Paul Weller played the main stage at V2000 and drew a reasonably big crowd. With his reputation before him, the crowd were expecting to be impressed. Unfortunately neither the crowd, nor Weller himself seemed too pleased with this set.
The main stage at V2000 in Chelmsford was quite large, with an amphitheatre style hill coming away from the stage. This afforded the crowd with a great view of the stage and provided plenty of space for a big audience, but without the PA's on full volume, it was just too quiet to appreciate Weller's talent. He called out to 'turn the PA up', but to no avail and the crowd failed to be enthused. It was a bit like listening to an old record that you can nearly hear, but not quite clearly enough, so you end up leaving. We did just that in the hope of gaining a good position for Moby at the Peoplesound stage. What a shame when Weller - a clearly masterful player - was putting out classic tunes such as 'Changing Man', 'You do something to me' and 'Frightened'.
Having seen Weller in 1994 at Glastonbury on the main stage I know that this man performs brilliantly on a big arena in a festival setting, but V2000 got something wrong that meant that Weller and his band couldn't produce the goods. As we left it was depressing to hear him described as 'Eric Clapton of the 21st century'. I only hope that the people down the front of the stage had a good time, which it looked as though they did. We were glad to have missed the final insult that was a failed attempt to bring Noel Gallagher into the set. Nevermind Paul, maybe next time (by which time you'll probably have gone completely grey, mmm, freaky).
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