September 26, 2000

San Francisco Golden Gate Park

There is no queue for the beer tent. A perfect crowd for [a]Travis[/a], then...

The fog does the decent thing, staying the other side of Twin Peaks. How Alice (a radio station) deserves such good karma after playing that awful Sting song to death is a mystery, but it's a gloriously sunny day. The station also has an obsession for Sarah McLachlan and all things Lilith, so the park is full of earth mothers and teen-hippie daughters, dot-com t-shirts and handwoven blankets. There is no queue for the beer tent.

A perfect crowd for Travis, then. Unfortunately, they are buried at the bottom of the bill with only Keanu Reeves' vanity project Dogstar preceding them. It's only just turned 12.30 when the familiar chords of 'Writing To Reach You' echo across the meadow. And not long after that the familiar words of the "songs are bookmarks" spiel ring across the glade. They have half an hour to convert 14,000 people, and Fran Healy is talking too much.

A half-hour Travis set, though, is a pretty persuasive creature. 'Why Does It...?', 'Turn', 'Driftwood', 'Slide Show' and the closing 'Blue Flashing Light' are the selections, and spark mild to middling interest as the sponsored beach balls fly around. New song 'Humpty Dumpty Love Song' is played live for the first time and is the usual twee poppy nonsense, like a faster, happier 'Driftwood'. Quite good in other words.

A few songs, a few too many stories, and then it's off to the autograph tent. Travis may not have been blaring from every car radio from here to the Oregon border this summer - as they rightfully should have been - but it's not for want of trying.

The next band have had more than their fair share of airplay. Tonic's big hit 'If You Could Only See' sends anyone who spent time near a radio in 1997 running screaming for the trees. Mercifully, they also only get 30 minutes..

The Go-Go's, on the other hand, are California Pop Royalty and allowed to indulge themselves in a couple of new songs between 'Vacation' and 'Our Lips Are Sealed'. They were pioneers, lest we forget, maybe the first successful all-female songwriting pop band and the mothers and the daughters give their respects. Then they do 'We Got The Beat', mixing in a chorus of 'All The Small Things' and everyone has a good old jump around.

Beck seems to also have been handed the note that says "play the hits, dammit". And so he does - 'Loser', 'Where It's At', 'Devil's Haircut', 'Sexx Laws', with that curious Beckian flair for being alternately very annoying and annoyingly very good. Look at me, he says. I can do heavy metal/stoner hip hop/paisley funk/alt-country, look. Very fucking clever. Then he slides into a sublime, loping 'Jack Ass' and he's your best mate again. At 5pm on the dot, he strings yellow caution tape across the stage and the crowd politely files out onto Haight Street. To the best of nme.com's knowledge, no portaloos were set on fire.