V Festival (Chelmsford)

A weekend of beautiful burning sun, gorgeous scantily clad women and a line-up spattered with some intriguing propositions. Sound good? Well hey ho let's go – welcome to Chelmsford.

Saturday and the audience is an interesting mix of skate kids (bless), day-trippers and marauding gangs of Hacket clad Essex boys. A lucky few of whom catch Echo and the Bunnymen on the V Stage and witness the touching spectacle of a great band fallen on difficult times. McCullough still has great presence and his voice soars like it did all those years ago. Not many people seem to care though, more intent as they are, on setting up camp and applying the suncream. A disappointing feature of the weekend, audience participation often limited to the hardcore devotees.

Today has the weaker of the line-ups; The Bees and The Basement under-whelming on the NME stage and the Foo's and The Hives falling rather flat on the V Stage. Coldplay are the main draw and they thrill the masses whilst leaving this reviewer feeling empty. Subsequent reports suggest that this could be a watershed for the band, Chris Martin keen to focus on reinvention.

Sunday dawns and we rub our weary heads and look bleary-eyed at another cloudless sky. People drift about aimlessly, some lie unconscious in the field's, hungover relics of yesterday - we all get browner. The Stands treat the NME Stage to nothing special. Nostalgics check out the Inspiral Carpets and leave slightly amused. Skin preceded them to a fabulous reception, incredible the level of her popularity when one listens to the sub grunge dirge that forms the set list. Check out that voice, the vocal equivalent of nails scraping down a blackboard. Aaargh! She jumps about a lot though don’t she? [she even thinks she's in Cheltenham - ed] Yeah, great!

The NME stage, by contrast, is being treated to a Liverpudlian Love in. Shack winning hearts with the loveliest of sets. Mick Head a true hero for the average man whetting the collective appetite for The Coral's appearance late that evening. A surreal and magical performance that one. As Shack leave a bunch of kids in long shorts arrive heralding the imminent appearance of 'punkers' The Distillers. What can't be denied is that the lead singer is an absolute fox with all manner of louche charms and if this were 1988 and Riot grrl still a going concern they might have some cultural currency. But it's not and so they don't.

The zenith of the whole weekend is the Queens of the Stone Age performance on the V Stage from 8 till 9. Some savagery, which is followed by the becalming influence of David Gray. A fitting conclusion is laid on by those guys from the mansion on the hill, the Red Hot Chili's, who are quite charming paying homage, as they do, to the "land of Joe Strummer". A solitary fist is raised high and proud. That fist is mine.

A drunken weekend ends and whilst it is true that V lacks a lot of soul you must admit that it supplies no shortage of fun.

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