T in the Park has never seen anything like it.
Sixty thousand revellers, the majority under 25 and some of them barely in their teens, singing along at the tops of their voices to a 70-year-old Welsh balladeer whose biggest hits came more than 40 years ago.
Tom Jones delighted the packed audience with a brilliant set including top hits Delilah, Mama Told Me Not To Come, Green Green Grass Of Home and a typically funky version of Kiss, inducing the biggest Friday night singalong in the sun the main stage has ever enjoyed.
It was the perfect set on a perfect day of great music, great atmosphere and great weather.
After the torrential rain midweek, the fear was T in the Park would be a mudbath, but while the early campers had to suffer a churned up campsite, the arena itself was in perfect nick to welcome the vast audience as Dunfermline’s own Big Country opened the main stage.
Despite their early slot, there was a sizeable crowd to cheer the band on stage, with another Welshman frontman Mike Peters intent on turning the Balado estate into his own Fields Of Fire.
Swinging a Dunfermline FC strip round his head, he launched it into the crowd and partied with the front row of the pit during their biggest hit song. Other hits included Harvest Home, In A Big Country and Wonderland which had the crowd in singalong mood.
The crowds moved in quickly afterwards though for Dundee heroes The View, whose superb greatest hits set included singles Grace, Same Jeans, Superstar Tradesman, Wasted Little DJs, Sunday and Shock Horror, with the acoustic Face For The Radio the highlight.’Best place in the world’Kieren Webster told the adoring audience, “This is the best place in the world to be right now.” Offstage he declared the gig even better than last year’s main stage debut.
He said, “I thought it was amazing, we couldn’t ask for a better crowd. I hope we lived up to expectations, I thought it was even better than last year.”
On the evidence of the massive queue at the signing tent afterwards, they more than lived up to fans’ hopes.
The Friday line-up was bigger than ever, with five stages and 24 acts to choose from, including Glasgow four-piece Kassidy, who opened the Radio 1/NME stage, Eliza Doolittle and 2 Many DJs in the King Tuts tent and seven of the UK’s most promising young bands on the T-Break stage.
The ever popular fancy dress parade produced a colourful array of leopards, tigers, bears and other animals, including a wonderful Muttley (Dick Dastardly’s canine sidekick), along with red Indians, men in pink tights and a pair of Star Wars stormtroopers.
The weather turned decidedly chilly as the night wore on, but the crowd was suitably warmed up by headliners Arctic Monkeys who strode on stage to the loudest cheer of the day.
The new, wider audience area for the main stage was packed as Sheffield’s finest belted out tunes from their latest album Suck It And See along with their three previous LPs.
The band haven’t had a top ten hit for four years, but their popularity remains undiminished as the audience’s rapturous response showed.
Not surprisingly though the biggest roars of the night came from the big hits during the 90-minute set. All in all, a tremendous first day with, hopefully, two more days of sunshine and great music to come.Click here for more photos