anybody would have complained if they'd had asked for £5 or £10 though! There seemed to be the typical lack of toilets (why can't organisers cotton on to that?) but at least the facilities seemed fit for a queen compared to normal festival bogs! I had been expecting an open field site but instead this was a concreted area with lots of hills and buildings, including a castle wall and a large space for seating. The place was rammed, yet I only saw one person I recognised. There seemed to be around four train lines going past (but they were all travelling too slow to cause noise) and the only proper pub onsite was V.I.P. only. We walked past three or four other stages (but never had a full look round the site) and saw the majority of Polytechnic's set at the main stage. They must have been the definition of a generic guitar band as here I am writing this the next day and I can't recall a single thing that they did! We spent much of the time making our way through the crowds, queuing for the beer tents (fortunately selling John Smiths) and talking about life and work.
The period after Polytechnic could quite fairly be described as uneventful. We watched the fairground rides (absurdly large and dangerous looking!) but never really considered going on them and sat down for a very long time in the middle of the site by a trench doing nothing except a little eating of curly fries on my part. Although I had been interested in seeing The Pipettes for the second time nobody else was keen, and I wasn't fussed enough to argue. I guess the heat coupled with the lack of famous bands inspired lethargy. However, I was pleased that nobody argued with my insistence of going back down the hill to see The Young Knives and we got a fairly good position, although a laughably tall person somehow managed to find their way in front of me again, which was doubly frustrating as he didn't seem to bother watching the show! The set-up of the site was such that true insanity was impossible. Crowd surfing and moshing on concrete is not advisable, and most were sitting down on the ring of concrete seats surrounding us. However, the sound quality was good and the crowd did react warmly to the bands.
I may have missed Field Music who were clashing with this, but I have no doubt that The Young Knives were the best performance going. This was a set strong enough to have stood out amongst the bands at Reading, and therefore completely vindicated my decision to travel here. They were a three piece with three songs that I recognised, who I'd seen playing a blinding set on Jools Holland a few months previously. The bassist is brilliantly nicknamed The House Of Lords and looks a little like the geeky one out of The Futureheads. They have a style somewhere between Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs so sounded like a very relevant and exciting talent! Whether they'll break through or not is a different question, but the tunes Rumour Mill, Hot Summer and (especially) She's Attracted To I just know I won't suddenly decide are rubbish, because they're just too good! The crowd seemed to enjoy it and to be familiar with some of the songs, although most of my friends seemed to foolishly wander off, missing the set get better and better as it went on. Every song they played was absurdly catchy and showed that they were already a fully formed band. They also made my neck hurt, although I'm not sure if that was due to my nodding along or trying to see over the freakishly tall guy in front!
The Young Knives left the stage and Clint Boon came up to an appreciative response. He showed some rare DJing talent by opening his short set with The Hop, Hound Dog and Rock 'N’ Rock Star. The crowd loved it and how could anybody dismiss it as obvious when I've never heard a DJ play any of those songs because they're too busy going for obscure shit?! This was the fifth time I'd seen Clint (Inspiral Carpets once, The Clint Boon Experience! twice and a DJ night once) and I found it annoying when he hailed the "Boon Army!" chant the best one he'd ever heard. This had happened spontaneously and so much more loudly at Leeds 2000 so the guy either has no memory or was indulging in some false flattery! Even when he got a pen and wrote "Boon Army" on the front of the stage most of the audience didn't bother keeping the chant going, thus it all seemed far too forced. Still he remains a very cool guy, even if the DJ set did seem to go into typical obscure pointless tunes after the strong start!
My festival ended with the third (!) and final full band, with second headliners and Mancunians The Longcut who followed up Clint. Although my mates seemed to like it, I just can't find a good word to say. Within a couple of minutes I was bored near death. It was like The Killers but without the glamour and the tunes. Everything seemed to be a slightly electronic drone with a faceless guy honking over the top. There was nothing actually offensive about it but there just didn't seem to be anything to admire, and no tunes to speak of. The high point of their set was when they covered You Got The Love by The Source, which made me want to seek out the original. However, they managed to turn their version into - you guessed it! - a faceless drone and also expressed embarrassment at playing a decent pop song! They did have that quality about them where you feel that they could produce something good in the right time and place, but nothing positive came across on this night, even thought the crowd seemed to enjoy it!
I'd never really got drunk and the sun hadn't even gone down, but upon being informed that closing act AIM were a bit hip-hoppy I felt this festival had already reached its conclusion. Ultimately it was a nice day out with one great show and a few talking points, so was certainly worth the effort. We hung round a few pubs afterwards (and this is the point I started regretting wearing such scummy festival clothes) and found an amazing bar with lots of pool tables, sadly let down by a playing of Toploader. I arrived home at 2am completely exhausted but here I am writing this not even twenty four hours later, with several Young Knives tunes downloaded. A nice warm-up to the Reading Festival indeed!
SONG OF THE DAY: The Young Knives - She's Attracted To
Castlefield, Manchester
5th August 2006
£2.00
