Just got back from seeing the best band I've seen in a while. Hey it's Wilco - I know we gushed about their set at Latitude last weekend but, wow, watching 20,000 people go mental just now was icing on the Uncut cake. Sounding like the best bits of Creedence Clearwater in parts, especially during 'Handshake Drugs' - I learnt the word for melt in Spanish - 'Derritir' - that's what Nels Cline's guitar combined with the band jamming behind him made me and thousands of overs feel like. Wilco, as John said so eloquently last weekend, fucking rock. I lost myself spacily in the proggy guitar sounds, and the vocals, and the swathed in mist, woken up between songs by the crowd chanting 'Ole Ole Ole Ole' - a chant started by Tweedy from the start. Very similar set to what we saw last week in Suffolk; 'Side With The Seeds', Spiders (Kidsmoke)' and 'I'm The Man Who Loves You' - but with thousands of people dancing, waving lights and flags, the atmosphere is amazing - Wilco deserve a crowd like this - what a difference a few miles makes. Devo are in the hallway to the press area, all in red builders hats, - very surreal - they are about to do a press conference before playing Benicassims' headline slot a bit later. Off to see Dinosaur Jr now - saw Mascis again about half hour ago - he still hasn't sorted his set list! Hope there's plenty of 'Bug'!

Where was everyone? In 1978, closing in on 100,000 people marched six miles from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park in East London to see The Clash headline a benefit concert for Rock Against Racism. Last night, RAR celebrated its 30th anniversary with a show at the Hackney Empire and when the evening started there probably weren’t enough people in the venerable old hall to fill a bus – not that this stopped a parade of veteran RAR activists regaling us at windy length and often at great volume with heroic tales of past battles with the National Front and BNP and their various Nazi allies, the lot of them hoarse and misty-eyed as the din of bygone conflict roared no doubt in their ears and banners flapped before them in an imaginary breeze. There were also several among last night’s musical cast with longstanding links with the organisation – Carol Grimes, who headlined the very first RAR concert, Tom Robinson (with TV Smith on rhythmn guitar), who with TRB supported The Clash at Victoria Park all those years ago, as well as tonight’s ostensible bill-toppers, the ‘legendary’ Misty In Roots. You can probably attribute the somewhat less than meaningful turnout to the absence of a more obviously popular headliner, but there’s interest a-plenty from some quarters in the section of tonight’s show curated by Babyshambles bassist Drew McConnell, which includes an appearance by The View who busk breezily through spunky acoustic versions of “Superstar Tradesman” and “Face For Radio”. The main point of interest here for me, though, is the projected first appearance in what seems like years of Patrick Walden, the guitar genius who fired Babyshambles classics like “Fuck Forever”, “Pipedown”, “Up The Morning” and “Eight Dead Boys”. Pat left the band around 18 months ago for what we’ll call health reasons and has been since recovering. He was due to appear earlier this year at the Cheltenham Jazz festival with bush-haired drummer Seb Roachford, but at the last minute pulled out. Seb’s here tonight, playing drums with Drew – and here’s Drew at the microphone, with an announcement that causes some considerable excitement where I’m sitting. “I’ve been waiting to say these words for a long time,” he says. Adding simply, “Pat Walden.” And out comes Pat, looking a far cry from the skeletal guitar hero of yore, the hollow-eyed spectre I’d last seen when Babyshambles played Shepherd’s Bush Empire in February 2006, after which date Pat dipped out of sight. Pat these days is clearly in thankfully rude health, looks frankly robust in rumpled black shirt and jeans, hair a fashionable mess. He plugs in for a furious takes on Babyshambles’ favourites “The Man Who Came To Stay” and “8 Dead Boys” – one of my favourite tracks from Down In Albion. I got a bit of a sniffy reaction from a lot of sceptical readers when in a review of Babyshambles at Brixton Academy, I described Pat as a cross between Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix, many people thinking I was merely taking the piss or possibly trying to wind up Jeff tweedy. I was doing neither. Walden’s just a fucking genius guitar player. No one I can think of at the moment quite sounds like him and even though tonight he’s low enough in the mix to make me want to hold a gun to someone’s head and tell them to turn every dial in the house up to 11, he still shines, his playing a thing of burnished metallic wonder – the serrated riffs on “The Man. . .” are electrifying and “Dead Boys” just fucking rocks, man. It’s over too soon, of course, and Pat squats stageside as Drew, looking relieved at last now that Pat has actually appeared, introduces first a buoyant Ed Larrikin who turns in a rousing version of the Waterboys’ “Fisherman’s Blues” and then Ali Love, who precedes the brief but very welcome appearance of The View. His name’s not on any of the posters or flyers, but word has gone out that Jerry Dammers is going to appear – either with his new big band or as DJ. In the event, he’s nowhere to be seen tonight and I rather get the impression that his name’s been spread in a last minute attempt to bolster ticket sales. Which tactic would have worked on me, if I hadn’t already been going to see the very welcome return of Patrick Walden.

A surreal cab journey from Valencia airport. Fifi Trixibelle, sister of Peaches Geldof, is in the back of our cab on the way to the Benicassim Festival site, and we arrive to the sight of Iggy & The Stooges creating a massive stage invasion which desperate security tried to hold back... Now accustomed to playing festivals, since the Stooges reformed a couple of years ago, they've been clocking up shows at the rate of knots. This one is pure adrenaline, muscle and all the riffs you can air guitar to, "No Fun", swiftly followed by "I Wanna Be Your Dog", cements the fact that we, have, indeed, arrived. As a Beni virgin, it's a lot to take in. It's dark, it's loud, and there are palm trees and haystacks to sit on. There's a swimming pool too. I've heard that of the capacity crowd, 75% of tickets were sold to non-Spaniards, a festival record. Even more surprisingly, 65% of those were sold to Brits. Which by my late night calculations works out at just over 40% British music fans here to see Muse, Arctic Monkeys et al, without wading knee-deep in cow manure. Bright Eyes came on at midnight, in a flash of white, dressed to the nines in suits, and with more instruments than you can count - Conor Oberst plus a nine-strong-ish string and brass orchestra behind him. It was more Arcade Fire, than Arcade themselves. Intense, lush arrangements, plus bastardisations of tearjerking acoustic numbers like "This Is The First Day Of My Life" into extreme country and western surprised but impressed the festival's maxed-out first night crowd. Recent single "Hot Knives" pumped up and spun the crowd into a dancing frenzy - which tbh is not what you'd expect from their recorded material. Will file setlist from the Bright Eyes show in the morning, having computer difficulties... Off to see the best band you've, and I've, never heard of, huge here in Espana apparently, Los Planetas, on the main stage - catch you in the am, with pics and everything. Vodka fanta limon if anyone's at the bar.

I've blogged previously about Grindhouse's abysmal showing at the American box office, and last night I finally got to see the version of Tarantino's extended Death Proof segment that's getting a UK release in September. Grindhouse was intended as a tribute to the cult movies of the Seventies, the Italian horror flicks, exploitation movies and the post-Easy Rider crash-and-burn road movies. Tarantino's Death Proof is a pretty nasty spin on the latter two -- woman are indeed exploited, in a way that borders uncomfortably on the misogynist, and cars are raced and chased through the badlands of Texas and Tennessee. It revolves around Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a scarred, bequiffed vet of TV shows like The Virginian, The Men From Shiloh and Vegas. He has a big, black, reinforced 1969 Dodge Challenger with a death's head painted on the bonnet in which he pursues and kills girls, four of whom we meet in the Texas Chili Parlour, drinking shots and talking, talking, talking about getting laid and getting stoned and a weekend trip away. It's a kind of white trash Sex In The City jam, and it lasts for at least 20 minutes. Sure, Tarantino has written some crackling movie dialogue -- the Madonna speech in Reservoir Dogs, the Grand Royale debate in Pulp Fiction -- but these zippy, sparky exchanges have previously been restricted to 5 minute chunks and surrounded by equally memorable action scenes. Here, the dialogue just goes on and on. t's like telling a guitarist he does really good solos, and then he goes off and makes an album consisting entirely of... solos. It takes ages for anything to happen, and when it does it starts with poor Rose MacGowan being violently battered around the inside of Stuntman Mike's car until she's extremely bloody and very dead. The other girls are equally unfortunate. We cut foward, 14 months later, to another group of girls (including Rosario Dawson), and we get a replay of the first half of Death Proof. Only this time, there's a car chase and the girls fight back. The car chase is brilliant, actually, one of the best things in the film. It's an old-school, non-CGI face-off (or wing off, door off, windscreen off...) between two Dodge Challengers, in explicit homage to one of Death Proof's key references, Richard Sarafian's 1971 chase flick, Vanishing Point. To give it an extra bump, we get real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell (who doubled for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, and plays herself here) hanging off the hood of one car as it pelts along at breakneck speed, rammed and battered by Stuntman Mike's own Dodge Challenger. At one point, a car crashes through a hoarding advertising a double bill of Scary Movie 4 and Wolf Creek. Maybe this is the balance QT's aiming for: kinda funny, kinda scary. Truth is, Death Proof isn't really either of these things. I'd also worry slightly about the claim QT (via Zoe Bell) makes for Vanishing Point, which is described as one of the "greatest American movies ever made." It isn't. The way QT refuses to distinguish between high and low art is actually pretty interesting. In his world, Scorsese, Kubrick, Godard and Truffaut occupy the same space as Lucio Fulci, Russ Meyer or Richard Sarafian. It's great, because it means there's no sniffy snobbery in his work, he's likely to be as enthusiastic and passionate about 400 Blows as he is Soldier Blue. But here it feels like he's chosen to riff on a genre of movies that's just not really very good. There's some strong performances -- particularly MacGowan, Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bell and Russell. And the car chase is phenomenal. It's just wading through the other 90 minutes that's pretty tough going.

Is it weird to like a record even though it reminds you, however faintly, of something you never liked very much? I only ask because I've been playing this new Iron & Wine record quite a lot this past couple of weeks. The past Iron & Wine albums have had a distinct touch of Simon & Garfunkel about them, I think, in their hushed minimalism, the way Sam Beam sang in a calm whisper that masked all manner of psychic anxieties. "The Shepherd's Dog", though, is a much fuller and more dynamic record. Many of the 12 tracks have driving, rattling grooves and, although there's a still a feeling of air and space, a clarity and precision to each sound in the mix, there's a whole lot more going on. But what's strange, especially in the gentle and persistent undulations of a track like "Lovesong Of The Buzzard", is how it kind of reminds me of Paul Simon's "Graceland". It's not an African influence, exactly; more, perhaps, a sense of a traditionally discreet folksinger hitching his songs to elaborately unravelling rhythms. Fortunately, it works brilliantly, too. Perhaps it's residual indie absolutism, but I'm often a bit suspicious of artists, who've virtually perfected something small, trying to construct a bigger sound that doesn't really suit them. Beam, though, has been extremely clever here. On "White Tooth Man", he and his musicians kick up a momentum that's irresistible and actually psychedelic. But there's still a lightness of touch at all times which ensures, critically, that the musical arrangements don't overwhelm the delicacy of Beam's voice. "Carousel" is more familiar, muted, but even here there's a depth and detailing which reveals itself on fifth, sixth, seventh listens. Listening to "The Shepherd's Dog" as I write, I'm struck by how much there is to take in here, a kind of measured lushness, a subtle hyperactivity, that aligns Iron & Wine firmly with this sector's heavy hitters Calexico and Lambchop; Joey Burns and Paul Niehaus actually contribute to the album, few of you will be surprised to hear. "Wolves (Song Of The Shepherd's Dog)" has just come on. There are weird dub drop-outs, bubbling FX and echoing piano chords reverberating around some Cooder-ish slide, then a fidgety, chattering rhythm that, again, feels a world away from the gothic southern folk with which Beam made his name. I'm thinking of "Graceland" again, and I'm wondering if anyone else has a record they love which reminds them of a record they loathe? Drop me a line below. . .

I know we have to stop banging on about the Latitude festival at some point this year, but I've just been going through some of your comments on the Uncut Latitude blog. I've never seen such a positive response on the Uncut blogs before, exemplified by Dave's pithy, "Superb. Great Atmosphere. Great Organisation." I've just done a bit of unscientific number-crunching, and can now exclusively reveal your favourite bands of the weekend. The Top Five looks something like: 1 Arcade Fire 2 Wilco 3 Cold War Kids 4 The Hold Steady 5 Bat For Lashes Not far off our feelings, there, apart from Cold War Kids, who seem to have provoked some of the more extreme reactions of the weekend, as these comments prove. A quick heads up, next, for the new James Blackshaw album, "The Cloud Of Unknowing". I'm a bit late on this one, since it's out already, though to be honest I've only just found out about it. Blackshaw is a terrific 12-string guitar player from London who constructs long, lustrous pieces that recall those progressive extrapolations of folk music made by John Fahey and the Takoma school - especially, actually, Robbie Basho. Blackshaw doesn't have a peculiar operatic bellow like Basho - in fact, he doesn't sing at all. But he does create a very similar spiritual calm, as wave after wave of guitar roll in. I realise describing it like this makes Blackshaw sound like some kind of new age practitioner, but this is a profoundly deep practise, and he's also not averse to adding discordance to these semi-improvised pastoral trances. When you look at the array of amazing musicians who are working under some notional "acid/freak/free-folk" flag in America (Jack Rose and Ben Chasny are two obvious fellow travellers to Blackshaw), it really points up how thin our indigenous "nu-folk" scene is (God, that name). I think I've done this rant before about how much of the British stuff flogged under this catch-all is really mimsy, well-scrubbed indie with an acoustic guitar. And I think that rant was nailed to a rave about Voice Of The Seven Woods, who's probably the closest kindred spirit to Blackshaw here. The VOT7W album is finally out in a couple of weeks, by the way; one of my favourites of the year. I suspect Blackshaw may be, too. Have a listen at his Myspace.