Fucknuggets. DiS enters the T in the Park site in a foul mood, so DiS is heading straight to hospitality to pick up the photocopied sheets of A4 that have all the stagetimes on. But before that, the first band encountered is The Warlocks, droning out some turgid piece of tuneless shite. Move swiftly on. Move awaaaay from the stage. Nothing to see here.

Upon hearing the recognisable tones of ‘A Picture of Dorian Gray’, it appears The Futureheads are on, so DiS legs it over to the King Tut’s tent as fast as possible. The band look a bit bemused. “I cannae believe we’re playing here, like” says bespectacled guitarist Ross. Their stop-start eccentric pop is tighter than ever and they suit the big stage. DiS swells with pride, shouts “tune!” at the Kate Bush cover, and leaves. Mood has improved considerably.

Inevitable annual meet’n’greet ensues in hospitality. We purchase a bottle of water, much to the disgust of the throng of music industry, ‘local bands’, and media whores who’ve already started on the Tennants. The holy Photocopied Sheets Of A4 Paper are swiped from the media cabin and we’re off. Rah.

Feeling the need to support the local talent, we make the trek to the T-Break tent. Or the Hidden Tent. The tent that nobody really mentions cos it’s full of mainly, urrrghgghgh, UNSIGNED bands. Small Enclosed Area are the first we spy, and more “aww bless” thoughts go through DiS’s head, having seen this band’s first ever gig a few years ago in, errr, the Mosset Tavern in Forres. SEA are nippers who like Tool (who doesn’t?) and it shows. They’re all dressed for the occasion in white, and a throng of rockers are screaming in appreciation.

Meanwhile, Snow Patrol are playing the stage next door, so we catch the end of their set. Gary Lightbody looks very rosy-cheeked and is making ‘Bo Selecta’ references (groan). Considering how much fannying about he’s been doing with the Reindeer Section, it’s a wonder anyone still knows who Snow Patrol are, but the new stuff sounds good. DiS starts to overheat and considers purchasing a beverage but the queue for tokens is massive, so we get chips’n’curry sauce instead. Price: £2.00 (the cheapest we could find).

It’s now Kings of Leon’s turn. DiS’s attention is drawn to the two non-bearded band members. We like them. Mmmmm. But we’re not watching because we fancy them, we’re watching because of their brand of blues rock is surprisingly refreshing and pleasing on the ear. A pogo pit appears in full for ‘Red Morning Light’. Yes, King of Leon rock.

Miss The Proclaimers on the main stage but can hear them in the background with some very tasty pedal steel guitar going on. We head to the new X-Tent, a very welcome addition to the T in the Park range of, um, tents. Having seen Har Mar Superstar in the past and thought he was just a fat twat prancing around in his underwear, for some reason this time round he was cool. He’s still a fat twat prancing around in his underwear but hey, this is MADE for festivals. The kidzzzz are lapping it up and staring in disbelief. “Which one of you is going to suck my dick tonight?” he questions.

DiS leaves after ‘EZ Pass’ (TUNE) and heads back to the T-Break tent to wait for Dogs Die In Hot Cars, who not only have an ace name but they sound like a million and one bands we like; the newest comparison drawn is Talking Heads, which is a very ace thing indeed. Needless to say, their happy pop cheers us up some more (this band will be huge), but now we’re knackered and need booze.

By the time of recovery, DiS is pissed off to discover we’ve missed Super Furry Animals, and also the first song of The Flaming Lips set, which was apparently The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’. Grrrrrrr. The ‘Lips are all dressed in red and white, and are surrounded by the now obligatory dancing people in animal costumes (and later in the set, members of Super Furry Animals perch behind the drum kit). As previously reported, the ‘Stripes pulled out at the last minute. Instead of getting in a replacement, the promoters moved the Flaming Lips up to the main stage. Due to Wayne Coyne fannying about in between songs and the band extending the outros more than necessary, they only end up playing five or six tunes! But what a set it is. Class all the way and some great crowd interaction. They even played ‘Thank You Jack White (For The Fiberoptic Jesus That You Gave Me)’. Band of the day by a long mile, despite DiS being surrounded by clueless ned who was trying to tell us the reason the band played so few songs was because they don’t have enough for a full set. Idiot.

We catch a bit of the Polyphonic Spree on the other stage but they don’t impress us as much as previously. Tim was wearing a nice tartan robe though. Likewise REM – a few songs in and already we’re bored shitless. Gutted. We try out The Mars Volta instead, who can only be described as “pish”. Well, they can also be described thusly: mental live show, ear-bleeding volume, no fucking songs whatsoever. Sort it out. Bring back At The Drive-In!

Now rather knackered and pissed off again, DiS wanders out of the arena of fix the tent, which will be our home for the night, but not before checking out a bit of The Music, who have pulled a big crowd of neds due to the nature of their boogie woogie wah wah guitar type indie music. What we see is great but we’re not sure if we could stomach an hour of it, so bedtime it is…

SUNDAY 13th JULY 2003

Lineup looks much better today. DiS cracks open a beer at 9.30am and tries to hide from the sun.

Some utter stupidity in the land of scheduling has Longview, the first band of the day, due onstage at 12pm. What time were the gates due to open? Yes, 12pm. Dumbasses. Anyway, the mind is not made up about Longview. We can’t decide if we really like them or really, really hate them. They remind us of indie would-be-goods Ballroom. They look fucking terrible and have zero stage presence. But there’s something about their tunes we like. Nice anthemic stuff for student bedsits. Hmm. *Strokes chin and returns to sit on the fence*

The moment we’ve been looking forward to for ages is seeing The Darkness open the main stage today. The sun is beaming down and the crowd is – to put it bluntly – fucking massive. In fact, it’s probably the biggest we’ve ever seen it at this time of day. The Darkness are the perfect festival band. To think they even set foot on Camden’s grimy toilet circuit seems impossible now, as this is a band made for big stages, as Justin proves with all his prancing and bum wiggling. In their minds, this is Queen at Wembley Stadium. Great tunes, pompous guitar solos, humorous banter, swearing, and a costume change – it’s over in half an hour, which is all too short. Fucking fantastic. Everybody talks about them for the rest of the day, including OK Go, which we’ll get to later.

DiS shoves to the front for Echo & The Bunnymen, who attract an entirely different crowd. We wonder if their place on the bill was at the request of headliners Coldplay, who are well-known for their love of the mighty Bunnymen. Anyhow, it’s been ages since DiS saw the Bunnies and ages since we listened to them, but we’re delighted that they stick to a proper festival set of songs – ie. the ‘hits’. So we get ‘Rescue’, ‘Heads Will Roll’, ‘The Cutter’, ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, ‘Seven Seas’, ‘The Killing Moon’, ‘The Back Of Love’, ‘Bring on the Dancing Horses’ and ‘Lips Like Sugar’. The Bunnies aren’t really made for this kind of slot at a festival. It must be humiliating to be placed after The Darkness and before the Sugababes. Mac is uncharacteristically quiet inbetween songs. Disappointing there. But the set is top-notch, and DiS wants to join their band. That would be cool.

The Cooper Temple Clause have no idea how to construct a festival-happy set. Opening with new songs, one of them is ‘Promises Promises’, which is only going to be known to the hardcore gig-goers and downloaders. The first ‘known’ track they play is ‘Who Needs Enemies?’, when a more faster song like ‘Panzer Attack’ probably would’ve been more appropriate for the mini moshers present. Never mind.

Aberdeen =emo= band Alyssa’s Wish are next up at T-Break. DiS likes their energy and frontman Kris’s nonsensical gibberish banter. It seems that half the tent is drunk. Jolly good. Alyssa’s Wish are developing into something special and are closer to attaining the all-important stamp of individuality to set them apart from the hundreds/thousands of other bands doing this sorta thing. They can belt out a good show with some impressive riffary. DiS feels like overheating again but obviously not as much as Kris, who’s developed an impressive sweat. Drink some water, young man!

We’re pissed about having to miss [cayto] and in another feat of dumb scheduling today, The Coral and the Inspiral Carpets both clash. BUGGER! DiS plumps for the latter. We’ve seen both Clint Boon and Tom Hingley at T In The Park before, but not on the same stage together. Again, this is the perfect festival band. They know that people want the hits, and they deliver them. The reaction from the crowd is incredible, so DiS decides to brave being at the front and jumping along. Hingley manages to fuck up the microphone twice, so it gets off to a slow start but immediately picks up with ‘This Is How It Feels’, the 1990 indie anthem. The band look visibly taken aback at the massive singalong and cheering it generates. Top festival moment. Hurrah.

As soon as they’re off, DiS runs like the wind to see All-American Rejects, but unfortunately they’re halfway through their last song. The band are covered in sweat and are jumping into the audience. The young crowd are going mad and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that this band are going to be very big indeed. Back across the field, Torqamada are playing dumb rawk music and striking poses to rival The Darkness. We like Torqamada. DiS is getting knackered again and goes on the search for beer and pop music.

OK Go think the Darkness are “totally fucking awesome” and to prove it, Damian imitates Justin’s “RRROCKS!” chant to the crowd and attempts a hilarious falsetto vocal. Tee hee! The atmosphere lags a bit during the songs which aren’t their two singles. Seems the album hasn’t really caught on yet. But OK Go are fun, and even try out their boyband routine for the first time in Scotland, which has the crowd screaming in delight. Super.

An unimpressed DiS spends the entire set of The Streets waiting in the queue for the Orange tent, to pick up the all-important mobile phone which had gone in for recharging. The Streets were pretty dull, actually. Mike Skinner’s “I’m more crazy than you!” taunts were met by chants of “fuck off!” After this, it’s time for Coldplay, and there’s no way DiS is going to make it to the front, so we perch near the mixing desk.

The sound for Coldplay was utter pish to the highest degree. Turn up the fucking volume. This is the headlining band of the festival, so sort it out! DiS’s mood dampens more when the band stick to their normal gigging set and ignore a big chunk of ‘Parachutes’. It looks like they’re going through the motions, save for a few crowd-pleasing Oasis taunts and Chris Martin royally sucking up to his admirers (Scottish audiences are easily pleased). The hits (you know the ones) are all saved for the end of the set. The set includes two new songs which both sound like the Bunnymen’s ‘Lips Like Sugar’. Curiouser and curiouser. Several encores later, which included some very nice green lasers for ‘Clocks’, Ian McCulloch joins them onstage and the band get to live out their We ARE Echo And The Bunnymen fantasy as they play, you guessed it, ‘Lips Like Sugar’ (“one of the greatest songs ever,” they say).

As DiS is shoving the tent back in its bag and masses of people are trying to escape before the traffic gets bad, there are four men onstage after Coldplay, all wearing kilts and singing ‘Flower Of Scotland’. Oh dear. Meanwhile, Underworld are still playing the night away to weary drunkards and drugged-out boys and girls.

Happy 10th anniversary T In The Park. We’ll see you again next year.