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Best feat of engineering
Best show
John Fogerty: After seeing Stevie Wonder at Summer Sonic last week, I was refortified in my opinion of what a rare and wonderful treat Fogerty’s Saturday evening set was. Though Stevie can still ram and jam with the best of them, it’s clear that those classics, as great as they are, mean less to him with every passing concert. He’s just played them too many times. Fogerty, on the other hand, went almost three decades without playing his classic CCR tunes in front of people simply because he didn’t own the publishing and didn’t think he should pay for the privilege of performing them. Now that he’s got the publishing back, it’s like he’s discovered these songs for the first time: fresh, tough, eminently sing-alongable. Now it’s our privilege to hear them again.
Runnerup: Moriarty, the best France-based, Anglophone, Irish-American-roots rock group with female lead singer. Every festival should have one.
Most notable musical style: Early 70s FM rock (Alberta Cross, Superfly, The Entrance Band)
Most squirm-inducing cover: !!!’s version of Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain” (Nic Offer: “I just learned the lyrics back stage while taking a shit.”)
Best alcoholic beverage: The huge tumblers of cider (6%) at that British joint in the World Food Court
Best chorus: “Don’t tell me what to do tomorrow,” from “The Politics” by Narasirato Pan Pipers
Best sound/mix: LCD Soundsystem
Most potent threat: “I might take my clothes off again”: Matt of Matt and Kim
Best minute-for-minute lineup: Naeba Shokudo
Best Bee Gees moment: Yeasayer’s Chris Keating’s falsetto eruption during “O.N.E.”
Best mid-course correction: “Sorry, I made a mistake. That was a song about fucking. This is the song about the lady with the big cock.” -Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters.
Most derided performance (according to word-of-mouth): The XX
Best power spot: The terraced rise in front of Gypsy Avalon
Quite surprised to hear that XX bashing was going on. I thought their set was 1 of the finest of the recent 2 weekends of festival going. I told a friend beforehand that they’d made a nice album, but may be a dull proposition live in the afternoon. Despite the tightly packed crowd and my somewhat dodgy vantage point, the intimacy of their sound was able to transfix me. Their lead singers voice is pure honey & sensuality. I hope the make another trip over here soon.