The headlining acts were met with a sea of faces on Friday, which is lovely to see after the sparseness of the opening day. It is, quite literally, rammed.
While the daytime acts go down okay, they are not what pull the crowd. The buzz is most definitely about the Happy Mondays. Will Shaun Ryder turn up? Can he cope with the no booze and no swearing? Will Bez be wearing an overcoat?
After a slow start and a lot of hanging around while prayers took over (didn’t someone tell them it was the Sabbath?), the night gets going.
Gabriella Climi is chaperoned on site by her mum and needs a special license to perform, being that she’s still a child, but her performance of harmless pop is a good one. ‘Sweet About Me’ had the crowd singing and she wins over a few stubborn souls with her ‘Whole Lotta Love’ cover.
The Automatic, minus the small shouty one, play fast and loud and everyone joins in on ‘What’s That Coming Over The Hill’, but they sound pretty average and bit last year, as do The Courteeners, who play a mix of noisy indie and a tiny slice of twee.
Ocean Colour Scene take the second from top spot on the night, which is an odd choice being that they haven’t done anything good since 1995. ‘Fight No More’, ‘Hundred Mile High City’ and ‘The Day We Caught The Train’ are entertaining enough, but the rest is dull as dish water. It doesn’t matter though, as the atmosphere builds for the Manchester headliners.
The first disappointment? No Bez. Apparently he was ‘taken ill’ and couldn’t get on the flight. Make of that what you will. Shaun does his best, but he looks a shadow of his former self, hanging near the back of the stage and struggling to hear his monitors. With his finger in his ear for half the set, it looked like he was singing down a mobile phone. To give him credit though, with such strict laws and Shaun’s well-known reliance on certain things back home, it was almost a miracle that he made on stage at all. And to given him even more credit, after a couple of songs to settle in, Shaun perks up a little and makes some hilarious observations. “We’ve had to cut some of this song because we’re not allowed to swear on stage. You’d get two years or something,” he says just before an “fuck” slip up and a “shit” mistake. Oops!
‘Step On’ opened the show, but instead of blasting these fans, (who you have to remember have been pretty much starved of live music for months), with the hits they crave, the Mondays choose to showcase some newer material. It kind of doesn’t matter though, especially as ‘Loose Fit’ and ‘Kinky Afro’ give the crowd exactly what their after.
The biggest disappointment of the day was hearing that De La Soul hadn’t made it leaving a bit of a gap in the schedule.
Saturday is quiet as a mouse and the crowd is thin on the ground again for bands like Alphabeat, The Wombats and Super Furry Animals. Even Nitin Sawnhey had to cope with playing in front of about 20 people.
It’s a shame and it doesn’t look set to get better after the news that Echo & the Bunnymen aren’t turning up for the headline slot due to another ‘illness’. With so many sales expected on the night, it could be a disaster for Sound City. Let’s hope SFA pull a bit of magic out the bag to keep everyone going.
Words by Gemma Hampson
