Gigs of the year
2003
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Truck festival sets - Steventon "it's not a badger, it's a poof in a PVC jacket!"
From the first "Hello Truck!" booming through the trailer-top PA - a call that could be to the stage as well as to the audience - to the last thud of shit in a portaloo (clean, you see?), the sounds on offer here marked the occasion as a modern music festival like no other. In fact it's half as much like a village fete.
If you didn't know, Goldrush and their Truck Records Co. mastermind the event every year on the edge of their Oxfordshire village. Besides some of the best independent bands around, there's a lot of local acts, in fact they start and end proceedings- at Saturday lunchtime, Igloo recall classic rock of the Radiohead mould; as dusk falls on Sunday evening events are closed by KTB's sweet (and crazy like Emma Rugg) singer-songerwritering and orchestra.
My own highlights, obviously, included: the Edibles filling a Barn with one of their best sets; Fonda 500 dressed in sombreros and calling everyone "bummers!"; Kid Samson, before all their toys broke… jumping around on the tops of tables.
Lesbo Pig and Mr. Duck jointly win the prize for best names! The former a three-piece who play about 30 songs in 20 minutes, on subjects such as… itchy nipples; the latter, some young pups called Mr. Duck…they were quite good. Laura Veirs and Jesse Sykes both turned in some chillingly good stripped-down sets.
Magoo, perhaps better known as noisy buggers, played a friendly and charming acoustic set to a packed 'Chill Out Lounge': I was practically sitting underneath the mixing desk, but their nu-psychedelia made me ignore the thistles at my backside.
British Sea Power rocked their most; seen (in white slacks, rather than uniform) all over the tree-bedecked Truck stage, on top of the speaker stacks and in the crowd. If you've never seen them, just do. Manic stares and uh, powerful songs don't do much for the late-evening crowd though. Seems like they were all standing around just to watch Goldrush. But when not playing their music, the down-to-earth homeliness of the organisers makes for a great laid-back weekend.
Buck 65 advises us to watch
the sunset - "the view over there is more beautiful than this one";
even the odder billings seem to work. Those dirty Russians Meanwhile
Back In.., taking claustrophobic electronics and their dark monologues
out in the sunshine? Yes, and where else can you see such a smart band
as Saloon wrestle their Rogue Moogs in an old barn? Or where
can you legimitately piss into a field of lush crops that stretches
to the horizon? And if you're good, you might get to stay up late and
listen to bad Beatles covers chosen by scaffolders with a strange line
in insults (see above).
