I’ve always like Jon Maclure and his Mad Head. I imagine the inside of his brain looks like a Lottery Machine with 49 different ideas bouncing around it at any one time.
After the first interview we ever did on 6Music – around the time of the ‘Bandits’ demos – I went to meet him in a pub over the road after the show. By the time I got there he’d made friends with a 50-something-Random at the bar who played harmonica and they were busking together outside.
Maclure came to my rescue on Friday as the 6Music programme, live at Latitude Festival, threatened to fall apart. First Speech Debelle pulled out (her van hadn’t turned up) and then the Pet Shop Boys got themselves stuck in traffic on the A12 and phoned in sick.
Unphased, we collared Maclure, who, with ten minutes notice, played two songs live on a borrowed acoustic guitar and went down a storm in our little BBC tent. What a gent.
In return I took him off to see KAP BAMBINO later, who were just brilliant (again). Better than at Glastonbury. Like a female John Lydon, fronting a latter-day electro-punk outfit, they are absolutely compelling when they’re on form. The agitated, pulsing rhythms ricochet through the air while singer Caroline flips about the stage like a pinball.
It was a young moshpit as well. So young, we eventually felt like old men and withdrew to the bar just outside the tent where we ended up drinking cider and being accosted by a passing Stag Do. Not a bad evening, really.
PS by coincidence REVEREND & THE MAKERS in Session on Radio 1 on Monday night (July 20th).
PPS anyone going to the Tramlines Festival this weekend?