Saturday 15/06/08 Day Two, Isle of Wight Festival @ Seaclose Park, Newport

Share

The migration from campsite to main stage on Saturday morning is always my favourite part of Saturday. Hanging from the night before but not yet battle-weary, the hords make their way past the hat stalls and the panini vendors and join the ever lengthening queues for bar tokens. Ex-Proud Mary guitairst Paul Newsome gets the Big Top moving with a selection from his forthcoming debut LP. Now of LA, his sound his still bluesy but perhaps more chilled out than his band’s efforts and whilst not the finished article – his LP could be one to watch for the summer.

Much much later, Iggy Pop takes to the stage and looks like a man with a crack habit the size of a small bear – his eyes are wild – and he spends the entire set bouncing around the stage as if he’s been chained to a radiator for the past 12 months. "We are the underloved, overtrodden fucking Stooges," he announces before launching into 'Loose' and 'Down on the Streets' from their classic 1970 album Funhouse. Pop’barked his way through the Lock Stock classic ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ in a pulverisingly primal set that included that culminates in ‘Search And Destroy.’ John Lydon take note, this is fucking punk.

Coming on to Vera Lynn’s ‘There Will Always Be An England’ and giving an extended tribute to footballer Paul Gascoigne, it was clear Lydon, or Rotten, or ‘Mr. Celebrity Get Him Out of Here,’ was ensuring we hadn’t forgotten where The Sex Pistols came from. Dressed like their was a wedding at the campsite, Lydon spat and snarled his way through a set that covered ‘God Save The Queen,’ ‘Anarchy in the UK,’ and even affording us two versions of ‘Pretty Vacant,’ but then they only really have one album. Their new song, ‘Baghdad Was A Blast’ takes a dated swipe at George Bush which sums them up. In it for the money, they haven’t been relevant since cigarrettes were medicinal.

Earlier in the day, The Cribs were followed by Ryan Jarman’s missus Kate Nash. ‘Hey Scenester’ was the band’s highlight – mocking posers in indie discos across the land – their performance was tight before Nash begins as she did at the Hammersmith Apollo a couple of months ago – way to fast. As she did that night, Nash settles into her rhythm and puts in a tidy set with ‘Mariella’ and ‘Foundations’ getting the biggest cheers of the day so far before a bolshy performance by The Enemy and cheesier one by The Zutons.

Ian Brown played before the Pistols and although starting slowly, put in the kind of performance we’ve come to take for granted from the monkey-man genius. Sporting some stitches after an incident in Sheffield the night before, a slow start that concentrated on his latest material included ‘The World Is Yours,’ and ‘Time Is My Everything,’ the crowds mute lacks response led to ‘Brown’ asking “You seem a bit jaded, have you had too much liquor?” He was probably right.

Picking up the pace with ‘Keep What Ya Got’ at the halfway point, ‘Dolphins Are Monkeys’ and the bass-laden ‘Golden Gaze’ sounded as fresh as they did ten years ago and whilst there was no Roses stuff – rumoured to be because he didn’t wanna upstage the Pistols after him – he did anyway, we did get a little burst of ‘Rhianna – Umbrella’ to test his mic out after a change over. An emphatic ‘F.E.A.R.’ cemented his performance as the best of the day and the biggest singalong of the weekend. Sugababes were apprently class over on the Big Top, but tonight was all about the man from Warrington. 

Day Two in pictures: