Sam Phillips kicked the evening off with an all-too brief set. Phillips has one of the most fertile imaginations in pop - her lyrics are almost psychedelic, with their references to "champagne waterfalls" and "solid gold question marks twenty feet tall" - and her songs manage to be both innovative and irresistably catchy. Throw in a great voice and you've got the makings of a star, if anyone ever decides to play her records on the radio.
Her set was a fine balance of tunes (from the psychedelic popper Trying To Hold On To The Earth through the spirited Can't Find The Door and haunting ballads Private Storm and I Can Wait) and humorous interludes: she cracked the audience up with lines like "I really like your city - I was asking if we could do the rest of the tour here" and "my parents were broken when I got them - they didn't really work right, that's why I turned out the way I did." She's a charmer, the kind of performer who makes friends live, even when she's trying to flog her records. "That's kind of crass," she admitted, after plugging her latest album, Cruel Inventions. "But I'm an American, and that's my job."