Yes, absolutely great festival, way better than '98 and not just because it was nice and sunny as opposed to cold, wet and very very muddy!
The crowds weren't that bad at all, even moving around between the two main stages was relatively easy. REM was fairly packed out on the Friday night, many people leaving regularly for beers and talking through all the stuff they didn't know, even booing when they announced a new song (of which there were 3) during the encore. Bad Day was probably the best of the new songs.
Jimmy Cliff was without doubt the highlight on the main stage. Great performance, although I knew some of his stuff I wasn't aware exactly how much of it I did know. Bar one song which was about September 11 I knew the lot. Must dig out my old cassettes.
The Music were awesome, definitely a better option than Zwan. The standout performances from their set being The People and Human. For a band that are so young they turned in a really accomplished performance, I expect big things for them in the future.
The musical highlights for me were probably them, Los Lobos headlining the acoustic stage on the Saturday night, superlative musicianship and a great performance, despite fairly small crowd and The String Cheese Incident, opening on the Lost Stage on the Sunday morning. The other major highlight of course was the sunrise on the Sunday morning, and the assorted cakes and truffles purchased over the weekend.
The Waterboys were pretty good too, in particular a track called (I think) Isle of Iona (?) from the latest CD Universal Hall which I haven't yet got.
There seemed to be an unusually high number of sound problems on all the stages, power outage on the oneworld stage on the Sunday afternoon meant we caught an excellent set by Slovo - must check out some of their stuff - and a slightly curtailed set by Yes.
Another band that I must check out some albums by are The Frames, I caught the last half of their set while waiting for Sharon Shannon's performance (the stage was running late) and need to hear more. Kind of like an Irish REM if you really wanted to pigeon-hole them.
See you all in the Lunched Out Lizard next year!
Dom - will develop my photos and bring them up on the weekend.