The Human League close Ben And Jerry's Sundae

Super Furry Animals, The Futureheads and more perform

United Kingdom | 27 July 2009

The Human League closed the festival with an hour-long blistering set spanning their 30-year career.

Coming on stage amid light showers they entertained the crowd in the rain using their charm, professionalism and back catalogue of hits.

No artist got the same reaction from the crowd during the whole two-day event. Opening with ‘Get It Right’, it was their third song ‘Love Action’ that started seeing people swaying en mass in their ponchos.

Singer Phil Oakley started fully dressed in long coat, suit jacket, trousers and black tie and was joined by a full backing bands including the two lead female vocalists Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall whom he infamously picked up in a Sheffield nightclub in 1980.

After playing penultimate song, ‘Mirror Man’, Oakley thanked the crowd for making this show their quickest sell out of the year and preserving with them given the light shower of rain still falling from the grey sky. But it was ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’ that had everybody singing along before they returned to close the event with an encore of ‘Electric Dreams’.

It had been a day that had started sunny and become more overcast with sets from The Answering Machine, Red Light Company and The Futureheads, the latter entertaining for around 45 minutes with a set that included ‘Hounds Of Love’ which had been jokingly called ‘House Of Love’ in some mid-set stage banter to the front row.

Super Furry Animals rocked a hot Clapham Common on Saturday with a career spanning performance as they headlined the first day of Bthe festival.

Despite early sound problems which saw singer Gruff Rhys’ microphone not working properly and backing vocals louder then they should be, the band used one word visual cue cards for the audience to instigate whooping, clapping and thanking as they played songs from their nine albums. Playing ‘Rings Around The World’, ‘Demons’ and early single ‘God! Show Me Magic’ the band got people up from their picnic spots.

Earlier on in the day Marina And the Diamonds really worked hard to entertain those at the front of the stage and sounded gorgeous to those chilling elsewhere around the rather large site.

The festival however was marked by hundreds of children running around amongst family picnics, a big slide, a petting zoo, enjoying 30 or so flavours of Ben And Jerry’s ice cream that was the star of the show.

Check back for our review of Ben And Jerry’s Sundae On The Common 2009.

By Julian Savitch-Lee