ICK OF IT ALL - playing in the even-more-popular-than-before Vans tent - telling the assembled punkers, "Hey! If anyone's confused, we're not SUEDE - they're on over there!"

They are, too, all dressed in black like a sheer heart attack, as JB Jovi would say, and doing a fair old impersonation of the first proper scarily cool band (give or take the Poo Poos Explosion, natch) of this thoroughly erratic day. 'Animal Nitrate' growls as groovily as ever and the Bowie-esque brawl of 'Coming Up' has your mind bending back to Top Of The Pops circa '74, when boys weren't sure if they really were boys any more. Crucially, we've also back-flipped to the era when half the audience wanted to fuck Brett and the other half simply wanted to be him. Nice. Admittedly Justine Frischmann's 'surprise' guest appearance consists of much punk squealing and little else, and Suede's propensity for ballads leads to mucho impatient twitching beyond the moshpit. But when they're good they're light years ahead of anything else that dared tread the boards on this barmy day."

by Simon Williams