Ben Harper at Glastonbury

(In which Ben Harper teaches a festival crowd what it means to perform)

Thought for the day: What makes a good gig? I mean a really good gig - one that gets the adrenaline running and catches your breath, brings tears to your eyes, makes you laugh out loud, inspires you and sends you back out into the world looking at everything with fresh open eyes? Something that makes you wonder how it is that bands manage to get away with songs-by-numbers as if they're miming Top Of The Pops style. One such gig was the Manics a few years ago. Who needs the band, the live experience when you've got the CD and it sounds exactly the same? I can even make it sound almost as loud at home, so why bother wasting the money?

This year's Glastonbury was full of it. Lost Prophets, Snow Patrol, Kasabian (ok I don't like their music either) and many others all did it. So many times I was left wondering how much thought they'd actually put into their festival performance, if it were actually even special to them. Maybe it's that it's become commercialised like everyone says. Maybe it's no less than people expect. Maybe if I'd paid for my ticket I would have been even more disappointed.

Ben Harper was different. You really got the impression that these guys were in it for the music, not just there 'for the fooking money' as Liam Gallagher so eloquently put it as he left the stage (not that I saw them, coz that would be silly). For blissful solo after solo, wig-outs, extended breaks, gorgeous music and energy, Ben Harper drove the audience up and up, I didn't see another crowd at the festival in such a state (until James Brown and the end of Suzanne Vega). This was the real deal, this was the festival experience, this was what people go to Glastonbury for, to have a shared experience of something really quite special with thousands of other people, all riding the same wave.

Getting a bit emotional here, but that's what music is all about: emotion. There are a few kinds of music: music that makes you dance, music that makes you think, and music that carries you away with it on waves of emotion (get a list from google), and pop (which is supposed to be dance I guess). All of these things can be ruined by the performance, the attitude of the performer, the thought that goes into the set, and the desire / reluctance to create something unique.

I believe that of all the gigs that people saw, the ones they remember are going to be the ones where this happened. Where performers like Ben Harper (and James Brown) gave them something different, allowed his band to demonstrate (sounds too technical) their skills, show what music really means, what it can really be (Nina Nastasia did this a few weeks ago - see article below). PJ Harvey played new and old songs with lots of energy in new arrangements, it felt special.

So while for me, and possibly many others Ben Harper was the stand-out gig of the festival, I'm sure there were other seminal performances that I missed, and a great many who just didn't really put in the effort, or didn't have the imagination, skill or depth to be able to. I shouldn't hope too much. But one has to wonder what artists really get out of making so little effort, and how they deal with their obvious deficiencies. 'Orbital celebrated their last ever English show (Scotland next week) with a decidedly average Orbital by Numbers set which was almost identical to the one the did in the same slot on the same stage with the same visuals two years ago' (www.gusset.co.uk). And the years before that, no doubt. I remember when they were good live.

This was my fourth Glastonbury. Not many, but the others were full of once in a lifetime seminal festival performances. This year it wasn't really about the music and that hurt, although it was still one of the best, even with the mud and the rain and my new found limp due to achilles injury.

Dave's Big Glastonbury 2004 review

Sorry about the long delay people! I've been away for a week. Got muddy, sunburnt, muddy and injured. Saw tons of music (and lots of random stuff). Very little in the way of drum and bass this year (boohoo). Here's my Glastonbury review, in the style of Santa's Christmas list:
Camping - nice

Toilets - nice

(hehe, we had the best crew camping ever)

Sun - nice

Mud - naughty

Circus fields - nice and random

Babyhead - nice

Kasabian ('oasis and kraftwerk' said the review - they weren't wrong) - naughty

Spree (drum and bass) - nice

Jim White - nice (but only coz he was so average)

Death b4 Dishonour (hip hop crew) - nice

Elbow - very nice

Snow Patrol - naughty

PJ Harvey - nice

Tindersticks - nice (but we had to go work halfway through)

Lost Prophets - naughty

Ben Harper - NICE!!!

The Egg - naughty (how are the mighty fallen)

Jane Taylor - nice

Tinariwen - nice! (backstage view too)

James Brown - very nice

Suzanne Vega - nice

Bill Bailey - very nice indeed (played on our stage - nearly didn't coz of the rain

40 ft praying mantis - nice (and French)

Naked dancing girls - nice

15 yr old jazz sax genius in the Banyan tree tent - nice (but naughty coz he couldn't sing)

Random electro band in some place - nice

Bunch of hippies jamming on didgeridoos and drums at four in the morning - nice

So there you have it, the most comprehensive Glastonbury review ever! I'll find some way of putting my pictures up on the net... And write a discourse on how Ben Harper showed everyone what a seminal festival performance really is.

Nina Nastasia at St George's, Bristol

There's a thing about Tuvans at the moment. I mean, when we discovered Yat Kha all those years ago, they were the one of the most amazing musical creations I'd ever heard. Plus, their founder with his electric guitar built Tuvan throat music into a whole different kind of music. What's this got to do with Nina Nastasia? I hear you cry. Well, I'm afraid that Nina, bless her, seems to have realised (a little too late IMHO) how cool Tuvan music is these days.

Michael Ormiston came to the Venn festival, a few months after a seminal Yat Kha gig. Yat Kha themselves appeared on Susheela Rahman's last album Love Trap. And last night, Nina Nastasia brought in a couple for the second half of her gig.

There are some lessons we learn from this. Her producers made her do it. Maybe. I'd like to give her credit, it doesn't seem that she's the kind of writer to be told what to do. It's just that some of the songs were so obviously written for the Igil and they were quite annoying, boring, even, compared to the rest of her work. However, there were other songs, where it sounded more like they had been added afterwards, and those ones were really good. So my conclusion, is that while the fashion is dictating how much Tuvan music we get given these days, we can't write for it, because it is inherent in all music.

If you don't know her, Nina is a very strange mixture of sometimes simple, nursery-rhyme like melodies and jarring clashes between the viola's harmonics, an accordion and her voice. I couldn't help drawing comparisons between her acoustic sound and Kristin Hersh's... Kristin is a lot more crazy though, which is why she's the best... Other times, she sings like Jewel without the silly affected voice.

No bass player. Once I'd got over that, a lot of the songs were very compelling still, just couldn't shake the feeling that we were all being played for suckers a little bit. Yes the Tuvans are amazing. Yes their techniques are stunning, but this wasn't really up to the right standard to be able to carry it off. Just stick to what you do best Nina!