Festival review by : Rob Barbour

Glastonbury Festival 1999

Friday 25th to Sunday 27th June 1999
Worthy Farm, Pilton, nr Glastonbury, Somerset, England
£83

As Electrasy left the stage, the first signs of something not-quite-right appeared: girls crowd in from every corner. My place, right up the front on the bar, became more and more cramped, and I had one foot on the other to allow space for some (frankly impractical) female footwear. Then "he" strolled on stage. Mr. Keanu Reeves, wearing the beeniest of beany hats and holding his Bass case. He turned to the audience and smiled, then spoke to his guitar techs (at the time, I thought he was saying "So how do you play this thing"?) But after 10 more minutes of girls saying "Yeah i've heard they're, like, really good", DOGSTAR (consisting of: blonde dude in shades: guitar and vocals, mad-looking dude: drums and Keanu Reeves dude: bass and fame) take to the stage. And they rock. Their Carpenters cover may lack...everything, and none of their songs stick in the memory, but they rock a fat one. The press pit is filled for the first ten minutes, the photographers concentrating only on the bassist for some strange reason. These "priveleged" hacks did suffer for their art, though. Waterguns and £2-for-ten peaches bombarded the camera equipment until they got off their ladders and left). The girls scream "Keanu!" the blokes scream "Bogus dude!", and the singer tries hard to "do" frontman (sticking his head in the path of some guy's SuperSoaker XP-howevermillion), but Reeves has them hooked because..he's Kean-oooooooooooooooooooo! Dogstar were second-rate Grungesters, but perfect for jumping up and down to (something the audience was not prone to do) on a Summer's day. Ever ironic, they included a song about the Wyle Stallions in their set, but their music lacked any real depth, and we all know why the audience was there, so it would have been nice of Keanu to at least say "Hello". But in the end, it was the shout from one audience-member which summed it all up: "Don't give up the day job!" Why don't y'all just f-f-f-f-fade away