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Leeds, Telluride
and Festival Lag
by
Ian Waldron-Mantgani, August 28, 2002
It is said, by some, that critics are born cynics.
I dunno about that. I run this little site of mine to share good news, when
it comes, and because I have an innate need to express my opinions with whatever
tools available. That need comes from passion. When I put my critic's hat
on and sit at the keyboard, I become a mass of positivity. Or try to,
anyway.
Consider this year's Carling Weekend at Leeds,
which took place between Friday 23rd August and Sunday the 25th, with most
of the 30,000 punters arriving on Thursday and leaving the campsite on Monday.
Consciously I know that I lugged heavy, unevenly shaped bags over miles of
rocky ground, feeling like a rat in a maze because the promoter, Mean Fiddler,
this year decided to completely restructure the location of the campsite
and replace bushes with totalitarian steel fences. I failed to get laid,
got an average of four hours sleep per night, hid from a thunderstorm in
a tent that was too small for me, camped in the midst of a fiery riot and
survived for four and a half days by eating dirty forkfuls of peanut butter
and half-cooked Pot Noodles. I know all that, and yet… I don't want
to dwell on it.
There is a certain camaraderie among the muddy
patrons of the fest, and if that feeling was dulled a little this year due
to frustration and hostility over the campsite reorganisation, well, it was
still sometimes possible to be familiar to strangers, to shout random chants
across fields, and to smile at the fact that everyone around seemed to have
travelled to Temple Newsman Park with a common purpose. That made the weekend
worthwhile.
That, and the music. More than a hundred live
bands played the stages of Leeds (and Reading, at the well-established southern
leg of the festival) last weekend, and I summoned enough energy to go see
such acts as grunge-era legends Jane's Addiction and Foo Fighters, who rev
their guitars in a way that announces nothing except that they know damn
well how to rock. I overheard the gloriously unadorned strumming of White
Stripes and The Strokes, and saw contemporary legends such as John Spencer
Blues Explosion and The Breeders. The oft overlooked Guided By Voices played
a fine set, while a solo artist of loose morals named Peaches gave us fifty
minutes of taking off her clothes, banging a microphone against her crotch,
singing about unrepeatably lewd behaviour (you have my permission to go do
an internet search for her lyrics, you dirty-minded fiends) and faking a
lot of bleeding. I still haven't figured out if I was entertained or disturbed,
but hey, it was an experience.
The two most memorable acts of the festival were
high-profile names. Guns N Roses, a Leeds exclusive due to tour commitments,
headlined on Friday night, and I planned to take a look at the guys just
to know I'd seen them, while expecting them to be somewhat past it and really
kind of embarrassing. Axl Rose's ego troubles are well known, and GNR is
nowadays just he and a bunch of session musicians - none of the other original
members are left, not even Slash, that brilliant wildman
guitarist.
The band came onstage at 11pm, one hour late,
and launched straight into the obvious opener, "Welcome to the Jungle". The
crowd went wild, and I could not stop watching. They played hard, loud and
passionate. Axl looked like he was excited to be there, and halfway into
the set announced, "The promoters told us we could only play up until now.
But I came all the way from America for this, and I have another seven or
eight songs in me, so I don't think I'm goin' nowhere!" Somehow it didn't
seem like a rehearsed rabble-rouser line. The man looked in shape, he looked
like himself, and he bounded around the stage as if he were back in the day.
It was glorious. When those opening notes to "Sweet Child O Mine" came wailing
out, chords deep inside my heart were struck.
Prodigy, the great British electro-punk band that
has not played a gig since 1999, was the other act to transcend music and
achieve some kind of otherworldly perfection. For some reason (I was probably
chatting up random girls, but I honestly can't remember), I missed the first
half of the performance, and with it great tunes like "Breathe" and "Smack
My Bitch Up". What I did see had heart-stopping intensity and momentum; the
insistent, intricate metallic sounds emanating from the speakers were thrust
at us with command and the best kind of meanness, and I found myself drawn
into a hypnotic state of involvement rather than standing in the role of
a mere observer.
Later, when discussing the Prodigy gig, a friend
told me that when Liam Howlett walked onstage he had found himself unconsciously
saying to his girlfriend, "He's a god… he looks like a god!" In a separate
conversation, the person with whom I stood during the concert told me that
I myself had instinctively whispered to her, "This is godlike." I believe
them both.
But Leeds, boys and girls, is just the beginning
of our story. I'm writing this article from a hotel in Denver, Colorado,
and tomorrow I will embark on a seven-hour drive to the small mountain village
of Telluride, where hotel prices are steep and the altitude will supposedly
be high enough to make my cigarette smoking an unpleasant chore. The Telluride
Film Festival, beginning this Friday and ending next Monday, was started
in 1974 by the National Film Preserve, and has sold out in each of its
twenty-eight years of business. It is not a household name, but if, like
me, you're too involved in movies for your own good, you will know that it
is fabled to be a gem. Obviously I have yet to find out if the legends are
true, but things are looking hopeful. My colleagues Roger Ebert and Betty
Jo Tucker have had nothing but raves about the festival in their e-mails
to me, and this is after all the event which saw the North American premieres
of "My Dinner with Andre", "Blue Velvet", "Au Revoir Les Enfants", "Cinema
Paradiso", "The Crying Game" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon".
Telluride is unique, as far as I'm aware, in keeping
its festival programme secret until opening day. I'm fantasising about possible
screenings of "Punch Drunk Love", the new film by Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie
Nights", "Magnolia"); "Rules of Attraction", a Brett Easton Ellis adaptation
from Roger Avary ("Killing Zoe"); "The Four Feathers", from Shekhar Kapur
("Elizabeth", "Bandit Queen"); "Once Upon A Time in Mexico", from Robert
Rodriguez ("El Mariachi", "Spy Kids"); maybe even "Red Dragon", the new Hannibal
Lecter picture, or, dare I suggest it, Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York".
Perhaps none of these will be shown, but that's okay: I'm here to be surprised,
taken on adventures, blindsided by the unexpected. Not knowing what will
be in store is exactly as it should be.
Oh, but the sleep deprivation. I pulled an allnighter
the Wednesday before Leeds, hardly slept that weekend, got up the morning
after to fly twenty hours' worth of connections across three or four time
zones, and I have to be up at six tomorrow for that seven-hour drive and
another hectic weekend. Don't worry, it's not me doing the driving. But this
is tough stuff. You know, in a good way.
COPYRIGHT© 2002 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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