No Rock And Roll Fun

V ON TV: Let's try this again; our first post on this got swallowed by net congestion
E4 always had a hard task on its hands with its coverage of the V festival. The BBC had an excellent Glastonbury and T in the Park, and even without V usually feeling like the consolation prize of festivals, so many of the bands playing had already been on at Glasto or T (or both) the whole thing was in danger of looking more like a compilation of previous events rather than something fresh and exciting. Here are the Scissor Sisters, and Amy Winehouse, and Jamie Cullum, and Starsailor, and The Thrills, and... but you get the point. And the venue (E4 chose to base itself in Chelmsford) looked less like a bohemian out door celebration of the gods of music and joy, more like a bunch of protestors penned in a public park.

But it's always possible to turn a potential disaster around, and E4 managed it. They turned it round, and round, and round and round so much the programme lurched all over the place in a dizzy and confused fashion, eventually pausing to throw up in a wastebasket full of wasps. The main presentation was handled by Cat Deeley and Vernon Kay, for reasons we're still left fumbling with. Deeley is useless without a script in her hand and, we'd suggest from watching her rambling, confused attempts at interviews and desperate attempts to adlib, without three or four reshoots, and, although she is easy on the eye, she should never be allowed to anchor anything live ever again. Kay, of course, has wide experience of live television - having wasted so many, many precious minutes of his life presenting Top of the Pops At Play to an audience of almost nobody - so he's able to keep a show flowing.The trouble is, he's almost so insanely unlikeable, with his slightly smug air and inability to tell 'thing that happened' from 'interesting thing that happened' he should be used to protect famous people from being kidnapped. No terrorist, however desperate, is going to bundle someone in the back of a van if they have to take Kay as well. Of course, the duo's shit job would be almost forgivable in the context of a live show, but for some reason they decided to leave their clumsy, pointless links for the highlights package as well. (The package, by the way, claiming to be 'LIVE' even as it showed bright sunlight over Chelmsford at ten thirty at night). Even T4's Simon was a bit rubbish, pissing away an interview with the Scissor Sisters in what was meant to be a humorous undercutting of media people's desire to say "I was there first", but was actually little more than Simes' way of telling us "I was there first." Even though he wasn't. He also interviewed Jamie Cullum for what seemed to be three hours.

Cullum, for me, was the highlight of the music - mainly because he desperately tried to get the crowd to sing along, only to be met with a handful of people participating amongst ranks of stony-faced, closed-mouth Pixies fans.

The gimmick of choice this year seemed to be child labour - Scissor sisters had a couple of scary looking blond kids clog dancing to Laura, while N*E*R*D pulled a young lad in a Muse shirt onstage for Rockstar. Jamelia didn't invite any kids on stage, but did show beyond reasonable doubt that she has just one "dance", that hand-wavy thing that she does; it may just have been a bad gig but her much-vaunted astonishing voice doesn't seem to cut it live, either - you wished she'd just shut up and let her backing singers do the work, to be frank. And whoever it was who suggested Goldie Lookin' Chain are simply 2004's Morris Minor and the Majors (on NYLPM, I believe) was being cruel. Tony Hawke's songwriting talents are way beyond what GLC can achieve. In a way, they're a perfect E4 band, working well in a context which pretends that Bo Selecta is funny; but beyond that, they're very patchy. "Guns don't kill people - rappers do" is a kind of funny phrase, but repeating it sixty odd times in three minutes is a comedy cupboard that's been laid bare. Especially if the best rhyme you can think of to go with it is "woo-woo-woo." Stutter Rap? Closer to Rat Rapping.