Just check those festival vibes maaan, something really gross is lurking in the toilets, something grim, kinda luminous orange, strange. 'Bad disease'. Something bad has exited some fucked up frame. Lowlights like this are still part of the 'Glastonbury thing'. Day One and the rain is holding off the sky is greasy and yesterday's mud is drying fast.
Meanwhile in the dance tent a different world is existing. It's bloody well packed. Rammed. The usual cross-section of festival heads is freaking over the Utah Saints, the long lost Utah Saints who re-emerged this year all Travis Bickled up with their Edwin Starr-starring comeback smash.
And fuck me if that isn't Edwin Starr up there. The old trooper belting it out over the stomping, mangled breakbeats. What a voice! The man don't need the PA. It's quite stunning - hi tech meets the very human voice. The rest of the set is piledriving beats with cheeky samples (AC/DC were looped for the closing number), subsonic bass boom and scattering loops. It's powerful stuff.
Purists will never count the Utah Saints as one of the hip bands - in fact I very much doubt the Utah Saints count themselves as being hipsters. They have roots, they go back to the punk days. There are moments when they hint at the brutal tribal workouts that early Killing Joke were messing with. This mix of goth darkness, punk rock energy excess and the dancefloor exocet capability of house and drum and bass makes for a compelling and ruthlessly powerful mix.
Rabblerouser frontman is the mohawked Jez living out rock star maniac fantasies, thrashing his guitar and the stage throwing loony shapes in his green boiler suit, losing it in the mountain of sound. Its oddly compelling stuff. The Utah Saints stalk a territory a million miles away from fashion. No-one in the tent could give a fuck, when it comes to the bottom line - but rocking a big fuck off tent like this is the key. For Utah Saints this has to be a triumph, the comeback almost complete and sharing a stage with Edwin soddin' Starr...AND making it work. Cool.