@ T in the Park – Part One

 

If you’ve not been before… you’re probably not Scottish and under 25. Middle England has Glastonbury, and young Scots (like, all of them!) have T in the Park.

I spent nearly all day getting up to Scotland, and to be honest I was wondering whether it would be worth the trip. The weatherman (and everyone else) kept on raising one eyebrow and gently warning me that “You know it’s going to rain the entire time?”. It being Scotland, I was expecting – no, dreading – that these warnings would come true and I’d have four days of miserable slogging through mud. I’ve done enough Glastonburys in my time to never want to do that again, so I was getting a bit nervous…

I needn’t have worried. At lunchtime on the last day I was actually lying on nice green grass with my shirt off enjoying the sunshine. Granted, it bucketed down only a half-hour later, but by then the fun had been had and an afternoon of mud was actually a reason to laugh rather than cry. Thank you, nature Goddesses: you smiled on us!

But enough about the weather. The music!

Friday was technically day two as we had arrived early to set up the tents, and we didn’t have passion for any of the acts until Tom Jones was scheduled to start mid afternoon. Sitting on the grass enjoying the sun, beer in hand, R__ commented on the music coming from the main stage, “Hey, isn’t that Tom Jones?”.

And it was.

Originally scheduled to play inside a tent, the cancellation of Jessie J due to a broken foot meant Tom had been promoted to the main stage. After seeing his masterful set, it was completely obvious: This was where he belonged all along.

We hustled over, ploughing deep into the crowd, and we weren’t disappointed. The first three or four numbers were stuff from his latest album, Praise and Blame, which was well received by the crowd but quite obviously not what they came to see. Tom’s voice, powered up by the Main Stage soundsystem, was even more enormous than normal, if such a thing is possible. I, shamefully, haven’t properly explored Praise and Blame, but to get a feel for it check out Burning Hell, which he ripped out at high volume:

Tom must have sensed the crowd’s lack of familiarity with what he was singing, because he quickly shifted to the classics: The Green, Green Grass of Home, Delilah, It’s Not Unusual, Kiss… and by You Can Leave Your Hat On had every single person singing at the top of their lungs. Incredible. He still has it, and my (married) female friend S__ complained afterwards (only half-jokingly, I think) that she was sorry she hadn’t stashed some extra knickers in her handbag so she could have thrown them at him…

The setting couldn’t have been more perfect. The main stage, a blue sky with just the occasional flicker of cloud, the Northern sun hanging in the sky seemingly forever, making the most amazing colours: a fantastic place for a fantastic performance from a true legend.

Tom made 2ManyDJs afterwards seem so… lightweight. They rock, don’t get me wrong, but by all accounts we should have picked up Pendulum instead as they apparently blew the roof off. Next time.

Leaving you with the one song Tom should have sung but didn’t: Sex Bomb.