The Ned Wood Archive

Everywhere there was song and celebration

Brandi Carlile, Pyramid Stage, June 2025

Joe

What’s the best way to get from Carhenge to BBC Introducing?  Joe has to decide quickly.  There’d be a straight track if the festival weren’t there and you could go through the back stage area.  Joe can’t.  And he can’t go through the markets and past the bandstand because he’ll never get through the crush at Bread and Roses, that is even if they let him through which he thinks they won’t because they’re trying to do a one way system.  He got stuck there one year coming from the Pyramid trying to see a band at Left Field.  There’ll also be a mad crush coming from the Pyramid if he goes straight along the track past the cider bus and then a further mad crush going through or round the crowd at the Pyramid.  That’d take all day.  It’s either down to West Holts then across to Left Field and then round the Other Stage field.  But that’s a long way round and anyway, there’ll be another crush opposite Left Field with people leaving the Other Stage.  So he decides to go the other long way round.  Up the hill across Kidney Mead campsite, diagonally, then across the top of the Pyramid Field, then back down the other side of the Pyramid, past the Mandela Bar and San Remo and into the Reach.  That’ll have the advantage of going with the flow away from Pyramid.

Joe’s got a pretty good idea of the fastest way between stages, but you never can tell, especially with this new-fangled so-called one way system.  They’ve had one in the past, but more ad hoc. Directing people one way or another.  Sometimes that’s messed him about, like when Mary Wallopers played the Park.  Usually he can avoid the worst of the crowds, mainly by taking the ring road and going to the paths nearer the outskirts of the site.  It’s just the people that get in the way.

He’d got a message from Tom telling him about Sprints at BBC Introducing.  It was just after that girl with the lost Mom next to Carhenge.  Tom, as usual, had found out, somehow, about this surprise set and suggested that Joe leg it over asap.  Which Joe did because Sprints were fantastic at Left Field in 24 and amazing at Peel in 25, so he’s got to see them again.  And he manages to get there before it’s too crowded, even though there is a bit of a crush of folk moving through the Reach even though the act on Pyramid wasn’t finished.  And he meets up with Tom and Max who’s also a big fan.

BBC Introducing is a nice small tent, so it’s a sweaty intense atmosphere inside.  The band are up for some fun.  Loud.  In your face.  The crowd are up too.  Singing along with all of the songs, especially the early ones like Little Fix and Delia Smith and those from the first album – Cathedral, Shadow of a Doubt, Adore, Literary Mind.  Joe’s calling out her name.  Is she calling out for him?  The singer spends half of the show dancing around in the audience. Moshing and surfing.  Then slowing it down for the beautiful acoustic haunting magical Desire.  The best they ever had.

Now Joe is happy and high on the music.  He’s heard the old gospel choir when they came to carry him over.  He’s heard your favourite song one last time.  And also happy and high on the serendipity.  Little Ellie finding her Mom and him getting to the gig on time.  And also he’s glad he caught up with Tom and Max.  Because they can see the gigs together. Especially Suede. They are next. Up at Peel. And because they can argue about the music.  Especially about Suede. See Joe got into Suede with AutoFiction a couple of years ago.  It’s by far their best album.  Except that Tom says it’s Dog Man Star which was like even before Joe was born (he thinks).  Max doesn’t get into the argument.  For one, he knows not to get in the way when Joe and Tom square off.  And, two, he knows that Suede’s best music was on Coming Up and the one after that.  How many bands are there that can boast creative peaks thirty years apart?  Most bands peak early then trail off.  Some more quickly than others.  Go one, name a band that reached their peak or equalled their peak later in life.  Maybe the Cure?  Maybe not.  There’s loads of bands that did good stuff later in their careers, but not as good as when they were at their best.  Not the Bunnymen.  Not Radiohead.  Not Foo Fighters.  Not Arctic Monkeys.  Not U2.  Not Blur.  Not Pulp.           

Anyway, the thing with Suede is that they’ve got loads of material they can play from different stages in their career.  Plus, they always mix it up live.  They don’t stick with the same songs, the same set list.  OK, so they’ll play Metal Mickey and Animal Nitrate.  But they could also play anything from almost any album.  They may even play something from Bloodsports. Stranger things have happened.   

And they do.  They play the obvious.  Metal Mickey.  Beautiful Ones.  Disintegrate.  They play the best ones from Dog Man Star and they play Stay Together, so Tom’s happy.  They play stuff from Autofiction, so Joe’s happy.  Brett’s out in front putting on the show while the others, dressed all in black, hide in the background.  He’s skinny and hyperactive, strolling round the stage, perching precariously on his monitor, soon drenched in sweat.  Jumping down into the photographers’ pit, climbing on the barrier in front of them, getting the crowd joining in – Joe on Boy on Stage & She Still Leads Me On, Tom on Animal Nitrate & So Young, and Max on Trash & Filmstar.  He never stops for a moment and neither does Joe.  

I got a European stain within me

And a European suffering

I want to be dancing with the Europeans