Marilyn Manson @ Leeds Festival 2005
By Lauren Strain
Before we delve into those cavernous vodka-marinaded archives of Leeds Festival 2005, I'll quickly make a short, sweet statement of truth. The weekend belonged to one band and one band only (well, two, actually, being as The Sunshine Underground were playing; but we already knew they'd steal the show right before our crazy eyes, right?) So, yes, apart from Craig and the boys, the three day dance n' drink extravaganza can consider itself to have been well and truly dominated by a band whose name begins with Arctic and ends in Monkeys. Christ alive, did you hear that posse of wonderful hooligans that was their crowd?! It was Sunday. Putrid toilets were festering and the third night of 'sleep' added to a grand total of four hours (one of which was not sleep at all but a state of boredom-induced unconsciousness whilst Foo Fighters clumsily wrecked their larynxes. My, they were poor...) But mardy bums us Yorkshire folk were not. God no, we were on bloody fire. However, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Are you sitting comfortably/conked out in bed with an alka seltzer, a bandaged head and only one remaining shoe? Good, then we'll begin...
The Adventures Of Loki provided a steel traincrash of a start to Friday, which then collapsed into the vicious synth squiggly shout-alongs of ˇForward, Russia! whose set suffered slightly from the abysmal soundsystem but was gargled and blurted victoriously out of Tom's mouth like a schizo-sonic nuclear gas attack. Awesome. A surprising number of iconic t-shirts were spotted in and around the gathering, with many a pair of exclamation marks glowing luminously and proudly. Then those Carling folks kicked 'em off before they had chance to yell out 'Fourteen'. Whinebags.
Back over on the unsigned stage, O Fracas romped through a volcanic set of sharp, obscured, snakebite clatter-pop gems, clobbering drums as though bent on homicide, jerking back and forth in a colourful array of snazzy jumpers and plastic glasses. Galloping off into rhythmic barminess, challenging each other with counter-attacks, they drew in a crowd with their summer zest and kept them dangling by their poisonous, hidden, scuttling hooks. A delightfully maddening show from a band so tight they no longer have room to breathe.
When Maximo Park are playing no task is too great; not even elbowing/karate-kicking our way from the very back of the heaving, sticky amoeba of an audience that swelled around the NME/Radio One tent to as damn near as we were going to get without dying in order to bounce like clowns. The whiplash riot of 'Once A Glimpse' has Paul Smith bedecked in public school red with his notebook to hand, side-parting migrating ever further down the side of his head. A goggle-eyed school-teacher-meets-class-rebel intellectual mentalist, he squeezes the foaming crowd in the palm of his hand until every last drop of sweat has splashed onto the floor and turned the ground to mud. Wildly throwing out riffs like great slabs of meat to the baying customers, they chomp and slam their way through much of 'A Certain Trigger', impaling it slap bang in the middle with the clattering ram of 'The Night I Lost My Head' during which we lose most of our limbs.
LCD Soundsystem were the surprise of the night, plunging and pummelling their way into a melting cauldron of brutal electro, providing cliffhanger clomps of beats and ten-ton weights of bass, the vibrations surging up through our feet, grabbing us by the throat and swinging our scrawny bodies about. Their raw, bleeding brilliance was monstrous, massive and eardrum-bustingly loud. Just how we like it, then. Other moments of the day, by turns pleasant and then less so, included the finding of a tenner in my back pocket and Marilyn Manson on stilts. That's one frightening nutter of a bloke, that is; but, at the same time, he's horrifyingly compelling and weirdly addictive. Watching a mental case brandish a cane is always going to be a fun gig.
To finish with, Komakino = gangly screaming hyperactive goodness with a moptop of black hair. Yum. British Sea Power = fabulous panorama of scenic noise. Nice twigs. Iggy = trousers horrendously lower than normal; not for viewing after having just eaten a hot dog for tea.
