I hadn’t listened to these guys for about a decade but worked my way through Captain, HIImportant, all the b sides and 100 BW two weeks back. Man, they were so good around this era.
Went to Glastonbury 1998 the monsoon and sewage river year. Stood in a tent waiting for them for an hour and they were so late, I was enduring theaudience setting up until finally a voice came over the PA saying that Idlewild couldn’t get their van to the tent to play due to flooding.
I so wanted them to play (plus it was so cold outside) that I just stood there in denial. And about 5 minutes later, these soaking wet scruffy guys carried in their gear on their backs. I couldn’t tell if it was actually them because of how misty the tent was.
They literally dumped guitar cases, amps, pedals etc on stage and left loads of it in the cases, but plugged in their guitars to whatever was around.
Roddy shouted something basic like ‘We’re Idlewild’ as his mic wasn’t set up and they rattled through about 8 songs in the 15 minutes window they had using the first song to soundcheck as they played it.
Along with Lightning Bolt’s set at ATP where they started playing over the Sonic Youth encore, it was the most rock n roll, exciting thing I’ve ever witnessed. By that point, most people had left the tent yet they played that short set to a mosh pit the size of a small pub like their life depended on it, and had to be forcibly removed from the stage. A load of us, complete strangers, hung around after just to talk about how awesome it was.
Amazing to think the only reason they performed like this at the time and were so visceral was because they found it awkward being on stage and were shy… Roddy shouted and rolled around because he didn’t like singing or making eye context I read somewhere.
