Radiohead
@ Benicassim Festival (Primal Scream/ Belle & Sebastian/ Super Furry
Aniomals/ The Beta Band)
Benicassim
August
3, 2002
Somewhere over the rainbow, there is a music festival that pulls some of the greatest bands on Earth, who, after dancing into your head, can then jump directly into the cooling, luscious Mediterranean.
This is Benicassim. Situated on the East coast of Spain, some four hours from Barcelona, the eighth annual event attracted perhaps the best European line-up of any of the summer festivals. Glastonbury 2002 it was not.
This has much to do with the Spaniards manana panache and the low-key scale - 40,000 people on-site, unobtrusive seccurity and no sign of evil pushermen. And, of course, when offered a bill such as the one presented on Saturday alone - Radiohead, Primal Scream, Beta Band, Super Furry Animals and Belle & Sebastian - it's easy to understand the calming euphoria of the atmosphere throughout.
Friday presented a rich vein of highlights: Notwist's ecstatically received, propulsive blend of the electronic and krautrocking, the schizophrenic cut and paste laptop prepotency of Four Tet and DJ Shadow's impossibly controlled scratching sorcery. However, for some the highest moment was seeing, through a rather mangled brain, Primal Scream bass player Mani DJing and throwing 'Loaded' and 'Mersey Paradise' at the baying crowd at 4am.
This is another key with Benicassim. The band's don't begin at 11am and finish at midnight. It's surely far cooler to get up late, take in the sun and then await a day that only ends when you want it to. And in this case, Saturday will end - again - at around 4am, when Primal Scream have finished imbedding their future rock'n'roll truck in the side of your face. You better believe it.
"It's time to shake your ass" is not a phrase you might expect from the arduously grumpy Beta Band at their worst. But that may well be because Steve Mason - who tonight performs like he's workingg with the crowd rather than against us - and co are in the sleekest, most barnstorming shape of their musical lives.
The barrelling acoustic jets of 'Dry The Rain', 'Broke' and 'She's The One' mutate into rolling walls of epic, layered psychedelic voltage that, as ever, blow the top of your head off with emphatic ease. And as the set closes in a slavering, four-way voodoo percussive freak-out, Benicassim reacts like they've never seen anything like it. Which is probable.
The Super Furry Animals, meanwhile, may lack the Beta Band's intensity and vigour, but more than make up for it with the cool breeze of their beatific, 'Beach Boys for a new century' pop. Thus, 'Rings Around The World', 'Sidewalk Serfer Girl', 'Presidential Suite' and 'Juxtaposed With U' are a wash of string symphonies. Elsewhere though, the Super Furries do ultimately flick the frenzy switch with a crazed wig-out at the close of 'Receptacle For The Respectable', the fast-food fury of 'Do Or Die' and 'Calimero' and a still monumental slam through 'The Man Don't Give A F*ck'.
Belle & Sebastian's decision to finally realise they are actually a pop band and that people, like, want to see them play live, resulted in a thrilling show at Glastonbury this year, and Benicassim gets an even more celebratory experience. As he looks over the gathered massive, Stuart Murdoch tells the crowd: "This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen", before quickly adding "except for my girlfriend", before the band play a set that amplifies the many wonders of Belle & Sebastian.
Eschewing their slower, more maudlin excursions, a blistering, show-boating 'Sleep The Clock Around', the spaghetti Western folk pop of 'Dog On Wheels' and the polite devastation of 'The State I'm In' are akin to being battered by a sunflower. 'Lazy Line Painter Jane' and a gloriously rampant 'Legal Man' - "get out of the city and into the sunshine" - complete the show, with around 25 people onstage and 30,000 enraptured by the ray of sunshine that shines at the core of these alienated emotional releases.
Alienation is surely something Thom Yorke can relate to, unless he's the finest actor of his generation - par Jim Carey of course. Perhaps the main draw at this year's festival, Radiohead come out fighting tonight, but choose not to unveil a whole slew of new material, as they have at their own shoes in recent weeks. Instead, from opener 'Optimistic' to closer 'There There' - one of two new tracks aired - this fivve-strong machine of sonic might and invention continue to play like they are being kept alive by brain-exploding pharmaceuticals, such is their feral intensity. This is, yet again, a performance of profoundly visceral, spell-binding fever.
Yorke is alarmingly edgy, making the destroyed strains of "release me" on 'Morning Bell' sound utterly believable, as a man is carried from the crowd in an equally tumultuous emotional state. As the group rip into 'Lucky', Yorke informs us that we are "standing on the edge", his eyes bulging out of his head, while the now standard, physical spasms of the disturbing electro mind-f*ck of 'Idiotique' suggest he's about to give birth if not actually die.
Of the two new tracks, 'A Drunken Punch Up At A Wedding' is rather less prosaic than the title suggest, with its repetitious, metronomic Can-esque mantra, whilst 'There There' features Ed O'Brien and Johnny Greenwood thumping stand-up tom toms, a typically telling lyrical twist - "just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there' - and is, frankly, stunning. At around 2.30am, Radiohead leave the stage, their reputation even further propelled into the stratosphere. And there is still more to come.
Primal Scream recently claimed they are untouchable as a live band and Mani waists no time in stating "We're f*ckin' great" to the audience, who seem to be struggling to comedown from the Radiohead experience. Bobby Gillespie looks utterly blasted, as a flurry of violent electric storms - 'Miss Lucifer', 'Detroit', 'Shoot Speed Kill Light' and 'Skull X' - rain from the sky amid thunderbolts of electro-guitar detritus.
Like Radiohead, Primal Scream are at the peak of their uncompromising and considerable powers, and if there is a band that can follow Bobby G's vision of the future, they've been keeping a pretty low profile. Anyway, at 4am, and after a day that emphasised just how glorious and transcendent rock 'n' roll can be when played with spunk, imagination and intelligence, there was really no need for any further evidence. Until next year that is. Viva Espana.
Dotmusic
08.08.02