In the process of clearing out about 10,000 emails (I'm not even joking) from my account, I stumbled across this review I wrote of Glastonbury 2009 for one of my old blogging friends, Postculturist aka Queenie, aka Lizzie aka Urban Fox. Her website doesn't seem to exist anymore, and it's sort-of topical and kind of interesting, so I thought I'd reproduce it in full here before expunging the email into the digital void forever.
--- "Here's mud in your eye".
If Worthy Farm's Ministry of Propaganda has anything to do with it, and they were at it from the very first day, then the 2009 Glastonbury Festival will be hailed as the best ever. This is the view that will be slavishly be repeated in the rapturous reviews that will now be appearing across all available media outlets, print, broadcast and online.
Perhaps we've all been seduced by an affable 73 year old farmer and his Utopian ideals and charitable work, but of all the festivals, Glastonbury is the one that is most readily given a critical pass. Yes, Glastonbury has raised millions of pounds for charities like Oxfam, Water Aid and Greenpeace, but this is no hippy idyll and big corporations are everywhere you look: the beer is provided by Carlsberg; the mobile phone partner for the Festival is Orange; The Guardian and Q Magazine are the official print media partners and both have their own venues on the site. In case you missed their saturation coverage by actually being at the Festival, the BBC are all over Glastonbury like a rash, sending more than 400 employees and flooding their networks with saturation coverage. I actually thought that Steve Lamacq might be stalking me at one point this year, so often did I run into him.
Those parts of the site that made the Festival different are slowly bur surely disappearing: Lost Vagueness disappeared after 2007, The Leftfield Stage, run by the Unions and a place for campaigning, watching Billy Bragg play and Tony Benn speak, disappeared after 2008. As long as the Green Fields still exist and the Glade is still hosting endless gigs by Ozric Tentacles and Gong, then I suppose there's still hope. There can't be many people that really miss the drug dealers selling Class A narcotics on the bridges between the two main stages, but surely there's no denying that the individuality and anarchic edge of the festival is slowly disappearing, to be replaced by something altogether more corporate and conventional. There are now even special entrances for hospitality pass holders at the pedestrian gates, for goodness sake.
Given that I consider it essential to take a flask of homemade Mojitos and a cool bag filled with ice and fresh mint, I can hardly complain about the festival becoming middle class, but I do I like to think that I was at least a little less middle class than the couple carrying the flag proudly proclaiming that they were "Tougher than the Rest" because they'd got married in Italy and were honeymooning at the Festival. Tougher than the rest of the tennis club maybe. To steal a line from Jimmy Carr, they're not so much hard as 'al dente'. The Festival has become a place to be seen, something that you do to say that you've done it, somewhere you go with your mates to celebrate a stag or a hen do.
As a relative veteran of eight Glastonbury's since 1993, including several very wet ones, I tend to pack for the worst and hope for the best, I expect the toilets to be a little more basic than the one I have at home and I make do without a shower for a few days. I find it amazing to see people moaning to their friends as they struggle through the mud in their flip-flops and pull faces in the queues for the toilets as they push toilet tissue up their noses to try and avoid the smell. I know it's not something you would normally do, but does your shit not stink? Do you really need to straighten your hair, curl your eyelashes and have room for your own shower tent at your campsite? Is life not worth living if you don't bring your own stereo system into the campsite at a music festival?
Perhaps I'm just grumpy because it took me more than 8 hours on Wednesday afternoon to drive the last 25 miles onto site; because it inevitably started to pour with rain on my first full day on the site; because I barely saw a dozen bands over the whole weekend that I really enjoyed; because I found myself drawn to the main stages again instead of making a bit more of an effort to get around the rest of the site; because the sound at Maximo Park at the Queen's Head on Thursday was so appalling; because the crowd trying to see Rolf Harris at the Jazz World stage was so predictably large and so un-stewarded that we couldn't even get close; because I fell asleep during the much anticipated, but ultimately very uncompromising set by Bruce Springsteen on Saturday night (frankly, I can't top Dorian Lynskey's simile in the Guardian that watching the Boss play the Pyramid was "like someone standing in front of a magic-eye picture and being told that, if he stares long enough, he will see the Statue of Liberty but who finds, two-and-a-half hours later, that it's still just squiggly lines")
Was this the best Festival ever? Well according to such backstage luminaries as Harry Enfield and Peaches Geldof, then it certainly was.
Me? I'm not so sure.
Still, although it might not have been a classic Glastonbury, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy myself. Highlights for me included: finally arriving onsite after 12 hours in the car, that first pint of Burrow Hill cider at the Cider Bus, getting to wear my fedora for four days solid, Neil Young's seemingly endless false endings to "Rockin' In The Free World", listening to the early morning rain on my tent, the Fleet Foxes, that ridiculous rumour that Michael Jackson was dead, Lily Allen - yes, Lily Allen - on the Pyramid, watching the British and Irish Lions on a big screen in the blazing sunshine, Status Quo, Tom Jones, Nick Cave ripping the heads off a sleepy Sunday afternoon crowd with a coruscating rendition of "The Mercy Seat", Blur's stately rendition of those beautiful sad, slow songs in the middle of their set.....
My absolute favourite moment? Standing in a massive crowd in front of the Pyramid Stage on Sunday afternoon, surrounded by all of my friends for perhaps the only time in the whole festival, singing and dancing along to Madness. I love Madness. They're one of first bands that I can remember, and I haven't seen them performing live since Madstock in 1994, when they were supported by A Guy Called Gerald, Aswad and Ian Dury & the Blockheads. They have a new album to promote, but essentially they gave the crowd exactly what they wanted and played all the old songs we remember: One Step Beyond, The Prince, Night Boat to Cairo, Embarrassment, House of Fun, My Girl, Baggy Trousers, Wings of a Dove, Shut Up, Grey Day, Bed & Breakfast Man.... when they played Our House, I looked around to see (almost) everyone singing and dancing their hearts out with huge smiles on their faces, and found myself uncontrollably welling up with tears. It's a nostalgic song, and I was filled with nostalgia for my childhood, for the friends around me and for this moment at this brilliant festival. I pushed my sunglasses back down onto my face, turned back to the stage and continued to dance happily as the band brought their families out onto the stage to share the moment with them and with us.
Same time next year?
--
Though I say so myself, I think that stands up okay!
My last visit to the Glastonbury festival was 2016, the year I heard the result to the referendum when my phone pushed an update in the early hours of the morning in my tent. I actually haven't missed it all that much, to be honest. I enjoyed watching this year's virtual festival, watching some iconic sets that I actually attended on tv for the first time. Will I be hurrying back? Well, never say never, but - whisper it quietly - I've discovered that smaller festivals are actually more fun. Not that it's easy to imagine attending any kind of large gathering of people ever again, given our current situation.
Ah. Great days, crazy nights (not that I've ever been one for partying the night away at a festival, to be honest. And now I'm old, so.....).
I've often said it, but nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
Well, it's hard to know where to begin with reviewing Glastonbury. In the past, I've done long write-ups of everything I've seen, and occasionally too, everything I've eaten. Since that's probably not really of interest to anyone, and because I also can't be bothered with spending the time writing that up (even if I can remember it).... how about this year, I just document my 14th Glastonbury in the shape of some earworms? Yeah? My wife ignores all these posts anyway....
Some of my friends were very, very excited to see ELO announced on the bill this year. Sunday afternoon on the Pyramid Stage is very much the legends slot, and over the years I've seen some brilliant acts here: Brian Wilson, Neil Diamond, Shirley Bassey, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie.... and Jeff Lynne's ELO seems to fit right in..... except that I'm a bit meh about them. I know Mr Blue Sky, and it's a pretty decent song, but there seemed to be some expectation that I would know loads of these songs, even if I thought I didn't. Well, let's just say that this wasn't quite the same as watching Chic on the West Holts stage here a couple of years ago, when basically every song they played was a stone-cold classic that you didn't even realise Nile Rodgers had been involved with. ELO for me were nothing like that. Alright, so as well as this song, I sort of recognised Living Thing, Evil Woman, Sweet Talkin' Woman, Don't Bring Me Down.... but they just sound insipid to me; like a slightly crappy, over-produced version of the Beatles. Jeff Lynne isn't much of a showman either. Fancy playing this song in front of about 100,000 people in the drizzle of the muddiest Glastonbury ever and not make a comment about the humorous juxtaposition.
Lekiddo is rapidly becoming a Glastonbury institution. Apart from playing maybe 15 gigs across the festival at a number of completely different stages, he was also the proud recipient of a five star review in the Guardian last year. He's exactly the kind of act that makes Glastonbury so different and so special. I saw him twice this year, and at the Rabbit Hole on Thursday night, his audience included about ten people in full shrimp costumes. I'm not joking.... they brought shrimp costumes to Glastonbury as a salute to their hero ("many are called, few are frozen...."). His set hasn't changed all that much. There seem to be some new songs, but they sound pretty much the same as the old ones. Lekiddo himself is his usual irrepressible self; so ridiculously joyous and downright weird that you have to stop and wonder what on earth he does in the real world when he's not at the festival. Children's parties, maybe? Too weird for that? A bit too Euro-disco sexy? Hm. Well, he's here.... and as he does every year, he plays his Christmas single. I think he releases it every Christmas too, perhaps in the hope that it will one day go viral and he'll be playing megadomes. It feels like a longshot, you have to say, although look at this gushing review of the single in the Guardian
As they say: Lekiddo, it has to be said, is an unusual candidate for the country’s chief festive songsmith. For a start, he claims that his moniker arose from a time eight years ago when he was chosen by the world’s lobster population to represent them: ““I realised that the crustaceans shall inherit the kitchen,” he says, matter of factly. “The lobsters knew that I knew this, so they chose me as their lord, and now I go around spreading lobster love.”
All together now, “Scam scam, scam-a-dur-dam-ba-dam/Scheme-scheme, scheme-a-deer-dim-da-dur”
Utterly bonkers. I think in a good way. I saw him twice this year, and people were dancing and laughing both times, so he must be doing something right. I enjoyed him more than ELO, anyway.
Sarah Cracknell is now 49 years old, and you'll be delighted to know is as fragrant as she always was. It's been drizzling all day, the festival site is a bog and the Sunday evening crowd is tired after a long, long festival and the slog up the hill to the Park stage. And you know what? Saint Etienne's brand of soothing, sophisticated pop is pretty much just what the doctor ordered. A joy. I don't think I need to say very much more than that really, do I?
Lovely Guy is a Glastonbury hero. Some bands (I'm looking at you, The 1975) take to the stage in white suits that tell you that they have popped straight onto the stage from their tour bus and will be leaving straight after their set. That's not Guy Garvey's style. You just know that Lovely Guy will take to the stage in muddy boots and trousers and wearing a raincoat. He's one of us. He hasn't been onsite all weekend this time around because of other commitments, but you just know that he's going to milk the festival for everything it's worth whilst he's here. He has an easy charm with his crowd. To be fair, as it always has done, this mostly consists of repeatedly asking us if we're okay. But that's okay because you know he means it. At one point, he decides to award a prize for the best waltzers in the crowd, and searching his pockets for a prize, he tosses them his packet of fags. He's not fancy or fussy, but he's genuine to his core. His whole set tonight is taken from his debut solo album, "Courting the Squall", and we don't get so much of a sniff of an Elbow song... but that's okay too, because the album is good and because it's nice to hear him doing his own thing. He's the last act that we see before we make an early exit from the site, and I have to say that I couldn't have asked for anything better.
I haven't got the energy to go and see Adele on Saturday night. I don't have anything against her, and I'm not one of those people who spend all their time on internet forums moaning about the Glastonbury bill and how the headliners just aren't right for the festival (last year was a new low when that guy, who had never been to Glastonbury before, started that petition to try and stop Kanye West playing. What's wrong with these people? There a literally hundreds of other things you could be doing at the festival instead, and who exactly are you to determine who is and isn't an appropriate act? If Oasis played every year, it would be pretty bloody boring, wouldn't it... and that's basically what they mean, isn't it?). Adele is the biggest selling act in the world and she's also that other rarity: a female headliner. She has every right to play here, but I want to take the opportunity of her drawing a massive crowd to do something else entirely. I've seen New Order before, so I head up the hill to the Park Stage to watch Mercury Rev. We're camping in Worthy View this year, which is way over the top of the hill at the very back of the site past Strummerville, and the Park is a pretty good staging post on the way back up to the tent (for pretty much the same reason, I also find myself sitting around the campfire at Strummerville for the very first time in the 14 times I've been to this festival). Besides, I've got a couple of Mercury Rev albums and their spaced-out rock seems like a good way to wind down the day. They're both very loud and really very good indeed. Over the weekend, I got to see a number of bands that are highly rated.... people like Blossoms and The 1975.... and I have to say that Mercury Rev blow those guys off the stage in terms of songwriting and sheer musicianship. Yes, they've been doing this for a long time, but they're actually really pretty bloody good at it. Some of their tunes are brilliant too, not least this song, which is a proper classic. As we walk back up the hill to our camp, you can hear the sounds of the massive sing-a-long from Adele's set, and as we look back down across the festival site, we can see the whole Pyramid Arena light up with mobile phones as Adele asks everyone to hold them up and we just have to pause and admire. It looks amazing, and the effect is even better as I walk a bit further and catch a waft of True Faith along the way.
I saw ZZ Top in about 1991 at the Milton Keynes Bowl, and it must be said that I don't think the band have changed very much since then: they certainly look the same, and I'm pretty sure the setlist is pretty much the same too. They have a pretty big crowd for a Friday afternoon too, with a fairly significant number of the audience wearing comedy beards and carrying inflatable guitars. It's that kind of a gig. They sound bloody good too: people forget that Billy Gibbons is an extremely talented guitarist, and when you have songs as good as this, Legs and Gimme All Your Loving... well, you should be playing to massive crowds. I'm not sure that you could get away with some of those lyrics now, but there's no denying that they sound absolutely brilliant. Good enough that I'm thinking of digging out my old copy of "Eliminator", anyway. This is totally the riff from the Rolling Stones cover of Chuck Berry's "Route 66" though, eh?
Muse are predictably brilliant on Friday night. They're technically astonishing and they have a long list of outstanding songs to draw on. There's a reason that they're the only one of this year's Pyramid headliners that I choose to watch... but I have some reservations. The first is that, just as with their albums, I find that a little bit of Muse goes a long way. They're a fantastic band, but their music can be so involved that it just becomes exhausting to listen to. A two hour set? Well, that's enough soloing and conspiracy theorising for anyone, isn't it? The other reservation? Perhaps it's a bit selfish and self-absorbed of me, but I like bands at Glastonbury to respond to the fact that they're at Glastonbury. You don't need to go overboard about it (I'm looking at you, James Hetfield...and you Bono), but it's nice to acknowledge where you are and that it's not just another gig for you.... well, maybe it is just another big gig for a band like Muse, but it really feels like it too. Matt Bellamy appears to have picked up some weird sort of trans-Atlantic "thankyouverrymuchhaahhh" thing that he uses at the end of every song in lieu of actually talking to us like a normal human being. They're very impressive --- oohh! fireworks! --- but maybe a little emotionally un-involving. That being said, I don't think I hear many better songs than this one, which closes their set without an encore. It's an absolutely barking mad song, but it's all the more brilliant for that. I did hear the girls in the tent next to ours discussing how it was such a shame that Matt Bellamy was a bit too small and pinched to be good-looking though. There's no pleasing some people, eh?
James are a brilliant choice of band to open the festival on the Other Stage on Friday morning. They're more than an hour later on as the crew desperately try and put woodchip down onto the sodden ground in front of the stage, but when they do arrive, they are introduced by none other than Michael Eavis himself... who seems to perhaps be a fan. They're a funny, awkward band and they proceed to play a very typical James set. The large crowd is probably hoping for a Greatest Hits festival set, but James have always been cussed, and they've been recording some great stuff over the last couple of years, and it's absolutely no surprise to me that they are keen to play some of it. Sure, they don't play Sit Down, but for my money the mix the set up pretty well. When they play Sometimes, I'm so overcome that I have to actually wipe away the tears that suddenly mist up my eyes. It's such a beautiful, profound song and it reminds me so much of being a student in Venice in 1994. "Sometimes, when I look deep into your eyes, I swear I can see your soul". That is one of the most beautiful things I think you can say to someone, and it gets me almost every time they play it. They play songs like Come Home, Laid, Tomorrow, Curse Curse, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up), but their newer stuff really stands up to scrutiny too: Moving On is a beautiful reflection on life and death inspired by the death of Tim Booth's mother, and it's another heartbreakingly lovely song with a killer chorus. Tim Booth seems to enjoy himself too, enthusiastically crowd-surfing and coming back onto the stage with a smear of mud on his cheek. He's not quite one of us in the way that Guy Garvey is, but in his own particular way, he's having fun. A great start to the festival by one of my favourite bands.
The John Peel tent has been moved slightly up the hill this year, near an entirely new area called the Wood and mostly out of the sludge that used to make it famous. We take the long hike from the Leftfield, right the way across the back of the Pyramid as Madness are playing to a huge crowd, through the Wood and then out at the John Peel in plenty of time to catch John Grant. There are only about three or four acts on the bill that I was determined to catch this year, and that gave me a load of freedom to wander around and just watch whatever grabbed my fancy. I was never going to miss John Grant though. He was brilliant when I saw him in Sheffield a couple of months ago and he was probably the act I was most looking forward to seeing at the festival this year. He's a hard act to explain to people who haven't heard his music, but I like his intensely personal (and often very funny) lyrics and his beautiful bass voice.... he was struggling with a cold here, but he was clearly drawing so much energy from the crowd that he was determined to give everything a go and hope for the best. As he feared, he wasn't able to hit the big parts of this song, but the crowd took up the reins and picked up the mantle, allowing John Grant to bring the whole thing gloriously home. Grant was clearly buoyed by the energy and enthusiasm of his crowd and it was truly a beautiful thing to be a part of. Magical. Although I had been drinking cider.... no. I'm pretty sure he was that good. On Sunday, as we walked back into the site from a trip to drop our bags off in the car, Sarah stopped to queue up to use the toilets. When we caught up with her a bit later, she was beside herself with delight because the person who was in the portaloo directly before her was... John Grant.... I asked if she stopped to say hello, but apparently it wasn't really the moment. She did reveal that she was pleased (and slightly relieved) to discover that he left the toilet in an acceptable state. Imagine!
I woke up at about 6am on Friday morning when my phone sent me a push alert from the Guardian informing me of the result of the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. I read it, swore loudly and then rolled over to get some more sleep. As Billy Bragg said later in the day, this was Schrodinger's Referendum... as long as we were at the Festival, we were neither in or out of the EU. I say every year that I want to spend more time at the Leftfield tent, but this year I had more reason than ever to want to hear soothing things to make me feel better about the state of the world. I did a bit better this year, amongst other things watching a very interesting debate with some junior doctors and Mhairi Black, the 21 year old SNP MP (Black talked about how the Labour MPs in Scotland thought they had safe seats and that their constituents would always vote for them, so they spent their time in Westminster and didn't bother campaigning because they were complacent. The SNP was able to exploit this.... it's impossible not to feel the same way about some of the remaining members of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the way they currently seem to feel that the wishes of their members are not as important as their own ambitions...) As ever though, the main draw of the Leftfield was Billy Bragg himself. The man is a Glastonbury legend, and I must have seen him performing here dozens of times by now, usually several times at each festival (I think my personal best is 5 times in one festival). I wanted Billy to help me make sense of the shape of our country; he is the milkman of human kindness and I really needed an extra pint. He didn't disappoint. Although he's famously political, actually most of his songs are about people and about love; when he spoke, he often spoke about the need for unity and the need to pull together and not let things drive us apart - he was quite wry about the fact that, just as the Tories were at their weakest, of course the Labour party was choosing just that moment to begin tearing itself apart. Lots of his songs make me a bit emotional - New England, Levi Stubbs' Tears, Sexuality - but it was when he played Between the Wars that I think there wasn't a dry eye in the house. I make no apology for putting the whole lyrics here:
- I was a miner, I was a docker I was a railway man between the wars I raised a family in times of austerity With sweat at the foundry between the wars I paid the union and as times got harder I looked to the government to help the working man But they brought prosperity down at the armoury We're arming for peace, me boys between the wars I kept the faith and I kept voting Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand For theirs is a land with a wall around it And mine is a faith in my fellow man Theirs is a land of hope and glory Mine is the green field and the factory floor Theirs are the skies all dark with bombers And mine is the peace we knew between the wars Call up the craftsmen, bring me the draftsmen Build me a path from cradle to grave And I'll give my consent to any government That does not deny a man a living wage Go find the young men never to fight again Bring up the banners from the days gone by Sweet moderation, heart of this nation Desert us not, we are between the wars
-
Ah, so painfully apt as we seem to lurch towards a more chaotic, racist and intolerant society.
It was a good festival. Muddy and tiring, but also inspiring and uplifting too. The best thing I saw over the weekend? Well, these guys captivated me for an hour in the circus tent and they were simply awe-inspiring
I head off down to Glastonbury on Tuesday next week. Luckily, I’ve just seen a list of handy festival gadgets for the festival that included (amongst many other marvellous things) an inflatable tent (a mere £368.98). Luckily, the same list also included a Swiss Army Knife…. Presumably in case you should happen upon one of those inflatable tents.
This is my twelfth Glastonbury. I think. I make a mess of this calculation every year. It’s 1993 plus every one since 2002. *checks*. Ah apparently it’s number 13.
Anyway, with the benefit of all those years of hard-earned experience, here are a few things I've learned. I make no claims that this list is exhaustive or even useful, but they're things that popped into my head as I contemplated that inflatable tent (which, to make matters worse, apparently weighs a ton too).
The tips:
1) Wet wipes. This should be the second item on your list after ticket.
2) Take a goon bag of red wine, but don’t save it all up and then find you have seven of the damn things to drink on Sunday between you. A red wine hangover on Monday is not really something you should aspire to (although, to be fair, there was one year that was so wet on Sunday night that the red wine buzz was the only thing that made it bearable. I have only the vaguest memories of standing at a stage way out by the East Gates watching Bill Bailey as it lashed it down. I don’t remember a word of his set, but I do remember falling out with my wife on the way back to the tent. Good times).
3) Bring booze by all means, but don’t be ridiculous about it. You would not believe how many slabs of shit lager or cider people bring in. I understand, but all those cans are left lying about and frankly, who wants to drink warm strongbow when you can get a delicious Burrow Hill cider at the cider bus? I’ll probably bring in some spiced rum, the wine and a few cans of beer for the first day. Are you really going to sit around your tent drinking all day? Can’t you do that at home? For goodness sake, if you must do that, at least pick up a green bag and recycle your cans. I sound about 104, don't I?
4) Don’t worry about the weather forecast: there’s not a damn thing you can do to influence it and they’ll all probably be wrong anyway. TOP TIP: if it rains at any point in the next week, the site will be a quagmire even if the festival itself is pretty dry. Muddy festivals are different, but you’ll have just as much fun. Experience tells me that the typical weather for England at the end of June is the sort that requires you to wear a raincoat AND put sun cream on your nose. It’s all good. Hot festivals can be horrible too. 2010 was merciless as there’s just no shade anywhere on the site and you can’t hide in your tent
5) Take your boots. Whatever the forecast. The worst thing that can happen is you don’t need them, but you do not want to be one of those people who are caught out when it suddenly and unexpectedly gets muddy and you only have tiny little trainers or crocs or something. Ditto a decent raincoat and hat.
6) It gets cold at night. Take a properly warm layer. I take a down jacket. It packs small and is toasty. Makes a good pillow, if nothing else.
7) Glastonbury is vast and it can take ages to get anywhere. Bring sensible shoes. Related to this, wellies are actually really uncomfortable to wear all day and you will sweat so much you will get wet socks. I wear steel toe-capped rigger boots. They’re tax free, plenty waterproof enough and a LOT more comfortable and easy to kick on and off. I wear them on dry years too, to be honest.
8) Try not to bring too much. You’ll probably have to walk a long way from car to camp, and if you have too much stuff, that journey can be hellish. If you’re going to bring a trolley, make sure it’s a sturdy one and forget about bringing a wheelie bag. This is a farm, after all, and on a wet year, the path into the site is a graveyard of inadequate trollies and bags. I actually find I need fewer clothes in a wet year as I tend to wear the same dirty set. My basic fashion rule is that everything should be practical but that you should aim to not dress entirely in forest casual greens and browns. Also, don’t bring anything valuable and carry your money around with you. I’ve heard that people will even nick your trousers out of your tent for your wallet when you’re in there and asleep. Just be careful. If you haven’t got anything worth taking, then you haven’t really got anything to worry about.
9) Don’t plan to charge your phone or take cash out on the site. It’s just avoidable queuing. Switching off data and Bluetooth and switching off completely at night will see even an iPhone last a surprising amount of time. I bring a battery pack thing that’s good for 4 or 5 full charges too, but maybe just wean yourself off facebook for a few days. I know, right? Imagine!
10) It might sound ridiculously middle class, but we take a stove and a hob top espresso maker. Coffee is essential but expensive and you’ll have to queue. This is just easier, and it's at your tent. And you can take tea bags and stuff for a mid-afternoon brew up.
11) Don’t build a ridiculous schedule of bands and expect to be able to see them all. Make a couple of key strategic decisions and work the rest around that. Prepare to be flexible. In my experience, the best festival experiences happen away from the main stage
12) Don’t get angry about the lineup. If you don’t like Kanye, don’t watch him. There’s plenty of other stuff to do.
13) Don’t get really, really smashed. It’s horrible. Also, you don’t want to wake up in a blazing hot tent at 5am with the mother of all hangovers and only red wine to slake your thirst.
14) The earliest license on site is the organic fruit wine tent in the green fields. Good times.
15) Don’t bring food. The sheer breadth of choices onsite is astonishing. Even if you’re skint. I took a loaf of bread in 1993 as well as some tins of beans. Even as a skint student, I didn’t touch them.
16) Talk to people you don’t know. There are some brilliant people at this festival and most people are pretty chilled and happy. There are some dicks too, but they are quite easy to spot and avoid (don’t remind me of the time that Oasis headlined. Ugh)
17) Don’t be scared of the toilets. Talk of immodium is just silly. They’re really not that bad (and the long drops are actually the best option). Don’t be one of those people who pulls a face as they walk out of their cubicle…. Your shit doesn’t smell of roses, so get over yourselves. Although, you know, don’t look down.
18) Don’t stand at the taps trying to wash your hair. It’s selfish and water gets everywhere. If you must shower, go and queue at the greenpeace ones in the green fields. Failing that, just have a whore’s bath with wet wipes. Even you can manage a few days without a shower. We all stink. If you get really clean, that just makes you realise quite how much the rest of us smell.
19) Don’t be a dick. Be considerate to everyone else and to the farm itself. Love the farm, leave no trace…. That means don’t piss in the hedges and try and put your rubbish in the bins. They give you black and green rubbish bags as you go into the site. Use them around your campsite. It’s really not hard.
20) Enjoy yourself. The weather might be awful, but if you approach everything with a sense of humour and a smile, you’ll have a lot more fun.
Tip 19 is probably the most important one, to be honest. Don’t be a dick. That’s the prime directive.
We're in a tipi this year, although apparently I'm the only one out of the six of us that doesn't snore. Well, it's a 24 hour festival and I usually take ear plugs anyway, plus I went to a boarding school, and no one in the world can possibly snore like Patrick Lo. I'm old enough that I do like my beauty sleep whilst the youngsters party.
..At least it would be nice if people didn’t park up their cars here to eat their drive-thru takeaways and then dump their rubbish out of their car windows. There are bins all the way down this road, but many people simply can’t be arsed and just toss their trash and drive off. As I cycle past it all, often within a few metres of a rubbish bin, it makes me so cross.
Grrr.
Things like this make my father-in-law cross too, and back in the day, if he saw someone dropping litter, he would pick it up and tap them on the shoulder with an “Excuse me, you’ve dropped something”. Apparently, most people were so shocked by this that they just meekly take the rubbish without a word. To be honest, I’d be worried that if you tried something like that now, the best you could hope for is to be jeered at, and the worst would probably be a smack in the face.
What’s wrong with people? Is it that they’re expecting someone else to pick it up, or that they genuinely don’t care what happens to it once they’ve discarded it? Apparently, the Highways Agency cleans up more than 180,000 sacks of litter from motorways and 'A' roads every year. Fly-tipping on land owned by Network Rail costs around £2.3 million a year to clean up and local authorities in England spend close to a billion pounds a year picking up litter. A billion pounds! To put that money into context, that money could fund 38,633 social care workers, pay the running costs of 4,400 libraries, or pay for 33,200 additional nurses (although, presumably if they did, the litter pickers would be out of work... so it's swings and roundabouts, eh?)
With Glastonbury in a couple of weeks, and before we make any social judgments about the kind of person who might dump their McDonalds drive through rubbish out of the window of their parked car, it’s probably also worth remembering that this is something that also blights something that generally prides itself on being a really green festival (and which generally has a very middle-class clientele, many of whom wouldn't dream of eating anything that came from a drive-thru).
Festival goers at Glastonbury are constantly exhorted to “love the farm, leave no trace” and there’s a real focus on sustainability, with Green Police around to make sure you don't pee in the hedges and upset the water table. They're trying to eliminate plastic bottles from the site, and even the cutlery you get from the food outlets is made of wood rather than plastic. Clearly, the festival isn’t populated by the hippies of legend any more (far from it, it’s practically part of the social circuit now). Every year we go sees people embracing more and more culture of disposability: everything is so cheap, so why would you bother to bring it home? People dump their tents, their bags, their wellies, their clothes… pretty much anything you can think of… because they just can’t be arsed to take it home and have the hassle of washing it; it was cheap enough that they just leave it on the farm.
You can see this in the litter: there are (beautifully painted) bins everywhere, but even before the weekend has really started, the whole site is swimming in litter. Apparently, every single thing, down to the last butt end, is picked up before the cows are allowed back out onto their pasture, but some 2000 tonnes of rubbish are left behind when the festival-goers leave the site: condoms, beer cans, nitrous oxide canisters… you name it. In 2009, about 400 gazebos, 9,500 roll mats, 5,500 tents, 6,500 sleeping bags, 3,500 airbeds and 2,200 chairs were abandoned. 9,500 roll mats out of a total of around 135,000 people at the festival is a pretty damn big percentage of people leaving that stuff behind, wouldn't you say? It makes for a sad and depressing sight on a Monday morning as you hike out to your car, That's for sure. But, to be honest, wading through all that rubbish is depressing long before then too.
And don't get me started on all those plastic bottles that covered those remote Pacific desert islands in The Island with Bear Grylls either.... horrifying.
Ugh. We don't deserve this planet.
---
I also found out today that our national forum reps at work, the guys who are elected in to represent employees across the country in front of the executive, decided to use their time with the leaders of the business to moan about the people who cycle to work. Yes, because it's the bike users who cause all the damn problems in the business. I'm sure that they're somehow responsible for the full car-parks, the congestion in and out of site and probably for global warming too. It's because of the people who don't drive to work that car drivers are having to pay a bigger share of the workplace parking levy too....... Honestly. Really? REALLY? AND they sacked Jeremy Clarkson too. Poor, persecuted lambs. It must be very hard.
Today, I have been suffering from a rather middle-class injury.
I've been breaking in a new pair of festival boots, you see. I've long since rejected wellington boots as practical footwear at a festival as large as Glastonbury. They're all very well in principle, and obviously they're pretty handy in the muddy conditions that are often found at Worthy Farm, but they're just not designed for wearing all day or for walking the miles and miles you do as you trudge around from stage to stage. Not to put too fine a point on it, your feet can't breathe, and by the end of the day, you might as well have been walking around barefoot in the puddles.
The solution? Well, for me, I've found rigger boots to be perfect. They're the kind of boots that you see on building sites; they're steel toe-capped, pretty breathable with a properly shaped insole and they're more than waterproof enough to wade around a muddy farm. They're also classed as workwear, so they're sold free of VAT. My old pair cost me something less than £30, but I've upgraded to something a little bit better and, well, a little bit less bright yellow.
Like any leather shoe though, they need breaking in. Because I can't think of anything much worse than blisters at Glastonbury, I started putting in some of the hard yards over the weekend.... and now I have the scraped skin on my ankles to prove it. With hindsight, perhaps I should have worn a better pair of socks, but as there's still plenty of breaking-in ahead, I imagine I'll have other opportunities.
22 days to go. I might have to start wearing them around the house.
(Incidentally, it never fails to amaze me how people go to Glastonbury without boots. When it rains, you see people panic shopping for wellies. I once saw a delivery of boots arrive on the site under Police escort. Honestly, I just take them every year just in case, whatever the forecast. It's not like they take all that much room. Actually, I wear my rigger boots even when it's nice, because they're comfortable). Then again, you also see people with little wheelie bags every year, and then, at the first sign of a bit of mud, you see the same people totally unable to move their bags because there isn't really another way of carrying those bags and the mud has clogged the wheels. Young people, eh?)
Back in 2008, Glastonbury announced that Jay-Z would be headlining the Pyramid Stage on the Saturday night of the festival. Cue uproar, with no less an authority than Noel Gallagher acting as spokesman for the rest of the world by saying 'I'm sorry, but Jay-Z? No chance. Glastonbury has the tradition of guitar music ... I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong.'
Well, given that the worst headliners I have seen at Glastonbury in all the years I've been going were Oasis, this seemed ironic.... and of course Jay-Z made fools of the naysayers from the moment he burst onto stage and played a fusion of "Wonderwall" and "99 Problems". He absolutely slayed it that night in front of a packed crowd.
I was there that night. I'm not really a fan of Jay-Z but I am a fan of music, and I was keen to watch one of the world's biggest acts at the top of his game. And you know what? He was really good and I was thoroughly entertained throughout. You'd think if this whole affair showed us anything, it showed us how entirely pointless it is to complain that a band somehow doesn't belong at an event, especially an event like Glastonbury.
The Glastonbury Festival sells out within an hour or so of tickets going on-sale. At that point, the people buying tickets have absolutely no idea who is going to be playing the event and won't know for at least another six months. And no one cares. You're not going to Glastonbury just to see the bands. They don't pay headliners as much as other festivals, and in the past they've forged something of a reputation for giving up-and-coming bands an early chance to headline (Coldplay in 2002 being an excellent example). Of all the festivals in the UK, Glastonbury is the one that is about so much more than the music: there are 175,000 people on a 900 acre site with a perimeter fence that covers nearly nine miles; there are something like 40 music stages, a theatre, a circus, a craft field, tipis.... you definitely don't need to be sucked down to the main stage every night to watch the headliners. In fact, you could easily argue that, if that's all you do, then you're missing out on the best parts. Almost all of my favourite Glastonbury memories come from when I wasn't at the Pyramid Stage.
The fuss about the headliner was new in 2008, but it's subsequently become a tediously predictable part of the festival. Look at the fuss when Metallica played in 2014. They're one of the biggest bands in the world and a phenomenally good live act, and yet people got their knickers in a twist about how they somehow "didn't belong" at Glastonbury. Nonsense, of course.
Kanye West is clearly an idiot. I don't really like his music and I like all the bullshit around him even less. But you know what? I'll just do something else that night instead. The end. It's not as though anyone is making me watch him, is it? Anyone who has a ticket to the festival who doesn't want to watch him can do exactly the same thing and vote with their feet. You could drink real ale at the tent by the Acoustic Stage, you could sit up in the Stone Circle.... or you could just have an early night reading a book. You could do pretty much anything.
I guarantee you that no one will be returning their ticket over this, and the fuss about the booking is utterly tedious. It says far more about the people complaining than it does about Kanye West and they should just shut the hell up.
Besides, what could be a more appropriate environment to see a centaur in the wild in wellington boots than at the Glastonbury Festival?
Well, it will make a change from the usual, common-or-garden unicorns, anyway......
Metallica have been announced as the Saturday night headliners on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival. This year will be my eleventh or twelfth Glastonbury, starting in 1993, but mostly in a straight line of attendance at every Festival since 2002. In that time I've seen some amazing headliners: Blur, Muse, Radiohead, R.E.M., QotSA, Paul McCartney, Suede, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Kings of Leon, Rod Stewart, U2, Neil Young, Springsteen.... but I can honestly say that I've never been more excited about a headliner being announced than I am today. Well, I did briefly see the Velvet Underground headlining the Pyramid as I trooped my way back up the hill from Suede, but in my defence I was too young and too stupid in 1993 to realise how excited I should have been. I curse the 1993 me almost every time I think about that decision. I heard the rumours of Metallica playing, but I honestly didn't want to believe that this could happen until it was formally confirmed.
They've just confirmed it.
As soon as the rumours really started to take shape, a very tedious backlash started of people whining about how Metallica just aren't a Glastonbury band and that this will be a disaster for the festival. Well, that's clearly bollocks. Metallica have sold 100m records worldwide and are one of the biggest selling bands in the history of music. They are also an awesome live proposition. They wanted to play here and they will be amazing. Besides, anyone remember all that fuss people made about Jay-Z a few years back? Yeah, and how did that work out? Oh, that's right. He killed it in front of a massive crowd and everyone who moaned was made to look a bit silly. Sound familiar.
Lars Ulrich has said some really stupid things in the past, but today he said this:
"But I am aware of the fact that in England some people dismiss hard rock as something that’s lesser-than, or it’s not as valuable, or it’s not as important [as other genres]. And I’m not even going to get into talking about that. That’s just plain silly. Over the decades, hard rock sometimes hasn’t done itself any favours by embracing cliches and some sexism and short-sightedness. But that’s not necessarily limited to hard rock. I mean, I think you can turn over any musical stone and find different versions of cliches and narrow-mindedness, so it is what it is. But for better or worse, we’re coming! And we’re pretty fucking excited about it. If anybody has anything to say, then it’s a two-fingered salute and take that with ya."
Not interested in Metallica? Go and watch something else.
As someone who has seen them a few times over the years, take it from me: they're one of the best live acts in the world bar no one. Don't people usually spend their time moaning that Glastonbury's headliners aren't big enough? Well, is this big enough for you?
I can't really put it any better than a comment I've just read on the Guardian. Amidst all the predictable bile from people who apparently think the band will be playing to an empty field, someone just wrote: "GIMMEFUEGIMMEFAHGIMMEDABAZABAZAAAAAH". Well, exactly. It's true that lots of people may only know "Enter Sandman", but to tell the truth, I'm actually a little bit envious of them because they are also going to hear other - better - songs by the band for the very first time. Can you remember the first time you heard "Battery"?
This is going to be awesome. Now, where did I put my Master of Puppets t-shirt?
(you can read my review of their 2009 gig at Nottingham Arena on the Death Magnetic tour here)
At about this time of year, a few thousand people begin paying very close attention to the weather forecast of a very specific place in Somerset.... Yup. It's the Glastonbury Festival next weekend. It is perhaps the most famous festival in the world and many amazing things have happened here over the years, but you know what most people think about when someone mentions the festival?
The mud. Apparently even the Queen does it when someone mentions the festival in conversation.
There's a very good reason for this, of course: the festival takes place on a farm, and when it rains, it gets very wet. With 150,000 people tramping about the place, it doesn't take very long for the site to turn into a quagmire. It's not so bad really: it makes getting around the place a lot harder and slower, and it's next to impossible to find somewhere to sit down... but as long as you have a decent pair of boots and a sense of humour, it's perfectly manageable. Well, unless perhaps you wake up to find your tent floating in the same lake as some portaloos, as happened to some poor souls in 2005 (pictured above).
The fact is that Glastonbury enjoys almost saturation (!) media coverage when it is on: it's all over the BBC, for starters. Although I think people like the pictures of people basking in the sun at a festival, I think they really enjoy the pictures of people slogging through the mud much more. There's a kind of perverse pleasure watching other people suffer in the swamp when you're at home in front of your telly, isn't there? Perhaps it feels even better if you're one of the thousands of people who tried to get a ticket and failed. I'm fairly sure it does. The Germans have a word for it: schadenfreude. The pleasure derived from watching other people suffer. Everyone wants to come to Glastonbury after a sunny one; very few people fancy it when they see a muddy one.
Honestly, it's not that bad. I look at the weather forecasts the same as everyone else, but I tend to take mostly the same stuff every year anyway. What's the worst thing that can happen? That you lug your boots in and you turn out never to need them? It is what it is, right? I already drive a small, diesel car in a one-car household, recycle all my paper and cardboard and have no children. What more could I realistically do to try and slow down climate change?
2013 will be my eleventh Glastonbury in all, and my tenth in a row since 2002 (no festival was held in 2006 or in 2012). In all that time, I think my weather tally is two really gorgeous, sunny festivals, 3 really wet and muddy ones, and all the rest have been somewhere in-between. The only conclusion I can draw is that it is entirely typical of the English climate that the weather in Somerset at the end of June to be a little bit wet, a little bit sunny, a bit windy and perhaps a bit chilly at night. Indeed, that's pretty much exactly what is forecast this time around. It's the kind of weather where you catch a bit of sun on your nose whilst wearing your wellies and your raincoat all day. People have been moaning about the sunshine and showers we've been having over the last few weeks and saying how it's unseasonable.... well, I'm not sure that it is, really.
Anyway. When it's nice, it's one of the most splendid places in the world.... whatever the weather. As long as you're with the people you love, right?
....and you have some cider. I'll be there first thing on Wednesday morning, rain or shine, and I can't wait.
So there I was, packing up the phone to send back to the BBC, and all ready to forget about Glastonbury for another year, when something on the radio caught my ear. Something about ticketing for 2008....
"The problem with the clientèle at the moment is that they're becoming a bit older and a bit more clever and they've got the gear to buy the tickets as they have fast access to the ticket system and can buy more"
According to Eavis, the festival next year needs to have about 30,000 to 40,000 more people between the ages of 16 and 18.
"Younger people have more spunk and really add to the character of the festival- that's how it always used to be"
The total attendance at this year's festival was 175,000 people. If the attendance in 2008 is more or less the same, then that's quite a lot of kids.
So how do you ensure that tickets are getting to the kids and not to those pesky adults? Why, you make sure that 40% of all tickets are sold exclusively over the phone, of course.... cos all those kids have got access to mobile phones but not necessarily to high speed internet connections.
Hmmm.
I know you're an all round good egg and all that... but.....
OI!
EAVIS!!
NOOOOOOOOO!
-> **newsflash** people other than kids aged 16-18 have (and are able to use) phones to buy tickets. Selling tickets over the phone is no guarantee that they will go to the yoof. And why the hell do they deserve tickets any more than anyone else? Besides, they're all on "Pay as You Go" so what happens when they run out of credit whilst on hold? Surely this system favours all of the rich, middle-class adults with contract phones?
-> Children have access to the internet too. Haven't you read about the threat of predatory paedophiles in chatrooms? (Just ask the guitarist with one of this year's headliners) Why would they be hanging about there if kids didn't go online? Eh? Where do you think they plagiarise their coursework from?
-> This year, I couldn't get through on the phone or on the internet. I only got a ticket because one of my friends got lucky. Why are 16-18 year olds going to be any luckier than anyone else next year? What are you going to do? Insist on a proof of age before selling the ticket? Cobblers.
-> The tickets cost £145 each. How many kids have that kind of cash? How many kids who do have that kind of cash lying around don't have access to the internet?
-> What about their parents? Are they coming on their own? Really?
-> They're too young to drink! What's the point of them being at the festival if they can't enjoy the cider bus?
The ticketing system this year was generally pretty good. Yes, it was difficult to get through, but you managed to almost completely eliminate touting, which can only be a good thing. Why can you not resist the temptation to tinker?
Leave it !!
In other news, apparently the site is now nearly clear of rubbish, and the cows are soon to be let back out into the fields.
That’s a first line that will ever conjure up images in my head of Richey slicing “4 REAL” into his arm with a razor blade in front of Steve Lamacq. Amy Winehouse eat your heart out.
I love the Manic Street Preachers. As a band, they seem to stand entirely on their own: there is no one that I can think of that is remotely like them. There was a time when I thought that James Dean Bradfield had one of the most difficult jobs in the world – putting the ridiculously wordy, literate and overly complicated lyrics of Nicky Wire and Richey James Edwards to music. The lyrics on “The Holy Bible” in particular are incredibly dense and often disturbing, and the fact that the album is so good pays tribute to Bradfield’s skill. This song in particular is a good example of what makes the Manics brilliant:
“I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer, I spat out Plath and Pinter”
Who else sings songs like that?
They don’t play material from “The Holy Bible” very often (although more now than they used to), and I was very, very pleased when they launched into this one.
> “Newborn” – Leon Fields
Leon is one of my friends, and this is one of the songs that he played at an open mic session at the Rabbit Hole in the new Park area of the site (the other songs being equally cheerful numbers by happy souls like Joy Division, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Nirvana). I don’t know how familiar you are with Muse, but this song is both extremely fiddly to play and is sung in an extremely high register. It took a hell of a lot of bottle to play this in front of an audience on an acoustic guitar, and I think Leon just about pulled it off. Mind you, he did start the day with a breakfast punch of industrial strength Somerset Scrumpy mixed with red wine….
It was Charlotte’s birthday when she played the Park stage, watched from the wings by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, and to be honest she looked like she would rather have been anywhere else but where she was…. And the second her set was over she flounced off the stage without a backwards glance and disappeared. Still, I thought that she was pretty good, and this song in particular has stuck in my head. It has a slightly wonky guitar line that I just can’t seem to shake.
Until he played this right at the end of his set, I’d more or less forgotten that Fogerty actually wrote this song (how much money must he have made out of the Quo?). It was a fantastic set and this was a great way to finish up. Even Fogerty’s guitar solos have guitar solos and he looked like he had an absolute ball throughout. I can easily imagine that he walks around everywhere with a guitar around his shoulders and one of those little portable amps strapped onto his belt… that way he can solo everywhere he goes.
Brilliant. You could say that I liked it, I liked it, I la-la-la liked it, la-la-la liked it.
I’m not sure about Nu-Rave, I just think that this is a great song – made even better if you substitute the last “Haaaaa!” in the chorus with a wookie noise.
This is a lovely song at the best of times, but this sent shivers down my spine. Rufus made a bit of a mess of the order of the verses, and the sound throughout the set was a bit ropey, but it didn’t make a bit of difference. Gorgeous.
> “James Bond Medley” – Dame Shirley Bassey
It’s always great to watch a Bond theme performed by the original artist, and here we got three for the price of one: “Goldfinger”, “Moonraker” and “Diamonds Are Forever”, all sandwiched together and belted out with gusto by the great welsh diva. Brilliant. I saw McCartney doing “Live and Let Die” in 2004, and I thought that was pretty good (it had fireworks and flamethrowers and everything!), but this was even better. It was somehow a quintessentially Glastonbury moment that the mud covered masses were stood in their wellies in the mud watching a diva in a bright pink ballgown doing her thing on a Sunday afternoon.
Tina Turner for 2008? A-Ha? Monty Norman?
> “Day Tripper” – The Bootleg Beatles
The Who may have been closing the festival over on the Pyramid Stage, but compared to this lot they just don’t have the back catalogue… As a direct result of the hour I spent in the Acoustic Tent, I lost my voice. I imagine I wasn’t the only one. Audience participation is not a problem for the Bootleg Beatles. They do exactly what they say on the tin.
Plus it was pissing it down outside, so there were other advantages to being in a tent, and no 20 minute guitar solos or pointless new material….
I saw this lot in the Social in Nottingham a little while ago, but I was more than happy to slog my way down to the John Peel stage to watch them performing at Glastonbury. They’re slightly quirky and I can’t really ever see them being Coldplay-big, but they are surely destined for bigger stages than this.
When I watched this lot play in the Park at lunchtime on Friday, they were the first band proper that I saw at the festival. Our tent was close enough to the Other Stage that I had been able to listen to Mr Hudson and the Library (not bad) and Reverend and the Makers (single aside, not very good) from the tent, but that’s no real substitute for actually pulling your wellies on and standing in the rain in front of a stage, is it?
Los Campesinos! were shambolic, obviously… but they were also fantastic. This is just such a brilliant pop song.
Unbelievably, Alex Turner was born in 1986. Quite how he manages to write such incisive lyrics is a marvel. The Arctics had an absolutely colossal crowd on Friday night, and although they are pretty no frills as a live act, they totally deserved it. They’re a brilliant band. They rock too, which is always a good thing.
> “New England” – Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg’s traditional set in the Left Field on Sunday night was an absolute joy. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching this guy performing his songs… even when it’s just him and his guitar. I love the fact that he gave up about a third of his set introducing the crowd to his “Jail Guitar Doors” charity… a charity that was founded when a guy wrote to Billy Bragg asking for his help raising a bit of cash to buy some instruments to help prisoners find a positive creative outlet for their feelings and frustrations. Three days after he had posted the letter, Billy Bragg rang him at work and offered to help. We were played a film about the charity, treated to a couple of impassioned speeches, a raffle and at one point Bragg even brought onstage a kid who has been out of jail on probation for four days and encouraged him to play us a song using Bragg’s own guitar. It was brilliant. The world is absolutely a better place for having people like Billy Bragg in it.
This song should need no introduction. When I saw Bragg here in 2002, he simply said “I’m Billy Bragg and this is my song”.
Not strictly speaking a band who played Glastonbury (although they are currently touring the USA apparently)… but thanks to Guitar Hero, this is a song that simply will not budge from my head. I was singing this all weekend.
Argghh!
Apparently the Foo Fighters have covered this. Part of me really wants to hear their version, but I think it could well be the death of me.
Is that the end of Glastonbury 2007 on this blog? Who knows? I haven't seen C's photos yet....
I've just been watching some of the BBC highlights on Barg & Hen's Sky+ box (kindly served with a tasty risotto and some pear cider to satisfy my cravings). My overwhelming feeling at the moment is that I want to go back and do it all over again - rain, mud and everything.
Hell, in some light, even the mud looks beautiful.
I think that maybe you should read someone else wittering on about the festival for a change. What do you say? After all, there's so much going on, that pretty much every single person who went will have a different take on it.
-> Ben has just kicked off his festival review. Expect a rave review of CSS on the Other Stage any time now.
-> In fact, Glastonbury is such a good festival that Ian even finds time to leave Plusnet alone for a bit, and I believe he was actually seen smiling....!
-> Here's the BBC site (I hear they had some great bloggers...)
"Imagine forcing the cast of Emmerdale to hurriedly construct Las Vegas at gunpoint in the rain. Then do it again. And once more for luck. That's Glastonbury: a cross between a medieval refugee camp and a recently detonated circus".
I want to go back and watch Iggy and the Stooges now. And The Twang. And Editors.... and so on. I also wouldn't mind seeing some of the bands I did see all over again. John Fogerty looked brilliant on t'telly!
Having watched their set now, I think you can keep the Killers though.
And here's a discussion point for you: does Jo Whiley look brilliant or like a Terrahawk? I can't quite decide....
I'm sure I must have mentioned it before, but the food at Glastonbury is just sensational. Every time I am there, I try to take great care over where I get each meal. There is so much good stuff, that I would be loathe to waste a perfectly good mealtime on something substandard.
Here's my countdown of my favourites this year (in no particular order).
Without a shadow of a doubt, this was the best pie that I had at the festival: beef, chorizo and butter beans... but the main attraction has to be the pastry. It's just delicious, and it's served with mash, peas and - optionally - a sprinkling of dried shalots and cheese. Also handily placed right next door to Brothers Pear Cider bar. Loopy juice. I went back for a second pie here later on in the festival (a "Chicken of Aragon"), and whilst standing in the long queue, I found myself being approached by a number of people and asked if this was worth the wait. Oh yes. Word of my pie expertise seemed to get around, and a bit later I was approached by some more people (I was wearing my santa hat, so easy to recognise in the queue).... "Are you the Pie Man? Is this worth the wait?".
I'm going to take that to my grave. I've rarely felt so happy and fulfilled.
This is the classic Glastonbury Pie for me. Unlike the Pie Minister pies, this one comes encased in puff pastry. To be honest, I think the Pie Minister pie was better, but nobody comes close to the quality of the mash and the gravy here. At the tent near the Dance Stages (there's another one on the other side of the site), you also get to watch the loons at the Silent Disco as you eat your tea. Bonkers and very, very funny.
> 6 fresh donuts - a van right at the back of the Other Stage
There are lots of donut vans around the place, but this one undoubtedly serves the biggest and the freshest donuts at the festival, and they very much hit the spot when I was walking back up to my tent after the Arctic Monkeys on Friday night.
> Falafel with humous - a van next to the Leftfield tent
Done right, this is the meal of champions. Here it was perfect. And my nice smile at the lady serving me paid off when she gave me an extra scoop of humous (much to C's disgust, as she only got the one spoonful).
> Fish n'chips - The Sea Cow near the Pyramid Stage
I was a touch wary of this to be honest, but I actually think that this van serves better fish n'chips than my local chippie in Nottingham. I had been expecting a small, flat piece of processed fish and some soggy chips... but what turned up was very much the real McCoy - a great big piece of battered cod. Proper chips too. And there was plenty of malt vinegar. Highly recommended.
> Fudge (made with Kenyan fair trade sugar) - a tent in the marketplace.
This was a bit of an impulse stop, to be honest, but we picked up a bag of assorted fudge here (butterscotch, ginger, vanilla, rum and raisin, white chocolate and a piece of turkish delight with pistachio) and then spent the next 10 minutes cooing over how brilliant it was before heading over to watch Tony Benn in the Left Field.
> "Le Super Royal" - La Grande Bouffe
This lot have a big reputation - Michael Eavis is a big fan, apparently - but I've always found them to be slightly disappointing and very stodgy. I decided to give them another go just before I went to see Billy Bragg. The only realistic alternative was a pasty, and although it looked delicious, I felt as though I had eaten enough pies already for one weekend. "Le Super Royal" is a combination of the tartiflette (potatoes, bacon, cream) and a delicious French sausage. I needn't have worried - it was gorgeous.
> Thai green curry - a tent near the Cider Bus
This didn't look very promising on the plate (it was very pale), but as soon as I tasted it, I knew I was onto a winner. Chicken, rice, lentils and various other salad-y bits in a green curry sauce. Mmmmmm. And all for a fiver! bargain.
> "The Appalachian Feast" (buffalo chili, rice, buttery sweet potato mash, sweetcorn salsa) - a van on the corner of the market between the Left Field and Jazz World
The chili came from a massive vat that had been bubbling on a stove at the back for about 12 hours, and the buffalo meat was unbelievably tender. It wasn't that spicy, but the guy in the van was good enough to give me a shot of jalapeno dressing, which fired the whole thing up nicely.
> Organic coffee and a piece of apricot flapjack (or perhaps the Ginger bread) - The Tiny Tea Tent
This is a Sunday morning tradition at Glastonbury for me and my friend Rich, and this year was no exception. The Tiny Tea Tent is just inside the gates of the Green Fields, and is fully wind powered and serves the most delicious cups of coffee at the festival (50p deposit gets you a proper mug too!). I came here a couple of times over the weekend, and both times I spent a happy half hour just getting out of the hurly-burly of the festival.
I've acquired quite a taste for this stuff. The Cider Bus is just on the Left Field side of the Pyramid Stage, and it serves cider out of massive wooden kegs. This is none of your fizzy shit either - this is just the good stuff. The first pint I had here was the dry. It comes with a small oil-slick on the top and it absolutely blows your socks off. After that first one though, I tended to stick to the medium-sweet, which was just a bit more quaffable (they helpfully provide buckets of ice as well). They also do an absolutely delicious hot cider.
I'm certainly coming back here next year. Brothers Pear Cider is pretty drinkable, but this is the good stuff.
> Tempura vegetables with rice and prawn crackers - a tent between the Pyramid and the Other Stage
Simple and delicious. Made by the bag of prawn crackers.
> Shiraz drunk straight from a mineral water bottle
Is there any other way of drinking this? It's another Sunday Glastonbury tradition for me to carry around the skin from the inside of a box of wine. I then proceed to share this wine with my mates over the course of the day, slowly getting more and more sozzled.
Brilliant!
I first did this with my friend Vicky back in 2002.... but Vicky has just given birth to a beautiful baby daughter and so was unable to attend the festival. Naturally, I made sure I sent her a couple of drunken text messages to allow her to share in the moment. Bless her, but I think she quite enjoyed it. I look forward to when she next comes along to the festival and brings her family with her.
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Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen: at the Glastonbury Festival there is absolutely no need to eat a crappy burger from a brown van.... and if you do so, then I think you should be ejected from the site immediately. The only burgers you should be eating here should be hand made, organic and made from rare breeds lovingly reared in perfect conditions. Ideally, they should also be cooked by a member of the Dimbleby family.
I may have put on some weight.....
(Incidentally, I'm not going to go on about Glastonbury forever.... I think I'll do my Earworms from the festival on Friday, and then let it go for another year)
Well, it took about seven hours from when we first got back to the cars, but I'm finally home and have had that long awaited and much needed shower. It started to rain again whilst I was in the Left Field tent watching the mighty Billy Bragg, and I don't think it has stopped raining since. My God it was wet. After the Braggster, I watched the Bootleg Beatles in the Acoustic tent, but then broke cover and spent an extremely soggy hour or so standing in the rain at the Fire and Dance stage watching Bill Bailey.
I listened to the radio on the way home, and I've seen some of the press coverage of the festival now, and naturally the focus has been on the weather. Yes, it was wet. Yes, the site turned into a bog. But you know what? When it really gets down to it, none of that stuff is really all that important. Alright, so everything becomes a little bit harder, but if you've come prepared, then it's never unmanageable and you quickly learn to adjust. When I stood in the rain last night and watched Bill Bailey, I don't think I could have been much wetter or dirtier if I had tried.... but it was alright. When you're already wet, you can't exactly get much wetter, can you?
Still, I'd had quite a lot of cider and shiraz by that point, and I think I may actually have been asleep on my feet at one point.... so perhaps I'm not the best person to ask.
Monday mornings at Glastonbury are melancholy affairs at the best of times, but today was even bleaker and sadder than most. More than twelve hours of solid rain meant that rivers of slime were starting to flow down the site, and packing up your tent was even more of a chore than normal. Perhaps that was why so many people had simply abandoned their tents where they stood, preferring to get off the site as quickly and as painlessly as possible. As we slogged our way down from our campsite to the West car parks, it was a little bit like walking through a ghost town.... some tents still had bed rolls and sleeping bags still inside.
Glastonbury's car parks are famous. In 2002, I went down to my car at about 10:30 in the morning, about half an hour after another friend who was also heading back up to Nottingham. A few hours later, I received a call from this friend telling me that she had got home safe and sound, and how was I doing. I hadn't even got out of the field I had been parked in. I eventually got home at about 23.30, some 13 hours after I had first got to my car. This year didn't seem to be quite so bad, although it is something of a slog when you haven't had much sleep, and I was very grateful that I wasn't doing any driving.
Not everyone was so lucky: about an hour after we got back home, I had a phonecall from one of my friends who had been camping with us, but was heading to Oxford out of the East car parks. They hadn't yet managed to get as far as Stonehenge, and still had some way to go before that shower.
So it goes.
A lot of crap is talked about the Glastonbury Festival, and no one ever seems to want to criticise or to challenge the view that this is the best festival in the world - certainly not the BBC, who are all over the event like a rash. It may well be the best festival in the world, and it's an annual tradition now for Michael Eavis to say that this Festival was definitely the best yet. It might be fantastic, but that doesn't mean that it's perfect. Why could half the crowd not hear the Killers properly? (so I hear - I was at Rodrigo Y Gabriela, where there was some kind of a technical problem that meant that their set was delayed by about 45 minutes and in the end had to be cut short.... how many things can go wrong for an acoustic duo?). I also thought that there were too many people. The site has apparently been expanded to cope with the additional 40,000 or so people the licence now allows, but at key pressure points there were frequently too many people, many of whom appeared to be triumphantly wasted. And anyway, exactly how alternative is the festival now anyway? It seems that every stall now takes credit cards and offers cashback. Even Lost Vagueness is now conscious of being a brand.
Still, I'm not one of those people who is nostalgic for the festival as it used to be in the good old days. I remember the days before the fence, and I can remember the drug dealers hanging around on every bridge. If the festival hadn't adapted, then I'm sure that it wouldn't still exist. The festival has evolved to survive, and I'm sure it will continue to evolve. Besides, the old values of the festival are still there if you know where to look for them. You can head up to the Green Fields and as well as being able to buy things that will blow your head off (and possibly make you want to buy a pixie hat), you can learn about alternative futures, and get involved with campaign groups like Greenpeace and Oxfam. The Left Field too has a special place in my heart. It's quite easy to take the piss out things like this, but I got quite choked up when Billy Bragg was telling us all about the charity Jail Guitar Doors. It's a charity that looks to provide musical instruments to inmates to help them with their self-esteem and to give them an outlet for their frustrations and for their creativity. Braggy was looking to raise a paltry £300 on the night to buy some guitars, we had a whipround and a raffle and raised over £1000, which will be matched by the Fireman's Union. We also had one of the inmates come on and perform for us. He had only been out of jail on probation for four days, and was clearly a little overwhelmed, but he was also really good. You don't exactly get stuff like this at Download or Reading do you?
One happy by-product of the huge crowds was that it meant that I increasingly stayed away from the main stages and sought my entertainment elsewhere. I didn't watch The Killers, but I did get to see John Fogerty play a fantastic set on Jazz World (how could I have forgotten that he wrote "Rocking All Over The World"? What a way to finish your set). I gave the Kaiser Chiefs and the Who a wide berth and was rewarded by great sets by Billy Bragg and the Bootleg Beatles. I was a little sorry to miss the Marley brothers performing "Exodus" on the Pyramid Stage, but I got to see Tony Benn's sunday sermon and to see the brilliant Mark Thomas performing. I didn't make it down to the Circus or to the Theatre, but I stayed further away from the Main stages than I ever have before, and I finally made it down to the John Peel stage! I couldn't entirely escape the crowds of course, and sometimes this meant that you got glimpses of some of the more unpleasant aspects of human behaviour. At one point on Saturday night, I saw a man lying in the mud. He was clearly in a really bad way, and was barely moving, although he was being attended to by a steward. A concerned passer-by had collared the steward and brought him over to the casualty who was by now surrounded by a small group of lads who were standing around him and laughing. The Good Samaritan looked up at the lads as the steward bent over the guy in the mud. "Is this guy with you?" All of the lads just shook their heads. Hell no, they were just here to laugh at the idiot in the mud. Unbelievable. Another man's suffering as another of the festival's entertainments.
Nothing about that scene was remotely funny, and when I read this afternoon that a 26 year old man had died at the Festival as a result of a suspected drugs overdose, I couldn't help but think of that poor guy in the mud being laughed at.
Perhaps it was him.
Anyway.
Blogging the festival was quite an interesting experience too. I would have posted more often, but the phone I was given by the BBC only had a numeric keypad, so it was a bit of a pain to write more than a few lines at a time. I was also hampered a bit by the fact that the phone seems to use up a lot of power and that one of the two batteries I had been given to use appeared to be duff.... although this did lead me to the Green Fields where some hippies in a wooden caravan with a cat flap offered to charge my phone up using solar power. It took them a little while, but they got there in the end, God love'em. I also didn't want to spend all of my time blogging and not actually enjoying the festival for myself. Anyway, the link on the BBC site is here (all that talk of RSS feeds, and in the end they do it the old-fashioned way with a direct link!)
What a great festival though. There is simply nowhere else in the world that I would rather have been for the last few days. I will say that I'm very pleased to be able to sleep in my own bed tonight, but going to work tomorrow is going to be a very nasty shock to the system indeed.
Here's to the Glastonbury Festival. It's not perfect, but it's still bloody marvellous - even when it's muddy.
"Don't be afraid," my voice said. "No one is allowed to die more than once. The comedy will be over soon, and you'll never have to go through it again."
