TWISTED WHEEL

Radio 1/NME Stage 12 noon Saturday

photos by Steve Gunn

The first act on Radio 1/NME stage on a sodden Saturday morning. It is banging, totally banging, it down. Yet the space is rapidly filled with yellows: the fluorescent army of 20 (to prevent the crowd surfers – a frequent occurrence at Twisted Wheel gigs) and the T in the Park  waterproof poncho-wearers. One guy is happily doing forward rolls throughout the crowd.

There’s been a change of band members in the group with drummer Adam Clarke being replaced by Eoghan Clifford. Jonny Brown still fronts and Rick Lees is on the bass.  If there is any band capable of driving pure rock into the relentless greyness, it’s this one. By their second song, ‘We Are Us’, people are pogoing.  Jonny, now with longer hair and optimistic shades, careers through ‘Lucy The Castle’, ‘Let Them Have it All’ and ‘You stole the Sun’ – well, somebody certainly did as it is pelting buckets. The forward roller nonetheless is now upright and doing a delighted dance to ‘You Stole The Sun’. The ferocious ‘O, What Have You Done?’ hints at the latent punk revolution still coiled up in this tight unit.

It requires a fierce kind of energy to open a big stage at a festival in a torrential downpour but this is what Twisted Wheel has more than enough of: a purified rage and vision not seen much of these days. Long may they bring the antidote to dismal times.