Glasvegas, Dead Kids - Glastonbury Festival Day Zero, Pilton - Thursday 26th June 2008

It isn't until the second day of Glastonbury that any bands start to get anywhere near any stages. After opening the site on Wednesday, the day I got there, it was actually pretty good to spend that evening wandering around, exploring the site, and not needing to worry about who was playing where. A very entertaining visit to the Silent Disco passed the time, as well as a look at some of the hippies and general weirdos that seem to gravitate towards the Stone Circle.

But after all that, Thursday saw some bands playing at last, in the Leftfield and Queens Head venues. I especially wanted to see Glasvegas play at the Queens Head - a good chance to see one of the most hotly tipped bands of the festival, playing a warmup show. The Queens Head is a pretty small tent, and, being one of the very few places with music on at 6pm Thursday, was absurdly busy - making spending too much time there an especially unpleasant experience.

When we arrived at the tent and fought out way inside, an Australian band called Sparkadia were just finishing their set. Their songs sounded like good solid indie pop songs - quite mainstream, but certainly enough to get the audience warmed up. After their set and a short changeover, Dead Kids appeared for a half hour set. Fronted by a manic looking guy in a "USA" tracksuit top, they put on a frantic and mental show, all carried by the frontman's crazy antics. In their half hour, they completely won over the crowd, none of whom were expecting to see them, especially as Make Model were listed instead on the timetable.

Their songs and live set reminded me of a slightly more rock version of Does It Offend You Yeah, and overall they played a highly entertaining show. For the last song, the singer brought a large floor standing bongo on stage, and ended up throwing it to somebody in the crowd. Who then ran off with it, prompting all of the band and crew to jump into the audience at the end of the set, in search of it. A bizarre end to a gig that had lots of moments like that, so was absolutely anything but dull - definitely worth seeing again if the chance presents itself.

Another changeover, during which the tent got increasingly packed, hot and unpleasant to stand in for too long, and Glasvegas appeared to a rapturous reception. The band were all dressed in black as usual, and singer James Allan also sported his shades, looking like a dead ringer for Joe Strummer. Having heard most of their songs before, I knew a fair bit of what to expect, generally amazing lyrics about people's lives, wrapped up in incredibly powerful guitars and drums. The set was like that, but even more so.

Glasvegas have been described as making a wall of sound, and that certainly isn't giving them too much credit. The guitars on their first few songs sounded immense, very loud, very powerful, and not like anything that many other bands get close to. The brooding lyrics and relatively slow songs are too drawn out for many people (which is why I don't think they'll be quite as big as some are predicting), but I loved it. New single Geraldine was an obvious highlight, as were the guitar riffs on Its My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry - amazing stuff. They didn't talk between songs, it was just a set where they came on stage, played one song after another, played Daddy's Gone at the end, then left to a wild reaction from the audience. A great show, and although I thought it started to flag a bit towards the end (and I wondered how many more songs of the same quality they may have had up their sleeves) it gave me a tough choice about what to do the following lunchtime when they played again.