{archive: September, 2007}
Cold-blooded. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Callahan played the tightest set of the festival’s three days. Self-assured to the point of contemptuousness, he also came across - strange fire and ice in his veins - as humbled, as though in submission to his songs and the fact of performance.
Flake magnet. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Newsom was her habitual scintillating self at the festival, the Arachné of the indie circuit, the alpha-babe in the hotpants suit, her lips that necessary apple red, offending the gods with her flawless weavings of sound.
Inside men. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Clinic’s members wear sugical masks while on stage and sound - like many, many a band today - as though they’ve spent hours dissecting The Jesus Lizard under sterile conditions.
Outside in. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Glyn, the 2006-2007 Welsh Children’s Poet Laureate, was performing songs from her album Tonau in the Green Man’s “literature tent” - a session sponsored by the Welsh literary magazine Tu Chwith*, and stumbled upon by your correspondent only because of the vile weather outside.
Scritti politti. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Why “scritti politti” - ? Well, for one, we were in Wales (home of the band that invented the phrase); and, as a second point, a Six Organs performance is an uncompromising war on the dictatorship of soft, flabby rock (see next entry) - one of the few acts today that verges on the scary. They grittily grind it out, just like Antonio Gramsci. You find yourself somewhat awed.
Pet river. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. “Pet river” = meandering and complacent, just like this utterly unremarkable agglomeration of sleepyheads.
√ 
Post-tortoiseshell. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. “This is going to be our last song for some time,” said Adem Ilhan; then he and friends Kieran Hebden and Sam Jeffers (plus one more: who?) post-rocked into the night.
Scrooge-scourge. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Briefly. Plant was, quite frankly, worse than Donovan last year, who at least provided comic relief. Led Zeppelin’s reforming for a “one-off” gig is doubtless meant in part to make up for all the wrongs committed by the Strange Sensation.
Live band! **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Battles, who headlined the Green Man’s Folkey Dokey stage on Saturday night (playing opposite Robert Plant, who was on the main stage in front of arguably fewer people), provoked the first encore I witnessed at the festival. The audience simply howled until they reappeared.
Glass tent. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. The festival’s “Literature Tent”, designed more for poetry readings than interviews with rock stars, could barely house all of emperor-of-indie Stephen Malkmus’ fans. Fortunately, Your Correspondent and his Lovely Assistant had arrived early - with all of the UK’s Sunday papers to tide us through the wait - and had literally the best seats under the canopy for the Malkman’s interview with Phil Sutcliffe of the British music rag Mojo.
√
Nice vuvuzela. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. Rhys’ set mainly comprised a rendition of his hijack epic, “Skylon”, from the album Candylion.
Male fraud. **
____________
** Seen at the 2007 Green Man Festival. To be honest, the only reason we were standing that close to Banhart was to stake out a good position for the next act, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.
