Green Man
I went to the Green Man Festival with Leo over the weekend. No-one I’ve told about it has heard about it, but it had some excellent bands. I didn’t take any pictures, and I think I probably enjoyed it more that way. I’ll agree that it is a shame not to have anything to take away from the festival though. I’ve listed all the bands I saw. Where possible, the links below are Spotify, but some are Myspace or similar. I haven’t written something about all of the bands, because that would be dull and you can only say, “Pretty good,” so many times. Listening with Leo was an interesting experience. I’d be standing next to him, and suddenly he’d turn to me and comment that there had been a temporary modulation to the key of E. I never noticed this of course, so I used typical MFL conversational tactics, and agreed at what I thought were the appropriate moments. It was fun though, and he wasn’t the fool who tried to explain the basics of calculus during a Camera Obscura concert. Which reminds me: I never did get as far as properly explaining how to differentiate.
The Playlist
I’ve made the ‘Post Green Man 2009‘ collaborative playlist in Spotify for all these artists. Feel free to add similar things to it.
Friday
- We Aeronauts
- Dollboy
- “All over England, people are kissing their wives.” Tremendously cute lyric, not a fantastic song. The percussion was a little repetitive across tracks, although interesting in itself.
- No Thee, No Ess
- Stupid name.
- Diagonal
- Wave Machines
- Of the bands I wasn’t thinking of when I went to the festival, these were probably the best. Interesting stuff.
- Beth Jeans Houghton
- Very fun set
- Broken Records
- Emmy the Great
- Gang Gang Dance
- Hadn’t planned to see this set, and had lunch instead. From the tent it sounded pretty good though, so I got hiccups from eating my couscous too quickly.
- Broken Records
- Wooden Shjips
- We both dislike British Sea Power, so we watched these instead. It was an experience. It probably would have made more sense with some marijuana. One of the members of the band had an epic beard.
- Roky Erickson
- It was nice to have some good old school rock once on the weekend.
- Animal Collective
- Unfortunately, very disappointing. Probably the act I was most looking forward to, but their set was rambling and seemed somewhat less subtle for the benefit of those who were a little drunk.
Saturday
Picture of Peter Broderick by Anika :)
- The Soundcarriers
- Stornoway
- The Leisure Society
- Birdengine
- Blue Roses
- Beautiful intimate performance outside the Green Man pub
- Peter Broderick
- Great performance, and involved the crowd very well. Seemed a really genuine guy.
- Beach House
- Grizzly Bear
- Played some stuff from the new album. Good stuff.
- Bon Iver
- One of the best two acts of the weekend. Sounds more soothing than depressing when you’re listening in a huge group. This was their last live performance in Europe for a year.
- Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
- Jarvis Cocker
- Great big eejit prancing around the stage. Definitely had some highlights though. He played ‘You’re in my eyes’ and produced massive amounts of noise at the end. It went on for quite a while, and a lot of people got bored and walked away. That was annoying.
Sunday
- The Fuzzbirds
- 9bach
- Trembling Bells
- Scott Matthews
- Camera Obscura
- Rodriguez
- “Power to the People.” Not one for sounding profound… or sober.
- Dirty Three
- Wilco
- The other of the best two performances. I can’t work out whether I preferred this or Bon Iver. Either way, it was an incredible performance. Obviously, they played ‘Jesus, Etc.’, ‘Impossible Germany’ and the other popular ones; also played some of their less well known stuff. A lot of it I wasn’t familiar with, so I couldn’t say what it was. Some guy from the Guardian said he thought they were the best band in the world. They could be close, particularly if you read the Guardian.
- Hawkwind
- Yes. That Hawkwind. These were crazy. The visualisations were like the ones you used to get on Winamp, when that was popular. They had sparkly dancers on stilts. So funny. Wouldn’t listen to them again, but once was great.
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