The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

The name says it all. Where London’s other one-day festivals target indie kids or fashionistas, ‘Get Loaded’ is aimed squarely at uncomplicated hedonists. We’re talking about pill-munching young punters who revere Josh Wink’s ‘Higher States of Consciousness’ (not to mention Azzido da Bass’s ‘Doom’s Night’) and who tolerate rock bands only if they deliver anthems and debauchery. In 2005, Happy Mondays headlined the main stage. Last year, Pete Doherty and Babyshambles held court. This year, it’s the turn of The Streets.

It fits. Last seen collaborating with that man Doherty and bragging about crack-fuelled sex with a pop starlet, Mike Skinner is a celebrity version of this festival’s core customer. He’s also a man whose influence you see everywhere these days. With his ‘write about what you know’ philosophy and bedroom musicianship, he taught a generation far too young for punk that anyone could make a record. Problem was, anyone did. Yes, Kate Nash and her infuriating ilk are a direct product of Skinner’s success. As ‘LDN is a Victim’ put it, he’s “the godfather of it all”.

It’s maybe unfair to blame Skinner for his artistic offspring. What you can blame him for is that abomination of a third album. As this decade’s Be Here Now, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living is a monument to the damage cocaine can do to creativity and judgement. Over a year on, it’s still possible to have nightmares about that track where he reads aloud from his record label’s financial accounts. Today, then, is Skinner’s chance to convince people that he’s still worth listening to. He doesn’t take it.

Not helping his cause is the pathetically weak main-stage PA, which ensures that he struggles to be heard above chattering punters. Yet Skinner’s malaise runs deeper. Where once his cockiness was balanced out by sensitivity and self-awareness, it’s plain that success has terminally bloated his ego. He now sees himself less as an outsider looking in than as a man of the people, and today wastes half his set on boring crowd banter and pantomime routines.

During the encore, he plays ‘The Irony of It All’, his inspired juxtaposition of a harmless ‘criminal’ dope smoker and a boastful drunken thug. It loses its impact because, these days, Skinner seems more like the latter than the former. Ironic? You bet.

Skinner isn’t the only act responsible for a dreary main-stage set. Appearing early on, Art Brut are excruciating. That’s partly because the joke is wearing thin, but mainly because, in a setting far from intimate, it’s harder to tolerate Eddie Argos’ flat vocals. The Automatic likewise prove a trial. In the run-up to this performance, a rumour abounded that it would be their annoying keyboardist’s last, raising the tantalising prospect of onstage fistfights. Instead, we get an astonishingly ill-conceived cover of Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’, which closes a set of tired grunge revivalism.

Thought their guitars sound like they’re coming through practice amps half a mile away, Dirty Pretty Things give a decent account of themselves. Carl Barât seems more comfortable as a lone frontman than he once did, and now that people have had a chance to live with that debut album, even its subtler moments are greeted as old friends. Meanwhile, the band’s aesthetic, one of weather-beaten sophistication, seems to be sharpening in focus, boding well for the second LP, which is being recorded in LA as you read this.

M.I.A. recorded her second album Kala all over the world, and today is her chance to parade its eclectic treasures before a wildly enthusiastic public. Playing the Xfm tent, where the sound is fine, she splits her set evenly between old and new, without movement in the crowd stilling for a second. The Kala songs may be sonically more diverse and lyrically less political than those from Arular, but the set is nonetheless a seamless flow, powered throughout by ribcage-rattling beats. The place is already buzzing when she drops ‘Bucky Done Gun’, which pushes the intensity up several notches and serves notice that, as a live act, M.I.A. has arrived. The Xfm tent seems the place to be. After Dirty Pretty Things’ main-stage set, the rush to escape Brighton’s The Go! Team leads one to the finale of Dizzee Rascal’s set, which proves impressively hard and aggressive.

Still, even when you factor in M.I.A. and Dizzee it’s hard to see how this festival is worth its £40 admission fee. Get Loaded in the Park? Probably good advice, in retrospect…

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