dang
ovan
.com

I started reading Robin Hobb's "The Tawny Man" Trilogy on the day Harry Potter 7 came out (ZOMG NO SPOILERS!) so unfortunately it'll be a week or so before I get onto HP7. It's a shame because after watching the excellent film of HP5 I was looking forward to it, but the Hobb lady is just too good.

In other news my new beast of a computer arrived and now sits next to my new sound system. They're both brooding under my desk; black, sleek, mean-lookin, and both making subtle but annoying whining noises when they're on standby. D'oh. Every silver lining…

Blogging is likely to slow down a little due to business IRL, especially as my new site draws closer to completion. Much of the work is collating, fixing and categorising the 700-ish posts going back to March 2003, yawnsome though it is.

Though I'm booked in to see the latest Harry Potter film on Monday (a bit late, but I've been in the west country) at the sumptuous Electric Cinema, the fact that the eagerly awaited last book in the series is out on Friday had completely passed me by. So that's nice then! Problem is, it's already on BitTorrent! Somebody got an advance copy and a digicam and uploaded the whole frikking thing!! So close your ears and your eyes 'til you get yourself a copy, because there are already nasty spoilers all over the internetz, and it's only going to get worse.

Sick of the iPhone? This vid of the iPhone in a blender is what your need in your life. Very therapeutic.

Last Friday my job title changed. Twice! From "associate client-side developer" to just "client-side developer" and then to "front-end developer". Either way my lack of noobness has been officially recognised, which is nice. On the other hand my parents, having no knowledge of the industry, just think "front-end developer" sounds a bit rude. They might have a point.

What makes a Muslim Radical? A Gallup world poll has some interesting answers. As usual the preconceptions are wrong.

David Saw
Random acoustic dude we saw on our wanderings. Just him and a dude on a double bass. Really good stuff but only caught a couple of his songs. ****

Andy Parsons
We were only there because we had heard that Bill Bailey was to do a set at that tent, but I think we must have seen almost all of Andy's set, which was lucky coz it was bloody brilliant. Definitely my kind of humour, was aching from laughing so much. *****

Bill Bailey
Woot woot Bill Bailey! The material was old, audience participation was throwing him, and there was a constant ruckas from the edge of the tent as wardens kept having to remove people sneaking in as the tent was at capacity. It was still BILL BAILEY though!! #I got ham, but I'm not a hamster!# Sweet. ****

Shirley Bassey
Hahahahahaha! It's Shirley Bassey! Doing air guitar!! Bwahahahahaah! So she was brilliant and the crowd loved it. From opening with her cover of Pink's Get The Party Started to Gold Finger to Big Spender (TWICE). Hitting all the notes and winding around like a snake. Not bad for a septuagenarian! *****

Manic Street Preachers
Can't dis' the Manics, right? There was no way I was not going to go see them. But after a few songs it got uncomfortable. There seemed to be precious little chemistry between the band and the crowd; indifference reigned. And then of course you've got the fact that all their good songs are over a decade old! It was great to see Australia live, and it seems they played La Tristesse Durera after we left which I'm disappointed I didn't see; BUT OMG MOVE ON! So we did. I had planned to see the whole thing, but it was getting depressing and the go team were on at the other stage… **

The Go! Team
…Who were great! My pick of the festival. Their music is so upbeat and positive anyway, and it was really nice to see that they were even more so live, getting the crowd dancing and in the mud. As I've said I like it when musicians swap instruments, and there was plenty of that, it seemed like some of them were doing a circuit of the drum kits, guitars, and keyboard. But they took it to the next level; swapping mid-tune. When one of them suddenly dropped his guitar, pegged it across the stage, picked up a drum stick and did a flying jump to hit a symbol, before seating himself and taking up the second drum kit… Well that was pretty sweet. If you don't know what I'm on about or if you're just curious, here's the last song of their set; Ladyflash, on youtube. *****

The View
Admittedly we didn't really know who they were before we started watching them, but after a couple of songs we concluded that they were crap and we moved on. *

Radio Luxembourg
While everyone else was at the final headliners we went wandering through the dark and deserted mud fields and stumbled across a random band playing at a random stage being watched by about a dozen people, and were totally glad we did. These welsh kids were just great; kind of a cross between the Fratellies and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, which lots of random bouncing in welsh.*****

Gruff Rhys
(He's the lead singer from Super Furry Animals, if anyone's wondering.) The first set we went to on Thursday was a random welsh dude with a repeater, and so it was nice that we ended the festival on a similar note. He did go on a bit with a couple of songs but this might have been exacerbated by his set being cut short by the 12:30 curfew. Damn locals! Despite it being sooooo wet by that point I really enjoyed it, I guess the free 3-d specs handed out at the beginning must have helped. ****

CSS
Not actually that good, shockingly! They were really trying, bless 'em; throwing bubble-makers into the crowd and generally trying their hardest to engage. They'd probably be much better in a smaller venue where that kind of infectious energy would be more appropriate and likely to take root in the audience. As it was their tunes were all over the place. Pity.**

Calvin Harris
I wanted to see this chancer with my own eyes. We arrived just as they were starting with that 80s song, which was excellent. We stayed for the one after out of politeness, but as we only really came to do gurning club-singer impressions of that one song: mission accomplished in record time, and we moved on through the mud lakes.***

Pirates of the Caribbean 2
Our explorations took us to the cinema tent! Where we watched some buckling of swash and had a rare sit-down. For 15 minutes or so anyway. Yay!

Guillemots
Sound was bad and we'd seen them before anyways, in a much smaller venue with much less rain. And they insisted on playing that "She's evil" song which everyone hated. ***

Babyshambles
After catching the start of their set we listened to the rest of it from our tent, where we went for a quick nap. I was just thinking that the libertine were so much better, when they finished on a libertines song. Hah! ***

Maximo Park
Passed by Maximo Park just as they were playing Our Velocity, so yet another uber-efficient set watching as that was pretty much the only song I wanted to see. Yay! ****

Patrick Wolf
Genius. Boy has a lot of energy, climbing on the scaffolds and jumping around the place. (Yeah the music was great too.) Apart from one act we saw on the Sunday this was far and away my favorite set of the festival. Totally blew us away. *****

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.
Suffered a lot from being just after Patrick, probably would have been pretty good otherwise, but in (unfair) comparison it was a little dull. ***

Iggy and the Stooges
We saw Iggy Pop hump a speaker stack! Didn't really stop to listen though.

Rodrigo y Gabriella.Took aaaages to come on due to "technical difficulties", and then were pretty underwhelming. Nice music and impressive musicianship, but hardly stadium stuff IMO. Maybe it would have been better if they weren't so late, or if it hadn't been so muddy/wet at the time, or if they had engaged the crowd at all. At the end of the day there's only so many things you can do with a couple of flamenco guitars, though respect to them for doing all of those and then some more. We totally should have gone to see The Killers, prosaic though that decision would have been. Anyways we soon cut our losses and took advantage of a friend's backstage passes to go check out flushable toilets and large amounts of beer. *

Thursday:
Rod Thomas
One-man-band with few instruments and a repeater repeater repeater. This was only the second time I'd seen a repeater being used live, first being Imogen Heap (which I wrote about at the time and was all kinds of awesome) but even she had a band-on-a-leash for a bit of variety. Rod's got a great voice, a couple of excellent songs, a few meh ones, and probably needs a band-on-a-leash. ****

Lana
She was mental. We ignored her and got down to some serious cider drinking. *

Friday:
Modest Mouse
I like these guys a lot, but they're pretty laid back and the sameyness of their songs doesn't really bear close scrutiny, so I don't think playing to a stadium-like venue where the punters were getting pelted by some obscenely hard rain was really fair to them. Give us a drink, an armchair and some low lighting (indoors) and we'll see. We left to find shelter maybe half-way through the set. ***

!!!
(Pronounced "chk chk chk" BTW) They were going apeshit in a jazzy Primal Scream kind of way; I only barely recognised their songs. Fair enough if you're a big fan, but I've only been listening to them for a few weeks so we moved on pretty quickly. Also the drug-fuelled self-satisfaction of the people in the dance tent was just weird. **

Bloc Party
We'd been wanting to see these people for months so it was great that we finally got the chance . They didn't disappoint either, Kele was a great front-man with a good way with the crowd and a stunning voice, and most importantly he really looked like he was enjoying himself. The rest of the band were tight, though they hardly moved in comparison to Keke. All in all brilliant. *****

Rufus Wainwright
Rufus is the man! I think he carried this set off by sheer force or personality, he was beset by sound problems throughout, and the temptation to make jokes about cold remedies ruining his career proved too strong. (He has a really nasal voice.) I didn't hate his version of hallelujah, even though I'm all about the Jeff Buckley version. He ended on a stroke of genius though; dressing as Judy Garland and doing "Get Happy", while his band did the actions of her dancers from the film in a comedy manner. Predictably it's on YouTube so check it out. *****

Arcade Fire
I've never really clicked with Arcade Fire, they sound too similar to a bunch of other bands like the Decemberists or Broken Social Scene and I keep mistaking their songs for other people's. But they were stonking live, 11 of them (?) and their assorted equipment filling the big stage nicely. I like any band where people play various instruments throughout instead of just standing there strumming the same tired guitar; bring on the accordions! ****

Bjork
It was Bjork! ZOMG! AKA a really small pixie in a huge dress a long way away hugging people at length for no real reason… Was really surprised she did a lot of old favourites and it was a real treat to see them live, but I didn't know any of the new material. Voice was great, band was weird, electro-base GUI thing was sweet, her banter was odd though. As she is I guess. Very enjoyable, but it wasn't all that. ****