GREEN MAN FESTIVAL 2005, HAY ON WYE

SATURDAY

What is it with tents? The sun goes down: it's freezing. You wake up: it's so hot and stinky it's like you crawled into someone's ass. But the inside of the tent is covered in freezing cold condensation, so when you sit up and your bare back hits the tent lining it's like a thousand volt shock. I think next year's Green Man should have a lecture on this phenomenon in their Science Room.

There is one part of camping that I do understand the science of. That is, if you drink loads the night before you will need a massive dump the next morning. So when the sun comes up and burns your retina through the £20 borrowed Argos tent, don't fight it, get up and revel in the empty and relatively clean festival toilets. I experienced deep faecal joy at 7 am on Saturday, and celebrated with a cup of Earl Grey tea and a sit down while most of the campsite slept. Our camping partners (assorted ladies and gents from the bands Seachange, Sweet Briar and Hush The Many) were up already, because they are all achingly well practised at being outdoors. I suspect most of them can ride horses and I know for a fact that James Vyner (aka International Man Of Leisure) can make fire just by looking at two pieces of wood, and can probably fashion cutlery from bird bone. The people next to us had got the morning papers and were sitting in deck chairs eating bacon sandwiches and laughing.

I reflected on our stoveless position as I ate a soggy bourbon biscuit and decided that if I ever get to play Green Man I am changing the band name to Piss Wizard (don't even think about it - I've copyrighted it already) and playing Thin Lizzy covers.

The first band on the main stage started at 11 am and they sounded like Starsailor. We piled into the Folky Dokey stage (they may as well have called it the Ned Flanders' Folkily Dokily Stage) to see our camping partners Hush The Many. They benefit from having the most charming frontman alive in Nima, and instantly won everyone over despite sound problems and the drummer not showing up. Dave Change and myself marked Nima out of 10 throughout the set for 'hippy content'. He peaked at a 9.5 with a comment about 'plucking sounds from the air', but then crashed down low at the end by asking people to sign the mailing list, when what he should have done is give the band's equipment away and finish the set holding a new born baby in one hand and a sunflower in the other.

We decided the thing to do is to 'hang'. So we lounged on the lawn and then went up to Will & Ruth's to climb out the window onto the (frankly terrifyingly-constructed) balcony. The great feeling of looking down on people cheered me further, as did Ruth popping a champagne cork and taking out two passers-by.

I caught the first few songs from Cambridge's Lionshare who do sinister very well, in a kind of Arise, Therefore Palace kind of way. We further 'hung'. Talking of Palace, Will Oldham appeared on the balcony next door in a towel. We then watched him wander the grounds being photographed on digital cameras arm-in-arm with different men by said men's girlfriends (and Daniel). It didn't seem to bother him too much.

Everyone decided to play cricket. I stopped off for a Strongbow and a little watch of Half Cousin on the way. I appreciated the volume, the roughness and the rhythms. I am not sure if I would listen to it at home, but by this point my boundaries had become blurred.

Cricket was in a boiling hot dustbowl. A gent called Del let us use his posh BBQ to get some sausage action going. I finally began to feel the fun. Sadly I didn't feel the radiation-style sunburn enough at this point to put any lotion on. By Sunday, I looked like a red-faced angry drunk (which I sort of was).

Johnson and myself decided that it was important that by midway through Superwolf we were drunk enough to cry, so we set about the delicate task of timing things to perfection. We all watched Malcolm Middleton from the balcony again. Not half bad. His lyrics are really painfully simple, but the relentlessness of his misery makes them mantra-like and I dug.

We moved to the front for Alastair Roberts, who was a highlight. For one thing, the crazy instrumental skills I associate with folk were present, all the people up there were unique and amazing and above all sympathetic to the songs - the best way to project this quiet music to a field of drunken people without losing its intimacy. There seemed to be a thing at Green Man of cramming the stage with as many people as could fit playing as many things as possible. It was such a relief to see an electric guitar player hardly play, or a keyboard barely used or two drummers employed at the same time in such a minimal way and to such effect and all with the player's individual personality shining through.

As soon as he finished, everyone's politeness seemed to fail them and I was no different. What was a relaxed sit down affair suddenly became a gig again, and everyone stood up for Superwolf and packed to the front of the stage.

Luckily Johnson had foreseen this occurrence and was wielding a massive sports bag full of San Miguel, allowing us to steam to the front and dump the bag on the front of the stage, creating our own mini bar.

A girl squeezed through into a non-existent gap next to us, pushing people out of her way as she went. It was refreshing to see my normally apologetic over-polite friend tell her to "fucking do one" and get out the way. You see, we are all Will Oldham geeks and I make no bones about it. His songs are amazing - they stand up well for two reasons separate to each other.

Firstly, they're always amazing on record because the sounds are picked perfectly and are just so seemingly random and wonderful that the question of how they were done is removed, leaving a big space in which to marvel at the result you're confronted with. The second is that this first thing never gets in the way of them being amazing songs, so live gigs can be totally different every time, and still be wonderful experiences because the question of recreating the record is not important. With other artists Oldham gets compared to, it's usually one or the other.

At Green Man Superwolf drove the songs into the floor at times. For a folk festival this was easily the most rocking I've seen a Will Oldham band. He was joined by his brother Paul on bass, Alex Neilson (who had already played in Scatter and with Alastair Roberts at the festival) on drums and Ben Chasny (Comets On Fire/Six Organs Of Admittance) on electric guitar. And of course, the other half of Superwolf, Matt Sweeney on guitar and vocals. The three electric guitars (and sporadic keyboards from Oldham) made it sound more like Crazy Horse than anything else.

I expected a set of mainly the Superwolf record, but what we got was effectively a greatest hits set delivered with good humour and enthusiasm and it was perfect. At the point the chorus of 'I See A Darkness' came in, a lone firework shot from the oak tree in the garden, arcing over the stage and out of sight. For 'I Am A Cinematographer', three young kids sang the main vocals while Oldham jumped up and down like a clown to prompt them to remember the words, before instructing them to go crazy for the end of the song by jigging in front of them with a shit-eating grin.

A power cut in the encore even lead him to sing a capella into an errant glo-stick thrown on stage. We got 'Gulf Shores', 'Horses', 'Riding', 'Ohio River Boat Song' and wonderful rocking versions of the Superwolf material propelled by Neilson's octopus-like drumming and Chasny's glorious and unashamed rock outs. I even managed to nick off for a piss twice in the set by bargaining with San Miguel for people to let me back through. The plan to be so drunk we could cry was achieved, and by the end I am a dribbling mess from all ends - as everyone else seems to be.

Even the news that the disco was not going to happen because the Young Farmers had hired the hall didn't dampen my mood, and I slept well (face down in a load of bourbons and scrumpy dribble).

Sunday >>