The rain drives down hard in blobs the size of golf balls. Heads start to bleed. Some of us huddle for the warm, fried-onion-steamy protection of burger van awnings. The rest are left out in the open, the ground turning to mush beneath their feet, their pints overflowing with rain water.
Starsailor make the perfect music for such a sodden afternoon. Tunes of such melancholy, melodic, folksome beauty that you can't help but enjoy feeling sorry for yourself beneath the lowering clouds.
James Walsh has - and it has been said many times before- the voice of a bruised angel. He rarely speaks in between songs. Which might be because his speaking voice sounds like a helium powered gnome's.
That said, the sound is perfect for Starsailor this afternoon as fantastic renditions of debut single 'Fever' and Van Morrison's, 'The Way Young Lovers Do' cut through the storm. "This is your first lesson in humility" says Walsh in a bitchy message to Ash's Tim Wheeler before introducing 'Good Souls'. "The second is Neil f**king Young." He might have a point. But few here know what he's on about?
Aimee Mann meanwhile, comes nowhere near anything vaguely touching greatness this afternoon. The rain holds back for her entire set as the Boston singer/songwriter dips into the AOR of her Magnolia soundtrack and three albums. It's plodding, one-dimensional stuff which seems to go nowhere and fails to arouse the crowd. Aimee herself doesn't exactly seem to be enjoying it either.
The great thing about festivals is that there's always a surprise. If that's £3.50 worth of tortilla then Gary Moore is a Saturday teatime entertainer? With the steam rising from our sodden souls and the clouds moving slowly off towards Hackney, onto the stage bounces a young Gordon Brown lookalike dressed in black and we're off. Bang, Gary strokes his Les Paul and throws one arm aloft while his face takes on an agonised grimace that falls somewhere between 'foreskin caught in zip' and that old fella they found in a Peat Bog 2000 years after he snuffed it. It stays like that for an hour.
It's sensational stuff. No sulking indie mush, no earnest yank college rock, this is the Blues and Gary's still got it. Through 'You Upset Me Baby', 'Cold Black Night' and the pertinent 'Stormy Monday', Gaz sings the song as quickly as possible before delivering a master class in air guitar playing - only with an actual, real live instrument plugged in. Add in some of the most tasteful blues licks you'll hear on a live stage, and why - if there aint people eating their hats all around us. As the closing notes of 'Still Got The Blues' soar up into the evening air we are cleansed, reborn, dry at last and ready for another tortilla.
