Not everyone's cup of T: Kasabian
Give enough monkeys enough typewriters and enough time and they’d eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare, it’s been theorised.
On a related note, tonight’s show by Kasabian proves that if you shave four simians, arm them with instruments and other electronic gizmos and throw a bunch of Stone Roses and Oasis CDs at them, they’ll eventually come to headline T in the Park on the Sunday night.
Hmm, I guess it’s fair to say that I’m not exactly a fan of the Leicestershire mob, but I thought I’d see if I could put any prejudices to one side and try to last the distance at their festival-closing performance.
Hey, if nothing else at least there will be some fireworks at the end to finish this year’s event with a bang! What follows shall be a brief timeline of my experience; you’re welcome to send me your sympathy - or express your disdain - in the comments section below. Anyway, here we go:
9.20pm They should have started by now, but Kasabian’s crew are only at the stage of sound-checking the drums, which is not the most promising sign. I know Jay-Z's late exit is to blame, though I still involuntarily start twitching, a bit like a dental patient told that he's about to have all his teeth removed in just a few minutes - oh, and they've run out of anaesthetic.
9.25 pm As I traipse towards one of the outdoor urinals I have to swerve to avoid the sight of a woman squatting to make use of the metal trough, and not for the first time this weekend. It seems that 2010 can be crowned as the year when it seemed socially acceptable for females at T in the Park to potentially expose their nether regions to onlookers and relieve themselves in the breezy festival air whenever the desire presents itself. I’m not too sure 2010 will be proud of this.
9.30pm Back to (slightly) less tawdry matters: the mercifully swift roadies have shifted from testing out the bass to guitar, and then the vocals. Unless there's a sitar section that are remaining purposely hidden from the stage, the end is nigh (i.e. the start is soon). Still, nothing like challenging some preconceptions, after all, to assume make an ass out of - well, not you, for you have little to do with this potential disaster, so really it just makes an ass out of me. Could that mean that I wasn’t one before? Thinking back, I doubt it.
9.35pm HERE THEY ARE, HERE ARE KASABIAN. I take a deep breath and prepare to greet the motley quartet with an open mind. Wish me luck!
9.36pm Well, as it turns out open minds are way over-rated - Fast Fuse sounds a bit like a half-arsed Cooper Temple Clause, an attempt at musical experimentation over a fast-paced drum loop that probably went awry when Kasabian realised the new issue of Nuts magazine was out and they decided to head off to the newsagents instead to check out the ’50 Top Topless Summer Babes’ feature. (It wasn’t a bad read, to be fair.) Expectations are again lowered to the depths of Hades. I expect them to stay there until they tire of this misery and take the easy way out.
9.42pm Shoot the Runner plops itself into the set list, complete with sludgily incompetent drum beat and the sort of lazy, dreary bluesy rock riff that a two-year-old could probably come up with by happy slapping his dad’s guitar. Relatively speaking it makes Slade seem like The Beatles. I remind myself: Slade are definitely not The Beatles.
9.47pm Singer Tom Meighan blathers on some more during Underdog with the astute rhyming couplet: "It don't matter, I won't do what you say/You've got the money and the power, I won't go your way." (It’s sneeringly and tunelessly delivered for maximum impact.) I think he's trying to be political, in the sort of way that Katie Price might be thought of as philosophical when she engages in another bitching session about Jodie Marsh.
9.51pm Another bone-headed bass riff and plodding drum beat precedes the lunken lyricism of Where Did All The Love Go?, the formula already depressingly clear with the forecast in front of the Main Stage looking spectacularly grim for the next hour or so. The band are obviously on something of a roll here, in the sense of rolling headfirst down a steep hill into a pile of manure.
9.52pm "Where did all the love go?" enquires Tom. At best guess I’d say any zest I had left for life departed around three and a half songs back and that if I don’t leave this stage sharpish to go catch the far superior Plastikman I might throw up my own soul. Perhaps I’ll spot some chunks of love in that? Not that I’ll find out though, as I depart having lasted 17 minutes. (That’s 17 minutes of my life that will never be retrieved, just so we’re clear on the matter.) Still, I’m sure the rest of the set was a blast afterwards!
