T in the Park says Friday night's all right

Published on Saturday 11 July 2009 00:30

T IN THE PARK FRIDAY ****

POCKETS of the T in the Park crowd had chosen to observe Fancy Dress Friday, a relatively new T development designed to allow those who wanted to look as foolish as possible for the chance to win VIP tickets to next year's festival.

Smurfs, robots, superheroes and the inevitable Michael Jackson lookalike all filed through the gate, while overhead the festival was officially declared open with a hair-raising aerobatics display by the Red Bull Matadors strafing across the crowd.

This year the line-up is heavily front-loaded, with many of the best acts of the weekend appearing on the first night, including Franz Ferdinand, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Edwyn Collins.

With polite popster James Morrison scheduled to open the Main Stage, the discerning festival-goers headed to the NME Stage to catch LA's premier Hispanic freakout rockers The Mars Volta. Open-air festivals and truncated 45-minute sets are not the natural environment of this formidable free-form unit, but they reined in their improvisatory tendencies to deliver an incendiary set, anchored by a drummer who is a force of nature and enlivened by the gymnastic stage presence of frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala.

Across the site, in the King Tut's Wah-Wah Tent, Edwyn Collins was treating his equipment with more respect, but having just as much of a ball. A couple of years ago, his presence here would have been unthinkable, but his inspiring recovery from a serious stroke was surely advanced a little further by the warm support from the crowd.

They were rewarded with a set which covered all the classic Orange Juice bases, from debut single Falling and Laughing to Rip It Up via his biggest solo hit A Girl Like You, and new material such as the poignant Home Again. Collins was such a chatterbox between songs he had to be nudged along by his band.

The feelgood sounds continued with Glasgow's Camera Obscura in the bijou Futures Tent. Although they are still slightly hesitant performers, they have grown in confidence musically and their sunshine mix of girl group melodies, bittersweet lyrics and Tracyanne Campbell's pure, soulful voice was a disarming combination.

There was no such shyness from Franz Ferdinand on the Main Stage. Franz are seasoned festival performers who never underestimate the power of a singalong hook in their push into new territories. Matinee is a sophisticated pop song by any standards, but what mattered here was that it could get the crowd bouncing along as one.

While Take Me Out was ringing out across Balado, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was modelling a variety of unusual outfits on the NME Stage, while a giant balloon painted up to look like an eyeball was bobbing around the crowd. But the most unexpected element of the New York arch-rock trio's set was the guest appearance of the East Kilbride Pipe Band.

As darkness fell – along with the temperature – it seemed as if everyone had made their way to the main arena to huddle together for warmth. Headliners Kings of Leon must be one of the oddest success stories in recent years. The hirsute rockers from the southern United States turned in a brawny set with a mean outbreak of fuzz bass at one point, but exhibited a rather muted stage presence.

They may have been the popular choice, but the most electric performer of the night was Nick Cave, who played to an undeservedly modest crowd as if his life depended on it. As always, his trusty Bad Seeds were up for the white-knuckle ride to the finish line, providing ferocious backing to Cave's fire-and-brimstone testifying and a climatic ending to a high-octane opening night.

T IN THE PARK - LIVE!

Writers from The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and scotsman.com will be out and about at T in the Park, and you can follow all our updates on our live blog throughout the weekend.