CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS FROM THE SYDNEY V FESTIVAL HERE!

Do Smashing Pumpkins hate their fans? This thought crossed our minds as we suffered through the 20+ minutes of prog-art-metal guitar wankery, I mean ‘United States’. Seriously what is this? When did Smashing Pumpkins devolve into full blown metal shredding freaks? It must have been some time in the 10+ years since we last bought an album of theirs. Then again, Billy Corgan has cited Dimebag Darrell as his favourite contemporary guitarist for some years now. And with the silvery, 90s dance party* dress of flaps, it all makes sense. A bit. Not really.

It started so brilliantly. The unmistakable opening, chiming notes of Today sent many hundreds of us running like hyped up kids into the crowd. It might have been a somewhat quickened run-through of that track, but who cares! They’re here! I fucking LOVED that song, man! Etc. And so it goes. Soma, so well. Tonight, Tonight. Everyone is smiling, swaying, yelling along, lost in the moment. It’s spectacular. This is what festivals are for.

A shame then it only lasted about five tracks before Billy broke out The Metal. On the plus side, this allows Jimmy Chamberlain to let rip in his unendingly complex way, and he is a drummer of incredible skill and tuneful musicality. But still, this is tiring after about 15 minutes of incessant pummeling. An acoustic version of 1979 and an again, super-fast version of Bullet With Butterfly Wings cannot rescue this set from such dross as The Star Spangled Banner. We’re Australian, dude, apathy doesn’t come much more political. And I think that guy, Jimi Hendrix might have beat you to it.

It was cute when Billy Corgan played a few notes of Duran Duran and included a wonderful Church song (“they’re Australian” – oh, thankyou), Reptile in the encore before racing through Cherub Rock and spending a stupid amount of time walking around the stage waving. If it’s so hard to play the killer songs (AT A FESTIVAL, no less,) which made your band famous, for the people who bought them and made you a fortune, then don’t bother coming on tour. Go back to pressing a few hundred vinyl copies of your record and selling them over the internet. The world has moved on.

Continuing a backwards trek through the day, we’d spent about 10 minutes at Duran Duran, and at the time, their half of the ground was packed. They were doing the tailored suit rock thing, Hungry Like A Wolf going down a treat with the goosed up, loosed up masses who were digging the camp factor massively. Perhaps the festival (and considerably younger) crowd gave them a little kick in the pants. But once they broke out the material from the latest record, hordes started making their way to the Pumpkins. Fools! You might have had a better time where you were, perhaps. But we couldn’t have known.

Before this, the main stage had been just about destroyed by Josh Homme’s QOTSA who had the crowd having kittens, nailed as it were, by their unGodly massive sound. “I wanna fuck everyone of you, believe me,” he said somewhat lecherously, but instead just fucked our minds with an uncompromising, down home set of dirty rock and roll.

QOTSA as an outfit are tighter than a drum, holding down the massive bluesy groove on top of which Homme lets wail with his unmistakable vocals. Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen (lately of a Perfect Circle) locks in wayward time signatures and switches over to lapsteel for the mindbending 3s and 7s. Oliveri replacement Michael Shuman’s long head of hair is sweat drenched two songs in, and shirtless drummer Joey Castilo looks entirely animalistic and completely at home filling the chair that was once warmed by Dave Grohl.

“Sydney, I gotta tell you, I’ve always wanted to hold your balls in my hand,” Homme joked before throwing back one of countless blown up plastic orbs which has made its way to the stage. And QOTSA did just that, through nothing more than doing what they do exceptionally well, revving the crowd and clearly having a blast on the stage.

Before this we’d seen the original line in post-punk cool Britannia in the form of the Jesus and Mary Chain, whose effortless cool and 60s tinged sound has been imitated endlessly since their 1984 inception – by fellow Creation records labelmates Oasis most obviously, among others. Their big, simple, garage-ish guitar sound is indelible and in the case of the 23 years young single Just Like Honey, and their dozen other tracks, timeless. Pasty British bands in sunglasses in the Australian heat always look a little uncomfortable on stage, but the Jesus and Mary Chain in their short cut, greying hair, suit jackets and shades, took it all in stride and let their output speak for itself.

As the day geared up, it was Modest Mouse who elicited the first real wild abandon from the crowd, once their set hit the point of no return with Float On. Four years on from its release and that song shows no sign of wear, as perfection will not, and tracks from the breakout Good News for People Who Love Bad News are still the band’s best received material live. The permanent addition of Johnny Marr probably left a lot of people of a certain vintage pining for a Smiths reunion, but he certainly appears perfectly happy just being part of a well functioning band. Having two drummers allows Modest Mouse to bust out ear catching percussion elements while holding the groove, but it’s seemingly possessed frontman Isaac Brock who is the eye of the storm. It’s impossible to look away as he stirs himself practically into frenzy, squealing, yelping, and when that doesn’t get your attention, playing the banjo. Who knew the banjo could really rock like that? Thankyou for teaching us, Modest Mouse.

As we had arrived, Hot Hot Heat were winding up their set. A long meandering search for the V Bar made apparent how huge the grounds were and that you were likely to have to choose a stage and stick to it. So we stuck it out on the main rock stage for the day – all apologies to CSS, Cut Copy and the Presets, whose sets are hopefully reviewed elsewhere on the site.

Despite the crushing disappointment of the Smashing Pumpkins, the V Festival is a really great day out. The surrounds are idyllic, you can even camp out on chairs under trees if you are so inclined. Everything is easy to get to, there are ample toilet blocks and a pleasing lack of morons with southern cross tattoos, the ranks of which have so weirdly swelled the Big Day Out in recent years. The age restriction makes for a much more mellow crowd, to the point even where most people adhere to the traffic signs which direct you the long way around between stages, instead of just cutting across by going the wrong way. This is nothing short of amazing when you consider how many people there are, who’ve been drinking for the most part since midday. The cops walk around looking like they wish they had something to do, but they come up short with such a well-behaved turn out. Then it’s only a 10 minute walk to the city and wherever you need to go, instead of fighting the great unwashed on your way home from arse-end nowhere Homebush Bay.

It’s so polite it’s almost not rock, but we liked it.

*thanks to my buddy for that astute observation.