7 posts tagged “ting tings”

I return to Melrose and collect Ken, the two of us heading onto the site.   It has been raining constantly all morning and reports are that it is incredibly muddy.   As we pull onto the site the rain stops and to my relief it is actually quite warm, warmer than I can remember the festival being since the early nineties.   I manage to walk around in T Shirt all day.   Because of the good weather everyone came down early and the Hospitality Car Parks were full by Wednesday.   We are parked up in West 26, a good hour’s trek from the hospitality area.  When we finally arrive there we manage to find Lee, Adcock, Muz.   I head over to watch The View in the Other field.     I hear songs like “Face for the Radio” and “Same Jeans” and they are perfect.   My hope is that I can get Kyle over to New York to work with Mark Ronson and that could be a route back to success.
  I head over to the Park Stage  to see The Dead Weather.   White Lies are playing Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”; it is good to hear them perform a classc song. I keep walking uphill, through the Greenfields, stopping to look at the anarchist bookstalls.   I make it to the Park and watch them setting up for Dead Weather.   I wonder how well we have publicised that they are playing here?   I go backstage to see if they are about and run into Nick Dewey.  He insists I go and see the Shangri La stages; they are the last refuge of the Mutoid Waste Company and all of the creative travellers from the eighties.  That is what I love about this festival; I have to get up there.  
No sign of the band so I go back out front.   It is starting to get busier.  The stage looks amazing; the aesthetic of the band is spot on, all of them in black and leather, all of their guitars white and gold.  When they come on there is a reassuring roar from the crowd.  The band are so alive, they remind me of a bunch of kids playing hooky from school, on the run after robbing a bank, all of them cheating on their girlfriends and in the first flush of romance.   It is so exhilarating to watch.  What I love is how the crowd react.   Suddenly this record is now becoming accessible, the blues riffs making perfect sense at Glastonbury.  Alison is so spectacular, it is impossible to take my eyes off her.   All of them though are at the top of their game, playing for the love of it, I wonder how long they can keep it up for, will it just keep getting better and better or is the first flush of enthusiasm in a new band.  Whatever, I don’t want this to end.   I am heartbroken to think that I won’t be able to see them again until the autumn.    For the final song Jack comes out from behind the kit to play guitar and duets beautifully with Alison at the microphone.  The chemistry is electric.   As he launches into his guitar solo she saunters off to the side of the stage and sits there on the PA tower watching him.   It is amazing.   They stand in line to soak up the applause.   It is a glorious moment.   I am so proud to be involved with all of this, driving it forward.
I run into Angie and John her husband and we go backstage.   The band are all so excited, so happy with how it has gone.  They are being rushed away to do an interview with Zane Lowe.   He loves them.   He has taken our statement that he won’t be able to play the video as a direct challenge which is a good sign.  I go and hook up with the label who are all down here.   I love The Park stage, not least because it is not so muddy.   It has a bit of the old Glastonbury spirit.  I would happily hang with all of them as they get fucked up and party but sadly I have work to do.   I run into Gaz Coombes.   He and Danny had their Hot Rats covers project here today.   He is looking great in a white top hat.   His little boy is crawling across the ground.  
I head down to the Other Stage, stopping to eat a potato and lentil curry on the way.   I find Rob in the backstage area and we go and call on the Ting Tings before they go on.   Katie is looking stunning in a purple sequinned top over this black body stocking with white patterns on it and biker boots, all beneath this amazing peaked cap with part of the peak pinned up.   They seem really happy.   I follow them out onto the stage, all the while thinking how far they have come in the two years from when they played The BBC Introducing Stage to 75 people and I was hit on the head by Katie’s beater.   It is still so exciting to walk up behind one of your bands onto the stage, to see them stand there in front of a packed field of maybe 40-50,000 people, this really is immense.  They are moved by it.  It is the perfect slot, the sun setting in the west, everyone up for it.   They play an amazing set.   Jules kicks it off playing the keyboard part of “We Walk” building the tension before Katie emerges to this explosion of applause.   It has been a while since they have played in the UK and all of the work and success in America is paying off.   They are exceptional.   To watch two people keep so many people captivated is amazing.   They augment their performance with a great LED screen behind them and a brass section of girls in brightly coloured wigs who join them for key moments in a couple of songs, but never crowd the sound.     At one moment Katie is so exuberant during “Shut Up and Let Me Go” that the drum falls back off the podium and she throws her guitar down and picks up the cow bell to keep the rhythm going, it is immense.  She is standing on that drum by the end, leading the crowd in a chorus of “Shut up and let me Go”.   The “Psycho Killer interlude is spot on and Jules’ intro to “That’s Not My Name” on the drum machine firing off bursts of “Walk this Way” and “Ghostbusters” takes the crowd to another level.
Backstage afterwards they are thrilled with the way it has all gone, as they should be, it was very fucking special.

Saturday afternoon and beneath skies the colour of chicken cupasoup I am driving down the M11 to The V Festival in Chelmsford. I park up and make my way through the crowds to The Sessions tent to see The New York Fund. Chris McCormack tipped me off about them, I think they might be Scottish, hard to place that accent, might be connected to that night he runs up there. The singer is a troubadour, good looks behind the waistcoat, beard and harmonica brace. The music is pretty trad but it has charisma, bit parts of Neil Young, The Fan Club, even Dire Straits. Not fashionable for sure but there is a good crowd in here, so much so the singer is asking if it has started raining outside the tent.
I walk back out through all the Snow Patrol fans over to the Virgin Mobile Union tent where Mumm Ra are leaping enthusiasticly around. Nu's snake hips are more than a match for anything Jarvis shook in the 1990s and he has a tent packed full of enthusiastic supporters who are lapping up their very English melodies. "She's Got You High" is a song that should have been number one forever and the tents sings it back like maybe it was.
Back out through a crowd that sports red necks and shades despite the drizzle. Over in the Sessions tent The Ting Tings are taking to the stage. Its great to see how easily they adjust to a big festival stage after the small performing space in their mill.   Katie is charging round the stage, alternating between playing Rhythm on her telecaster, being te mike controller and dropping her rhymes on the beats to banging out the beats on the huge drum at the back of the stage.   They only play a handful of songs but it is so exciting.   I can't wait to get them out around the country with New Young Pony Club and Reverend and the Makers this autumn.

   I head over to the Channel 4 stage to see The Coral.   They feel like such a classic timeless band now, like we are gathering to see The Byrds or Arthur Lee and Love.   Their songs seem to have been around forever even though none of the band can be older than 25.   it is great to see the crowd react so well to songs from the new album such as "Who's Gonna Find Me" and the next single Jacqueline" as well as classics such as "Dreaming of You".   it is an exceptional set though, a real greatest hits collection.

   I make my way over to the main stage as night falls.   I climb up onto the stage just as The Foo Fighters are opening their set with "Everlong"   The roar from the crowd is staggering.   The whole field as far as we can see is jammed with people.   I pity the Kooks going up against the Foos, even the rain is not dislodging one member of the crowd.   It is suck a privillage to watch the band up close like this.   Taylor is such a machine, the heart of every great rock band is the drummer and The Foo Fighters are blessed with two of the very best.   But everyone gives their all, no one is ever short changed at a Foo Fighters show and it is electric tonight.   they tear through their very best songs, throw in a couple from the new record.  "Pretender" already feels like a classic.   This is the opening salvo of an incredible journey over the next twelve months, I am so excited to be here to see it unfold.