Bah! 09

For FFS. Summer, and it all turns to a form of sodden California. Kids go to stand in muddy fields and listen to sub-record standard sounds from their favourite slightly older kids with guitars and attitoods. You can trawl through 20 hours of the so-musicianly they've just found that day's attire in their laundry basket after an undetermined hiatus. Then you get the hoary old twats who were never palatable in the first place, like Neil Young. Oh God.
Dance acts doing all-purpose festivals: no. Acts like The Specials who should really be doing this behind closed doors to the faithful: no. Keane? Crosby, Stills and Nash?
Is this really worthwhile? The only way the mega-festivals make sense is if you can escape from the headliners and get away to their least important stages where people can't bay out requests and build human pyramids with clown hats on their gurning heads. And even then you run into them like accidentally falling into a sewer when you walk out.

Do like Florence and the Machine, though; like a starter kit for Siouxsie and the Banshees, more or less. Which is great, as things go.