There are some things about the Electric Picnic that we won’t know until Lana Del Rey has come off the Main Stage on Sunday, but you might as well hand the ZZ Top Sharpest Dressed Man of the Weekend Award to Martin Fry now.
While his gold lame jacket has sadly retired, the ABC mainman remains as impeccably well-tailored as the tunes on The Lexicon Of Love 2, the newly-released sequel to the 1982 album that made Fry an icon on both sides of the Atlantic.
Along with his sartorial elegance, he’s also maintained the knack for writing a killer pop tune and bathing it in celestial strings. All of which means that you’d be a prize chump not to catch ABC on the Main Stage at 6.15pm and before that in the Hot Press Chatroom at 4pm.
They’re followed at 7.30pm by Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, AKA Nas, who (sorry Kendrick!) is pound for pound the best live hip hop performer in the world.
While mine is now a life of monastic self-denial, I’ll be sparking up an imaginary blunt when, bathed in early evening sunshine, the Brooklynite launches into the peerless ‘One Love’.
Main Stage ribbon-cutting duties fall at 5pm to Ryan Sheridan who’s genetically incapable of playing a bad gig, and can be relied for a mass festival singalong or three.
A veritable festival within a festival, the Salty Dog has a trio of must-sees – Buffalo Sunn doing their blissed out Californian rock thing at 5pm, Bronagh Gallagher bringing the soul raunch at 8.45pm and a motley crew of musical admirers jamming up a Bowiesque storm at 2.30am.
There are also treats aplenty on the Other Voices stage with the heavenly close harmonies of Saint Sister at 9pm and a midnight hour appearance by Rusangano Family, the hyperactive Limerick/Clare hip hop trio who deserve to be mentioned in the same exalted breath as Public Enemy and NWA. Yep, they really are that good.
Thank God I have Padre Pio-like powers of bilocation or otherwise I’d miss Super Furry Animals waging psychedelic war in the Electric Arena from 10.45pm. Having taken five-years out, it’s perfectly possible that younger Picnic-ers mightn’t have seen Gruff and Co. re-write the rock ‘n’ roll rulebook live. Now’s their chance to remedy that!
The bad news is that Whilk & Misky, AKA Nima and Charlie, have cancelled their 2.40am visit to Body & Soul. The good news is that their place has been taken by All Tvvins who are guaranteed to blow the gaff up as well.