Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

I should do a bit of prefacing for this one, V Festival is possibly the commercial festival on Earth (I love capitalism so this isn't a hippy rant) and a very poppy festival. I like pop music, I wanted to see Girls Aloud, Sugababes, Amy Macdonald and Sam Sparro but this is festival is too much and too bland, but it appeals to the masses. I've never cared for genres of music, I think its pretty pathetic to say I'm an indie, metal, rap, dance or whatever fan and try to ignore everything else out of some kind of tribilistic feeling, I believe in two types of music good music and bad music. V is filled with uninteresting music by some very untalented artists (The Feeling, Pigeon Detectives (although I like them)). It's all about the Big Stars and the headliners its not reading your not there to see hidden gems and the next big thing like at Reading, Glasto or Wireless, its about Mega Stars stacked up. Thus and this is my point, we go for a lads weekend and a piss up and a night out in Essex rather than the music, so I didn't really watch many bands this year, but had a good time none the less.

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We only caught the end of her set and mainly watched from outside but what she did seemed competant and got a great crowd reaction, however her singing wasn't too hot today and she seemed to be fancying herself a MC rather than singer, which is a shame because she's much better hitting the high notes than shouting enanely.

The Sugababes benefit hugely from performing inside the giant JJB tent, this being the second time I've seen the babes, they sang quietly and seemed lost on the main stage two years ago. Things have changed, the new lineup seems to clicked much better than before and following the rave reviews at Isle of Wight totally upstaging the appalling Ian Brown (worst live performance I've ever seen) . In doors the Babes sound was crisper and their tour band was very sharp. The vocal performance was loud and confident with Heidi hitting all the high notes and the bands vocals were loud and proud. The crowd ate up every moment of the well put together set list and About You Know turned out to be an awesome set closer despite being a rather bland single. The only let down was Keisha whose warblings and high notes were allover the place but they didn't matter the Sugababes in 2008 have gone along way to establishing themselves a legitimate festival act who provide a good alternative to a traditional rock act on the second stage.

This wasn't my choice, my freind is a fan, but safe to say he isn't anymore. The Twang are lost in there own laddiness and the general blandness of there music. The new materiel was poor and worse than there current mediocre crop of tracks. Its a weak rip of a U2 riff repeated 12 times over the top of some lounge music with some unremarkble vocals. Slightly smaller crowd than Sugababes but they were passionate to start with and slowly lost steam.

Jamie T is a very competant live act, I was really excited three years ago at Electric Garden when I saw him bring the house down on the third stage but I was ultimately dissapointed by Panic Prevention. As in okay with good lyrics but not really note worthy but not bad either. Live however Jamie T remains sharp starting mass sing alongs with ease. His set has a loveable chaos to it just like his music ruff around the edges but tags at your heart strings. The new tracks with one exception suggest a heavy dose of second album sydrome. Calm Down Dearest, If You Got The Money and Sheila provoke the biggest singalongs but Salvador is best track of the set.

Boy oh boy how I wish we'd seen the Pougoes but unfortunately we wanted to makes sure we good get a good spot for Muse so we opted for the Pigeons (Its a fifteen minutes from JJB to front of Mainstage). We were watching from a far and you could tell that this was a performance that in the crowd would have been alot of fun. However musically the Detectives were very loose and seemed very tired, they could use a long break by the looks of it. Sure fire hits like She Found Out felt very breathy but the crowd we're filling in all the words for them and didn't care one little bit.

Overall Thoughts: The crowd didn't care in the least whether the band were on form or not they were here to dance, sing and have a good time. The Pigeons looked like they should stop dancing, singing and start catching up on there sleep. (**)

Its the third time I've seen Muse and they just get better everytime, this is the last performance before recording the new album and the end of there golden era of stadium rock. A new album will surely warrant a new stage show and make no mistake Muse went out with BANG! The solos and jams were superb and added greatly to the tracks. The stage show if you haven't seen it is incredible at Reading in 06 it was fire, Isle of Wight 07 was flames, sparkles and big balls of confetti and V festival its Giant Sattilites, Robots, Flames, Sparkles, Smoke, Steam rockets and big balls of confetti. However its not just the effects and pagentry its the Music that make Muse amazing far more powerful than on record. Their setlist is incredibly poignant singing in the apocalypse with the likes of Time is Running Out and Hysteria then singing about having our last chance to save ourselves Butterflies and Hurricanes and then the new dawn and new day of feeling good. Hoodoo always feels a little awkward in their setlist but lyrically its spot on. Muse really suceed on every level they get everyone dancing (Supermassive Black Hole, Map Of Problamitique), Singing (Feeling Good, Starlite) and best of all bouncing (Knights Of Cydonia and practicle everything else). Matt Belamy is a god of a front man and their bassist has to be the most underrated in modern music. The only real weakness is the banter or lack there off but the music alone does the talking for them.

There were a view issues with there set, alot of yelping, poor bass levels (way to squelchy) and some terrible covers (Salt and Peppa, Aerosmith) but regardless Girls Aloud proved why they are the best Girl Group in decades. A hit laden set, of not just throw away char numbers but brilliant tracks Biology and Love Machine are simply superb and Something Kind Of Oooh, The Show, Sound Of The Underground and Wake Me Up are irrestible slices of good old fashion pop music.

The Feeling are really good a covers, there own music is pretty horribly, so Take On Me and Video Killed The Radio star were clever selections. I can't lie V festival like Isle of Wight is built for The Feeling, there mild inoffensive music and tight performance was eaten up by the bulk of the crowd. The problem with the Feeling is that they have as many people rolling there eyes and singing along. I Love It When You Call is still the insepid but an unstoppable crowd pleaser.

As you can guess seeing as I reviewed the Feeling we weren't in the mood for moving today, we were thoroughly encamped by the Main Stage and thought while we had the chance we'd see the bands we'd never usually see or likely see again. Lenny falls into this catagory, I was suprised to see his name on the line up and I've never really liked him but I still don't. His set was scheduled for an hour but he ran over by an twenty minutes. The funky jams clocking in a over seven minutes were tedious and meandering especially as no one in the backing band or Lenny himself seemed to have much talent for playing their istruments. That crowd were hugely into Lenny and what he lacked in music he made up for in showmanship. He worked with the crowd and tried to spread his love relevolution, he really enjoyed the flags from accross the world. He sang bits of Pink Floyds the wall and American Woman, Fly Away and Are You Gonna Go My Way were big hits with this crowd. It was pretty funny when they was told he'd have to go off stage and he said it was "bullshit" scheduling and said he'd play a fast track and then launched into a seemingly endless funk jam. He then said he didn't care if they were gonna cut off his power he was gonna play one more jam and launched into Are You Gonna Go My Way to huge appluase.

Amy was in weak voice but not poor rather croaky, she had a good set list and was mostly down to business of working her way threw the tracks rather than rambling and drinking, she had a bizzare stage presences and seemed rather unwell. All that being said the crowd basically gave her a heroes welcome and we're basically going to eat up every track and sing every track loud and proud regardless of what mood Amy was in.

This was a brilliant performance by the Kings there's no other way to say it. They were great at Reading last year and match it this year. New tracks like Crawl sounded great and had the crowd singing along. The crowd were in great voice singing along with every word, On Call was simply deathening and almost every track inspired either moshing or non stop pogoing. Caleb was really happy tonight and he almost seemed tearful as the always shy band decided to say a few words saying the UK had made them one of their own and "truely made us Kings" the crowd cheered raptously. Always low on spectacle and showmanship but all you need is the cool guitar lines and Caleb beautiful and visercal howl to slay a crowd. Leon essentially played new tracks and album tracks for most part feeling comfortable leaving off Wasted Time and Red Morning Light from the setlist because V was happy to sing along with all seven minutes of Knocked Up with the crowd singing every word and all of the refrain. This finally performance before they drop the new album was simply Triumphant.

There were weaknesses to this set a ten minute opening peice of music was that really nessecary? Finishing nine minutes early isn't cool and the earlier prog stuff was very limp but this is all besides the point. The Verve were great a great choice to headline. They sang loud and proud and This Is Music, Sonnet, The Drugs Don't Work, Lucky Man, Bitter Sweet Syphomy and superb set closer Love Is Noise are just unstoppable tracks. Inspiring mass sing alongs and people throwing their arms in the air and around each other providing a lovely moment to end the show. Mr. Ashcroft seemed generally thrilled to be infront of a big crowd and showed us a huge amount of love and he is just seems so much more natural with the Verve than he did alone at Isle Of Wight three years ago. Richard was happy and so was everyone else.