On Thursday H, Bimbo and I made our way to the Greenman Festival in Glanusk Deer Park in the Brecon Beacons. We managed to get there and erect our tent while it wasn’t raining, but as soon as we were in it did rain, and it rained hard. We had to improvise a prop out of beer cans for the roof so that the water would come off the badly designed tent.
Friday came and we ventured into the Festival to see some bands, the first that we saw was Hail! The Planes, and the sun actually managed to come out half way through their set, so we managed to stand outside (away from the bar) for a while. The Friday brought an eclectic but excellent mix of bands, ranging from the 80’s inspired O. Children (Think New Order rather than A-Ha) to the mariachi sounding Beirut and the antipodean Rock of An Horse. By far my favourite was Steve Mason on the Far Out Stage, playing music from his own solo album which I like anyway, but finishing with a track by his former (and brilliant) band The Beta Band. This really made my night.
I woke up on Saturday still whistling a Steve Mason tune and looking forward to The Flaming Lips headlining later that night. H and Bimbo decided to get Massages, so I wandered about the site and came across the Flaming Lips sound check, where a large group gathered and they played the whole of the Yeah Yeah Yeah song, gaining a loud cheer from the 200 or so people that had gathered. The better news was that the sun came out making the festival site an extremely pleasant place to be. We started out the day by watching the weird Islet, and the up coming Egyptian Hip Hop. The surprise of the day was the Besnard Lakes, who rocked out on the main stage for a while.
The Flaming Lips Headline slot was a late one, but I suspected that it would be good, having seen them before in what is the best gig I have ever been to. Their stage show is somewhat epic, with Wayne Coyne entering the arena on a Zorb, with confetti cannons going off and balloons being blown into the audience and Lasers shooting into the night sky. The sing along’s were still great, but they played a lot off of their new album and missed a lot of their good songs out. Don’t get me wrong, this was still an exceptional gig, but not what I was expecting. I still left humming Do You Realise!
Sunday was hot so we spent the first few hours watching small bands on the Green Man Pub Stage where we saw the rather excellent Welsh duo Brigyn. Moving on the Far Out Stage, we settled in for a long day. Megafaun were my favourite band of the Festival and put on an excellent show, Bear In Heaven played their electro pop really well (we had a swift diversion to sing-a-long-a-Mumford-and-Sons, who played some new tracks too) the sunny Indie pop of Girls and the mad Danish electro of Efterklang who were joined on stage by Batman. One thing that I noticed, Bear In Heaven, Girls and Efterklang all started their sets slowly and I was unsure about them, but with strong finishes I came away loving them all.
Green man is an excellent festival, and I think that we will be going again next year. Having only seen one of the headlining acts properly there is enough good stuff going on that, that didn’t matter. Probably what I would do next year is not drink so much Festival Ale though.
Rantings from a bored mind. 