Hauling myself towards the dance tent, Sunday night, my head thumping from the sun and the space-cadet feeling Sigur Ros sprinkled on me fast dissolving in the staggering funk of the Portaloo’s. Doves would have signalled the end. I needed noise.
Inside, I bundled through sweating lunatics of every description, towards the stage; under the giant neon dream catchers painted onto the sagging canvas absorbing us all. As the sweat poured and the jawbones worked, Scratch Perverts hit the stage. Pounding drum and bass looped up and over the audience at first, until the MC began stalking up and down the stage like a caged, mentally ill Russian Dancing bear seen in grainy illegally shot Animal Rights footage.
“SWITCH!” - Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side, the crowd keep moving – half of them probably dunno what is going on – “SWITCH!” – more D+B – computer generated stream-of-consciousness spasms on the giant projection screens – “SWITCH!” – 7 Nation Army – Jack White’s pumping bass, he starts singing – “SWITCH!” – Jack’s blow away as Scratch Perverts stitch together a brutal Frankenstein of songs that somehow go together wonderfully, Like 2manyDJ’s but without the smug novelty value. My only nark was that we only got about 20 seconds worth of each song before the MC roared “SWITCH!” and it changed. The guy rages– throwing his arms all over the place, bouncing off the monitors and then the whole of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit screams out of the speakers and the whole tent is filled with searing white noise.
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I didn’t even know the Scratch Perverts were there – I was expecting some dire trance bollocks to sap me of my strength as I waited for Mike Skinner, and instead I was pleasantly surprised and feeling better than I had when I’d dragged my filthy carcass in there. And the crazed thing about it was that it all happened in a shade over half and hour.
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