Homelands : Winchester Bowl

Even the security guards are anxious that we get loaded up.

24th May 2003

Homelands is not so much a festival as an excuse to get as off-your-tits as humanly possible. When NME arrives it’s only 1pm and people are already dancing around the car park and trying to buy pills off their own reflection. Even the security guards are anxious that we get loaded up: we catch one moaning about the lack of cocaine he’s caught people smuggling in. “What’s wrong with you lot?” he mutters. “Are you all dead boring?” Like, nice attitude!

It’s still early-doors when Junior Senior hit the stage, armed only with a handful of crazy beats and some killer tunes. They’re brilliant, even after they’ve played Jackson 5-alike ‘Move Your Feet’ and everyone leaves. From start to finish, it’s like being bombarded by beat-heavy reworkings of ‘Twist And Shout’, especially the last one because it is a beat-heavy reworking of ‘Twist And Shout’, only with a few slices of Salt N Pepa’s ‘Push It’ mixed in. It makes little sense, but then today we’re living in a world where silver golf visors are ‘in’, people cover themselves in green paint and the future of great pop is being mapped out by a fat Danish dude with a ‘tache.

There’s barely a pause for a bite of guarana fudge before Audio Bullys pack out the tent on the back of a couple of great gonzo singles. There may be some debate about how well people actually ‘get’ the irony involved in their brand of hooligan house, but live the only real question worth answering is ‘do they make us want to dance?’ The answer, it seems, is a resounding ‘fuck yeah!’ and from the skull-pumping head-rush of ‘100 Million’ to the onstage graffiti artists spraying along to ‘Ego War’ these are tunes that create a thrilling rush of blood to the feet.

If Audio Bullys have the beats, then The Streets have the soul, and when Mike Skinner arrives we’ve all had several hours in which to ingest enough stimulants to shame a touring Libertine. He’s virtually inaudible for the first few tracks but when he does get going the results are immense. ‘Don’t Mug Yourself’ arouses a million ‘Ois!’ from the crowd, ‘It’s Too Late’ is

still unbearably sad and ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ segues perfectly into the chorus from The Special’s ‘Ghost Town’.

Sensing the mood, Skinner opts to let his lyrical wisdom take a back seat and concentrates on stirring up a party. The challenge he now faces is to maintain that crucial bite to his art while still reaching out to the average guy on the street. Tonight, however, it’s all about the good vibes and Skinner is allowed to coast on the strength of hero-worship alone. He could be singing a track called ‘Down The Docs With Genital Warts’ and we’d still be transformed into a bunch of grinning lunkheads happy to spill Stella on our own shoes in adoration.

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