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ventaWow. It's nearly a fortnight now since I headed up to Manchester to see the Stone Roses.
There's something pleasingly tribal about being one of a large number of people doing something. On the way to Glastonbury, ChrisC and I always play spot-the-festival goers on roads and at services (since we're usually travelling in a deeply impractical coupé we're hard to spot, I imagine). Pausing at services on the M42, I did an abrupt double-back to try and read a passing bloke's t-shirt. Bright red, and in a distinctive font, it read:
Mani&
Reni&
Squire&
Brown
Yup, guess he's going. Sometimes it was wild speculation - four burly blokes packed into a car, everyone but the driving swigging from cans? Aye, probably. One of them has a brand-new-looking paint-spattered bucket-hat? Definitely.
As ever, we were hard to spot. Just two of us, both sober, neither wearing Reni hats nor Stone Roses t-shirts. Giving out no clues. It made me appreciate, possibly for the first time, why people on the way to football matches drape their scarves over the parcel shelf.
It intrigues me how many of the reviews I read harped on about Ian Brown's singing being off-key. Er, guys... the people who bought tickets to go to Heaton Park, who were willing to slog it out on the website for the small pile of minutes in which there were tickets available... they're probably already Stone Roses fans. And the thing about anyone who's listened to the Stone Roses is that they are under no illusions. Of course Ian Brown can't bloody sing for toffee. Even the bright red t-shirt said Mani& Reni& Squire& Brown. For how many bands would you list the lead singer last? If you wanted great singing, you'd be seeing a different band.
Of course, in the declining years of the Stone Roses, when the drugs were winning, Brown had some really off off-days. Halfway through "our" Heaton Park gig, ChrisC observed that we'd got Brown on a day he could sing. I disagreed. He was, however, at the top end of his own personal continuum. A front man who knows how to work a crowd, and whose dissonant vocals slide down among the guitars to make up that distinctive sound.
The set of support bands was not one that really excited me: Holly Cook, Professor Green, The Wailers, Beady Eye. Holly Cook was feel-good sunshine music, but sadly didn't quite pull it off in the rain. Professor Green I enjoyed way more than I expected to. The Wailers, again, seemed more suited to lounging in the sunshine than hunching against the rain. As a long-standing Oasis-hater I... tolerated Beady Eye. Just about. Liam Gallagher's voice has become less irritating over the years, though I doubt I'll ever be a real fan. Early arrival at Heaton Park had prompted us to go and secure wristbands for the "front pit". I wasn't sure I really wanted to be in the "pit", but it turned out to be a misnamed and rather huge area in front of the stage. In fact, having pushed and shoved and squeeeezed our way through the crowds after Beady Eye, the "pit" turned out to be spacious and commodious compared to the rest of the park.
It never really occurred to me to wonder which song TSR would start their set with... surely it'll be... and it was. The opening track of their first album, the rustling, rainy notes of I Wanna Be Adored, one of my favourite intros ever. And despite having spent the last decade or so allegedly ignoring music and spending all his time painting, Squire really can still play the guitar. Mani, who's been gigging with Primal Scream in the interim, can still play bass but mysteriously spent the entire gig looking absolutely panic-striken (a review I read mentioned that they reckoned he was on a bet to hold his breath all night). And Reni, who seems to have been more or less AWOL since TSR split, all over the drumkit with the laid-back, off-beat sound that holds the whole thing together. They played for an hour and a bit, and it flew by.
As the band left the stage, a mass of fireworks hit the sky behind the audience (rather weirdly soundtracked to Redemption Song) and it was time for the long fight home - wandering up the road with the drunken, but largely good-natured, crowd to find the nearest Metrolink that wasn't closed.
On Friday night, I'd been watching the #stoneroses tag on twitter and been a little unsettled by the reports of security carnage, poor organisation, fights breaking out among the ridiculously long bar queues, bars having to be closed due to aggression... none of which were mentioned in reviews, suggesting that once again twitter is good for exaggerating the bad. True, on Saturday the bar queues were hugely epic (but also selling terrible beer, meaning I swiftly made a tactical decision not to even bother). The one tweet that made me laugh out loud was someone decrying the alleged brawling saying it was "against everything the Roses ever stood for". Er, yeah. Right. The band that drank, drugged and wrangled their way through a decade and once vandalised their own record label's offices? Yeah, everything they ever stood for.
Oh, and relatedly: one thing I really don't understand. Why do people throw their beer around to indicate that they like a song? If you've queued for ages, and paid through the nose for it, why fling it forwards over the crowd? When Beady Eye, the top support, launched into Roll With It there was more or less a breaking wave of flying beer over the front of the audience.
At least, given the variety of creative and unpleasant solutions found by people who didn't want to queue for toilets, you want to hope it's beer :( Large crowds can really be quite vile en masse :( But the beer flinging seems to be something that becomes more prevalent the further north you go: widespread at T in the Park, but relatively rarely seen at Glastonbury, for example.
There's something pleasingly tribal about being one of a large number of people doing something. On the way to Glastonbury, ChrisC and I always play spot-the-festival goers on roads and at services (since we're usually travelling in a deeply impractical coupé we're hard to spot, I imagine). Pausing at services on the M42, I did an abrupt double-back to try and read a passing bloke's t-shirt. Bright red, and in a distinctive font, it read:
Mani&
Reni&
Squire&
Brown
Yup, guess he's going. Sometimes it was wild speculation - four burly blokes packed into a car, everyone but the driving swigging from cans? Aye, probably. One of them has a brand-new-looking paint-spattered bucket-hat? Definitely.
As ever, we were hard to spot. Just two of us, both sober, neither wearing Reni hats nor Stone Roses t-shirts. Giving out no clues. It made me appreciate, possibly for the first time, why people on the way to football matches drape their scarves over the parcel shelf.
It intrigues me how many of the reviews I read harped on about Ian Brown's singing being off-key. Er, guys... the people who bought tickets to go to Heaton Park, who were willing to slog it out on the website for the small pile of minutes in which there were tickets available... they're probably already Stone Roses fans. And the thing about anyone who's listened to the Stone Roses is that they are under no illusions. Of course Ian Brown can't bloody sing for toffee. Even the bright red t-shirt said Mani& Reni& Squire& Brown. For how many bands would you list the lead singer last? If you wanted great singing, you'd be seeing a different band.
Of course, in the declining years of the Stone Roses, when the drugs were winning, Brown had some really off off-days. Halfway through "our" Heaton Park gig, ChrisC observed that we'd got Brown on a day he could sing. I disagreed. He was, however, at the top end of his own personal continuum. A front man who knows how to work a crowd, and whose dissonant vocals slide down among the guitars to make up that distinctive sound.
The set of support bands was not one that really excited me: Holly Cook, Professor Green, The Wailers, Beady Eye. Holly Cook was feel-good sunshine music, but sadly didn't quite pull it off in the rain. Professor Green I enjoyed way more than I expected to. The Wailers, again, seemed more suited to lounging in the sunshine than hunching against the rain. As a long-standing Oasis-hater I... tolerated Beady Eye. Just about. Liam Gallagher's voice has become less irritating over the years, though I doubt I'll ever be a real fan. Early arrival at Heaton Park had prompted us to go and secure wristbands for the "front pit". I wasn't sure I really wanted to be in the "pit", but it turned out to be a misnamed and rather huge area in front of the stage. In fact, having pushed and shoved and squeeeezed our way through the crowds after Beady Eye, the "pit" turned out to be spacious and commodious compared to the rest of the park.
It never really occurred to me to wonder which song TSR would start their set with... surely it'll be... and it was. The opening track of their first album, the rustling, rainy notes of I Wanna Be Adored, one of my favourite intros ever. And despite having spent the last decade or so allegedly ignoring music and spending all his time painting, Squire really can still play the guitar. Mani, who's been gigging with Primal Scream in the interim, can still play bass but mysteriously spent the entire gig looking absolutely panic-striken (a review I read mentioned that they reckoned he was on a bet to hold his breath all night). And Reni, who seems to have been more or less AWOL since TSR split, all over the drumkit with the laid-back, off-beat sound that holds the whole thing together. They played for an hour and a bit, and it flew by.
As the band left the stage, a mass of fireworks hit the sky behind the audience (rather weirdly soundtracked to Redemption Song) and it was time for the long fight home - wandering up the road with the drunken, but largely good-natured, crowd to find the nearest Metrolink that wasn't closed.
On Friday night, I'd been watching the #stoneroses tag on twitter and been a little unsettled by the reports of security carnage, poor organisation, fights breaking out among the ridiculously long bar queues, bars having to be closed due to aggression... none of which were mentioned in reviews, suggesting that once again twitter is good for exaggerating the bad. True, on Saturday the bar queues were hugely epic (but also selling terrible beer, meaning I swiftly made a tactical decision not to even bother). The one tweet that made me laugh out loud was someone decrying the alleged brawling saying it was "against everything the Roses ever stood for". Er, yeah. Right. The band that drank, drugged and wrangled their way through a decade and once vandalised their own record label's offices? Yeah, everything they ever stood for.
Oh, and relatedly: one thing I really don't understand. Why do people throw their beer around to indicate that they like a song? If you've queued for ages, and paid through the nose for it, why fling it forwards over the crowd? When Beady Eye, the top support, launched into Roll With It there was more or less a breaking wave of flying beer over the front of the audience.
At least, given the variety of creative and unpleasant solutions found by people who didn't want to queue for toilets, you want to hope it's beer :( Large crowds can really be quite vile en masse :( But the beer flinging seems to be something that becomes more prevalent the further north you go: widespread at T in the Park, but relatively rarely seen at Glastonbury, for example.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 03:56 pm (UTC)(That is, because I suspect I won't like it.... it's going to be icky, isn't it?)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-16 02:05 pm (UTC)This is definite, deliberately flinging (glass and all) with considerable height and length!
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 12:27 pm (UTC)My inclination to attend such events is dropping rapidly (from a starting point of "no thanks").
no subject
Date: 2012-07-16 02:09 pm (UTC)It's something that seems to get worse the larger the crowd - possibly because, I dunno, one in every 100 is an idiot, so the more people you have, the larger the absolute number of idiots and they all collect together to be idiotic.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 01:43 pm (UTC)