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Beabadoobee were great, as was Olivia Rodrigo who, me being 58, I'd never even heard of. Neil Young was ace.
Saw the start of Pulp before the U21s final and it was okay but I gather it picked up after kick-off and I've seen the Prodigy enough before to know they'd be good.
Future Islands were horrific. And far too much landfill indie like the Maccabees and the 1975 but plenty of people like them so fair enough, I suppose.
(Context)
As some of you will know if you've been paying attention, I have a 'history' in the B-List indie band world and a few friends have played there over the years on the Pyramid and in tiny tents. It's a bloody scam for the performers in general. Aside from the big acts many don't get paid at all (Ooh, exposure! Merch!) and as for the smaller acts, you're often given no money and two, yes TWO, free tickets for band members to get in; the rest of the band/crew are actually expected to pay. Alternatively you can - and this is not a wind up - work a few bar shifts to cover your admission. It's a bloody disgrace, even worse than the going rate for a slot on Jools Holland starting at £10K.
With world wars on my mind, clearly, I've been working my way through them yet again and am still fascinated by what a beautiful writer he was and how well he describes the real experience of soldiering: lots of fannying around, idiot officers, prolonged periods of horror, fear and loss, interspersed with lots of surreal silliness and 'squaddie' humour. Probably the best set of war memoirs I've ever read; proper fly-on-the-wall stuff, albeit tweaked a little as he admits.
Yes, the language is (ahem) of its time but I'm intelligent enough not to get all flouncy about that. If anything, it's more real because of it.
The way he describes his descent into shell shock and depression is beautifully done and his descriptions of the other characters, including a farting, chattering Welshman doing a comedy shaving routine who later goes on to be his fellow Goon Harry Secombe is terrific.
There is one clip on Pathe News, on YouTube, of the Bill Hall Trio, his first postwar act, from 1947 and you can see precisely where he was going in five years' time.
Excellent stuff: seek them out if you haven't already.
Mrs FBI was a punk back in '77 onward and crossed paths with Siouxsie a few times. Reckons she was nice to the blokes and an absolute b!tch to the women.
For context, my profile pic shows me in August 1978. When Gill was a 17 year old punk. Funny old world innit?
Poor Buster; it's terrible to see the state he's in now.
The Dolls were a bigger influence on early punk than they ever really got credited for and their reach stretches out past Hanoi Rocks etc, Guns & Roses then circles back to the present. One of the few bands that could pretty reasonably claim to have a bit of their DnA in most subsequent rock genres.
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