It's a long way to go, five days in a row
Jun. 29th, 2007 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaMy apologies for the mind-numbing length... this has been growing over the last few days. I like my past write-ups (2004, 2005) because I forget stuff and go back to check and end up thinking "good lord did I really voluntarily watch Keane?" and so on. So, this entry is really for my benefit. Read at own risk!
(Following the convention of other years, bands in [] are those where I only caught a short part of their set.)
Wednesday
We went to the festival earlier than other years - Wednesday night, in the hope of getting tents set up before the deluge. Putting up tents in the rain is no fun. Other years, I've criticised people for focussing on the weather so much instead of the festival excitement, but this year the weather really was so intrusive that it overshadowed everything. But on Wednesday it was still pleasantly clement; we landed, found a space, started to pitch a tent and were offered assistance and cider by people loafing nearby.
The problem with arriving at Glastonbury hungry is that you are hit by the realisation that you can have almost any kind of food you want. There are stalls all around, and they all smell great and you suddenly want to eat everything in the world. Actually, I ate a steak sandwich. My favourite food stall, though, remains La Grande Bouffe, who do the most amazing sausages and tartiflette.
My first sms report described "100 candles lighting a guy on stage mixing samples", which wasn't quite true (but you try being accurate in <140 characters). We walked passed a large, dark brown tent whose blackboard advertised it as "Chai Wallahs". Inside, people were sitting round little tables and on comfy chairs. On a tiny stage, there was a man cradling a small box o' twiddly knobs on his knee. He sang into a mike, recording the output, then mixed and matched the sounds to created a complicated, textured music. Stacked all round the tent on shelves were lumps of some translucent rock, each containing a tealight. There were some on tables, some on the bar, a few on the stage and a vast bank of them stretching off to one side. The effect was of a warm, cosy, glowing oasis in the darkening evening.
Thursday
Bands seen: unknown Cajun quartet, unknown bunch of singers, Paris Motel, King Blues, [Holy Fuck]
Bands don't officially get underway til Friday, but we found a few dotted about the place. Paris Motel are always great, and drew a surprisingly large crowd to the bandstand in the evening sunshine. I admit, I only had any interest in Holy Fuck because they have a silly name. They were eventually located in the Leftfield, and were quite an interesting blast of frantic electronic noise and guitars, before they inexplicably had the plug pulled on them. I'd like to hear them again.
During Thursday, I became impressively Tall. I'd had a painfully stiff neck before I even set off for Glastonbury, not helped by carrying a rucksack bigger than me for miles and miles and miles. In the healing fields I found a nice lady called Simone who offered half an hour's Shiatsu for a suggested donation of £10. She was lovely and made me all Tall again. Even with the continuing barrage of elements, standing up, and sleeping on the floor I was still quite Tall when I left on Monday.
Since we weren't hastily grabbing food between bands, we went for a more civilised option than the usual knife-fork-plate-cup juggling that goes on, and had a sit-down meal in Cafe Tango in the green fields. Comfy seats, huge platefuls of salad to go with my nice cheese-and-leek pie, papers to read and no need for juggling. Sadly, their ambient music was a bit in-yer-face and could have done with being turned down a notch.
Friday
Bands seen: Reverend and the Makers, The Dukes Box, Gogol Bordello, [Amy Winehouse], [Tokyo Police Club], [New Pornographers], Bloc Party, The Fratellis, Mumm-Ra, Arcade Fire, Bjork, [Hot Chip]
I think Friday was my best day for bands. Reverend and the Makers were unknown but surprisingly good, Gogol Bordello were as deranged and noisy as expected. Mumm-Ra were delightful, and handed out small pennants to the audience to wave. Arcade Fire rocked... though it's slightly weird to hear the wooo-a-long parts of their track sung by a giant crowd. Somehow that lairy, laddish sound belongs more to the likes of the Arctic Monkeys than the multi-instrumental Arcade Fire. No points to the cameramen, though. While Arcade Fire manically swapped instruments, ran around the stage, drummed on anything that came to hand and generally acted like loonies, the large TV screens showed a serene image of the singer's face almost all the time. I was reduced to watching the screens because, although I was of course Tall, the surrounding audience was taller.
I'm not really a Bjork fan (I'm not anti, I'm just mostly unaware of her music), and found that her set left me largely unmoved. Which is a shame, because others' views suggest it was a great performance. I sneaked out before the end and ran away to catch the last song or two from Hot Chip.
The Dukes Box was the best bit of performance art I saw all weekend - a carvan painted like a jukebox, complete with money slot and numbered buttons. Inside were crammed five blokes in lurid spandex (plus a full drum kit, double bass, two-necked guitar and some other stuff). We waited in torrential rain while they set up and manouevred into position, then I poked my pound in the slot and pressed button 4. As the song list promised, out of the caravan's speakers came a slightly glammy cover of Red Right Hand. Genius. We hung around for Rehab, Atomic and a bizarre parody of I've Been Everywhere before wandering on.
Saturday
Bands seen: Switches, The Pipettes, [The Brakes], The Long Blondes, [Atilla the Stockbroker], John Otway, CSS, The Broken Family Band, unknown band, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly & Friends, Paul Weller, Editors, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Madness
On Saturday morning I was striding confidently along the walkway in front of the Other Stage, reading the Q daily paper and singing along to Drama Queen. I had a waterproof on, but unzipped as it wasn't actually raining. It reminded me what days at Glastonbury are meant to be like, when the vast majority of your attention isn't diverted into staying upright/functional/dry. Sadly, it didn't last as the rain crept back very shortly afterwards and even the walkways vanished under the mud.
ChrisC and I had devloped an almost pathalogical faith that the sun would shine on the Pipettes. The Pipettes (described in the Q daily as pre-gun-toting-orgy Phil Spector-esque) are just too damn chirpy and polka-dotty and sunshiney to rain on. Despite enormously menacing grey clouds we were proved correct - the sun blazed down on the Pipettes, even to the extent that mid-set there was a streak of clear sky directly over the Other Stage when all else was looming black misery. Unfortunately, they came off stage and the torrent started again almost immediately.
Paul Weller was very... there. At T last year, he did a Jam-packed set which was a lot of fun. This time he went for lots of slowed-down solo stuff, which wasn't enough to make me party in the mud. He did close with Town Called Malice, but really I can't get excited about the likes of The Changing Man and Wildwood.
Being insufficiently exceited about the Killers, I opted for The Stooges as a headliner and joined a surprisingly small crowd in front of the Other stage. Watching the Stooges (who seem to have been rebranded as Iggy Pop And The Stooges, for fear the kids of today won't know the name) reminded me that back in the 70s bands got big largely through touring. There was none of this meteoric rise to fame via myspace and the like. The Stooges are a live band, and they know how to work an audience. Early in the set, Iggy Pop harassed the security into letting hundreds of muddy fans onto the stage (it's hardly an invasion when it's consenual) and did a couple of numbers from the middle of the crowd. Then he managed to get the hundreds of muddy people to leave again, without having to get security to throw them off. I'd like to see - say - Alex Kapranos get an unruly crowd to leave a stage they're enjoying occupying.
Going to see Madness was... well, madness. They were playing a "secret" gig in Lost Vagueness at half midnight. Sadly, it was very unsecret and everyone in the whole world tried to go. The small tent was full, and the crowd outside tightly packed together. We wormed our way in as best we could, and got to somewhere where we could just about hear. I'd have liked to have been properly "in", as I suspect it was a very fun set. Getting back to the tent again was a hugely complicated operation. The worst crowds I've seen at Glastonbury - two of them, trying to walk opposite ways along the railway track. Security were attempting crowd control, but crowds are stupid and it took us over an hour to get back to Pennards Hill.
Once I got into my sleeping bag, I wondered whether late-night crowds are always like that - usually I scoot off to bed soon after the main headliners have finished - and whether the attempts to close off areas would just cause more mayhem among the drunken hordes. I lay awake listening to the police helicopter overhead, wondering if the noises I could hear were happy whooping, or the yelling of incipient riot. The Glastonbury I've seen in the past few years has always been friendly, but I know in the past it's had its bad moments.
Sunday
(No obvious signs or reports of carnage, so I guess late night crowds are always like that :)
Bands seen: The Holloways, Tiny Dancers, Sunshine Underground, Secondclass Citizen, [Mika], Mark Ronson, The Go! Team, KT Tunstall, unknown ska band, Bill Bailey
That's not that many bands, is it ? No, I noticed that. Most of Sunday was spent idling around in the random weird shit fields (mainly Greenfields and Circus fields). We sat in the permaculture area, beside a giant enamelled bee-oven (that is, an oven made to look like a bee, not an oven for cooking bees) and ate comfrey pakora. We watched people carving limestone sculptures, with varying degrees of skill. We looked at giant sculptures made from rubbish or wicker or portaloos. At Glastonbury anything is possible so when we, hip-deep in sticky mud, found a sign saying 'The Beach' we followed it under the blithe assumption that there would be a beach. There was, and it had giant sand sculptures of skulls and dragons. And sofas.
We lounged in the Silent Disco, grateful of a bit of dry grass to sit on. The Silent Disco is a weird concept; a disco where everyone is issued with wireless headphones, thus allowing loud music after curfew. During the day it becomes the Silent Chill - we got a bizarre soundscape which the DJ announced as a tour round Zurich. Not quite what was expected, but pleasantly relaxing. And the sitting down. That was great. The biggest flaw with a muddy Glastonbury[*] is that you end up spending 14+ hours a day on your feet with nowhere to park your bum for a rest.
I wanted to see the Holloways on the strength of their latest single (Generator, which is top) - it was great, but clearly the best song they've got. I'll keep an eye on them, though, because they've got the potential to do good stuff. Nice a cappella bits of harmony when they get round to it. Tiny Dancers I was also keen to see following one single. They sound exactly like a band with that name should, all plinky-plonky xylophones. The audience for Mark Ronson was packed 15 deep out of the tent, and poor judgement meant we ended up in a lake. I like his covers, I'll be interested to see what he does next.
The choice of evening main headliners was The Who (who thoroughly underwhelmed me at T last year), The Chemical Brothers and The Gossip (who?). The problem with the Chemical Brothers was that we were over here, sitting down in a nice dry tent which served great hot chocolate, and they were over there, a good half-hour's plod through welly-stealing mud to stand in pouring rain. Since we were working up to another couple of hours standing in the rain to see Bill Bailey, it just seemed like too much hard work to see the Chemical Brothers as well. In the end, we watched most of Bill Bailey's set and wussed out. It was half past one in the morning, still raining solidly, and merely staying vertical, dry and alive was taking too much concentration.
Monday
Let us not speak of this day. Up at 7:20, to pack bags and pack up the tent. In the pouring rain. There was some scheme this year where left-behind tents would be collected, cleaned and sent somewhere useful so grateful thanks to our neighbours who'd left a large tent which we used to dump bags in while we packed up. A long, muddy slog to the car (along a carefully planned route which used made roads) in the pouring rain got us there at 10:20. Getting in the car and leaving, queueing as people spun their wheels hopelessly in the mud; we finally got out at about midday.
On the A303 was a sign saying "A303 Eastbound closed", and suggestions to follow a little diamond diversion. We were surprised when we were the only people who turned off for the diamond diversion - we took a 20 mile detour and rejoined the road. We don't believe it was closed at all. It was one of those foldy-out signs, and I reckon it had either been left open by mistake or opened by mischievous types. Then two hours of queueueueuing because a crash really had closed the A303 further on. A brief stop for lunch, then on again.
On the A34 was a sign saying "A34 Northbound closed", and suggestions to follow a little triangle diversion. It was another foldy out sign and we petulantly ignored it. And, would you believe, the A34 wasn't closed. Not even a little bit. In any direction. Eventually home about twelve hours after we got up - which is rubbish compared to other years, though I realise compared favourably to many people's experiences.
[*] Contrary to belief, I'm reliably informed there are other kinds. You know, where the sun shines and there's no mud.
(Following the convention of other years, bands in [] are those where I only caught a short part of their set.)
Wednesday
We went to the festival earlier than other years - Wednesday night, in the hope of getting tents set up before the deluge. Putting up tents in the rain is no fun. Other years, I've criticised people for focussing on the weather so much instead of the festival excitement, but this year the weather really was so intrusive that it overshadowed everything. But on Wednesday it was still pleasantly clement; we landed, found a space, started to pitch a tent and were offered assistance and cider by people loafing nearby.
The problem with arriving at Glastonbury hungry is that you are hit by the realisation that you can have almost any kind of food you want. There are stalls all around, and they all smell great and you suddenly want to eat everything in the world. Actually, I ate a steak sandwich. My favourite food stall, though, remains La Grande Bouffe, who do the most amazing sausages and tartiflette.
My first sms report described "100 candles lighting a guy on stage mixing samples", which wasn't quite true (but you try being accurate in <140 characters). We walked passed a large, dark brown tent whose blackboard advertised it as "Chai Wallahs". Inside, people were sitting round little tables and on comfy chairs. On a tiny stage, there was a man cradling a small box o' twiddly knobs on his knee. He sang into a mike, recording the output, then mixed and matched the sounds to created a complicated, textured music. Stacked all round the tent on shelves were lumps of some translucent rock, each containing a tealight. There were some on tables, some on the bar, a few on the stage and a vast bank of them stretching off to one side. The effect was of a warm, cosy, glowing oasis in the darkening evening.
Thursday
Bands seen: unknown Cajun quartet, unknown bunch of singers, Paris Motel, King Blues, [Holy Fuck]
Bands don't officially get underway til Friday, but we found a few dotted about the place. Paris Motel are always great, and drew a surprisingly large crowd to the bandstand in the evening sunshine. I admit, I only had any interest in Holy Fuck because they have a silly name. They were eventually located in the Leftfield, and were quite an interesting blast of frantic electronic noise and guitars, before they inexplicably had the plug pulled on them. I'd like to hear them again.
During Thursday, I became impressively Tall. I'd had a painfully stiff neck before I even set off for Glastonbury, not helped by carrying a rucksack bigger than me for miles and miles and miles. In the healing fields I found a nice lady called Simone who offered half an hour's Shiatsu for a suggested donation of £10. She was lovely and made me all Tall again. Even with the continuing barrage of elements, standing up, and sleeping on the floor I was still quite Tall when I left on Monday.
Since we weren't hastily grabbing food between bands, we went for a more civilised option than the usual knife-fork-plate-cup juggling that goes on, and had a sit-down meal in Cafe Tango in the green fields. Comfy seats, huge platefuls of salad to go with my nice cheese-and-leek pie, papers to read and no need for juggling. Sadly, their ambient music was a bit in-yer-face and could have done with being turned down a notch.
Friday
Bands seen: Reverend and the Makers, The Dukes Box, Gogol Bordello, [Amy Winehouse], [Tokyo Police Club], [New Pornographers], Bloc Party, The Fratellis, Mumm-Ra, Arcade Fire, Bjork, [Hot Chip]
I think Friday was my best day for bands. Reverend and the Makers were unknown but surprisingly good, Gogol Bordello were as deranged and noisy as expected. Mumm-Ra were delightful, and handed out small pennants to the audience to wave. Arcade Fire rocked... though it's slightly weird to hear the wooo-a-long parts of their track sung by a giant crowd. Somehow that lairy, laddish sound belongs more to the likes of the Arctic Monkeys than the multi-instrumental Arcade Fire. No points to the cameramen, though. While Arcade Fire manically swapped instruments, ran around the stage, drummed on anything that came to hand and generally acted like loonies, the large TV screens showed a serene image of the singer's face almost all the time. I was reduced to watching the screens because, although I was of course Tall, the surrounding audience was taller.
I'm not really a Bjork fan (I'm not anti, I'm just mostly unaware of her music), and found that her set left me largely unmoved. Which is a shame, because others' views suggest it was a great performance. I sneaked out before the end and ran away to catch the last song or two from Hot Chip.
The Dukes Box was the best bit of performance art I saw all weekend - a carvan painted like a jukebox, complete with money slot and numbered buttons. Inside were crammed five blokes in lurid spandex (plus a full drum kit, double bass, two-necked guitar and some other stuff). We waited in torrential rain while they set up and manouevred into position, then I poked my pound in the slot and pressed button 4. As the song list promised, out of the caravan's speakers came a slightly glammy cover of Red Right Hand. Genius. We hung around for Rehab, Atomic and a bizarre parody of I've Been Everywhere before wandering on.
Saturday
Bands seen: Switches, The Pipettes, [The Brakes], The Long Blondes, [Atilla the Stockbroker], John Otway, CSS, The Broken Family Band, unknown band, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly & Friends, Paul Weller, Editors, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Madness
On Saturday morning I was striding confidently along the walkway in front of the Other Stage, reading the Q daily paper and singing along to Drama Queen. I had a waterproof on, but unzipped as it wasn't actually raining. It reminded me what days at Glastonbury are meant to be like, when the vast majority of your attention isn't diverted into staying upright/functional/dry. Sadly, it didn't last as the rain crept back very shortly afterwards and even the walkways vanished under the mud.
ChrisC and I had devloped an almost pathalogical faith that the sun would shine on the Pipettes. The Pipettes (described in the Q daily as pre-gun-toting-orgy Phil Spector-esque) are just too damn chirpy and polka-dotty and sunshiney to rain on. Despite enormously menacing grey clouds we were proved correct - the sun blazed down on the Pipettes, even to the extent that mid-set there was a streak of clear sky directly over the Other Stage when all else was looming black misery. Unfortunately, they came off stage and the torrent started again almost immediately.
Paul Weller was very... there. At T last year, he did a Jam-packed set which was a lot of fun. This time he went for lots of slowed-down solo stuff, which wasn't enough to make me party in the mud. He did close with Town Called Malice, but really I can't get excited about the likes of The Changing Man and Wildwood.
Being insufficiently exceited about the Killers, I opted for The Stooges as a headliner and joined a surprisingly small crowd in front of the Other stage. Watching the Stooges (who seem to have been rebranded as Iggy Pop And The Stooges, for fear the kids of today won't know the name) reminded me that back in the 70s bands got big largely through touring. There was none of this meteoric rise to fame via myspace and the like. The Stooges are a live band, and they know how to work an audience. Early in the set, Iggy Pop harassed the security into letting hundreds of muddy fans onto the stage (it's hardly an invasion when it's consenual) and did a couple of numbers from the middle of the crowd. Then he managed to get the hundreds of muddy people to leave again, without having to get security to throw them off. I'd like to see - say - Alex Kapranos get an unruly crowd to leave a stage they're enjoying occupying.
Going to see Madness was... well, madness. They were playing a "secret" gig in Lost Vagueness at half midnight. Sadly, it was very unsecret and everyone in the whole world tried to go. The small tent was full, and the crowd outside tightly packed together. We wormed our way in as best we could, and got to somewhere where we could just about hear. I'd have liked to have been properly "in", as I suspect it was a very fun set. Getting back to the tent again was a hugely complicated operation. The worst crowds I've seen at Glastonbury - two of them, trying to walk opposite ways along the railway track. Security were attempting crowd control, but crowds are stupid and it took us over an hour to get back to Pennards Hill.
Once I got into my sleeping bag, I wondered whether late-night crowds are always like that - usually I scoot off to bed soon after the main headliners have finished - and whether the attempts to close off areas would just cause more mayhem among the drunken hordes. I lay awake listening to the police helicopter overhead, wondering if the noises I could hear were happy whooping, or the yelling of incipient riot. The Glastonbury I've seen in the past few years has always been friendly, but I know in the past it's had its bad moments.
Sunday
(No obvious signs or reports of carnage, so I guess late night crowds are always like that :)
Bands seen: The Holloways, Tiny Dancers, Sunshine Underground, Secondclass Citizen, [Mika], Mark Ronson, The Go! Team, KT Tunstall, unknown ska band, Bill Bailey
That's not that many bands, is it ? No, I noticed that. Most of Sunday was spent idling around in the random weird shit fields (mainly Greenfields and Circus fields). We sat in the permaculture area, beside a giant enamelled bee-oven (that is, an oven made to look like a bee, not an oven for cooking bees) and ate comfrey pakora. We watched people carving limestone sculptures, with varying degrees of skill. We looked at giant sculptures made from rubbish or wicker or portaloos. At Glastonbury anything is possible so when we, hip-deep in sticky mud, found a sign saying 'The Beach' we followed it under the blithe assumption that there would be a beach. There was, and it had giant sand sculptures of skulls and dragons. And sofas.
We lounged in the Silent Disco, grateful of a bit of dry grass to sit on. The Silent Disco is a weird concept; a disco where everyone is issued with wireless headphones, thus allowing loud music after curfew. During the day it becomes the Silent Chill - we got a bizarre soundscape which the DJ announced as a tour round Zurich. Not quite what was expected, but pleasantly relaxing. And the sitting down. That was great. The biggest flaw with a muddy Glastonbury[*] is that you end up spending 14+ hours a day on your feet with nowhere to park your bum for a rest.
I wanted to see the Holloways on the strength of their latest single (Generator, which is top) - it was great, but clearly the best song they've got. I'll keep an eye on them, though, because they've got the potential to do good stuff. Nice a cappella bits of harmony when they get round to it. Tiny Dancers I was also keen to see following one single. They sound exactly like a band with that name should, all plinky-plonky xylophones. The audience for Mark Ronson was packed 15 deep out of the tent, and poor judgement meant we ended up in a lake. I like his covers, I'll be interested to see what he does next.
The choice of evening main headliners was The Who (who thoroughly underwhelmed me at T last year), The Chemical Brothers and The Gossip (who?). The problem with the Chemical Brothers was that we were over here, sitting down in a nice dry tent which served great hot chocolate, and they were over there, a good half-hour's plod through welly-stealing mud to stand in pouring rain. Since we were working up to another couple of hours standing in the rain to see Bill Bailey, it just seemed like too much hard work to see the Chemical Brothers as well. In the end, we watched most of Bill Bailey's set and wussed out. It was half past one in the morning, still raining solidly, and merely staying vertical, dry and alive was taking too much concentration.
Monday
Let us not speak of this day. Up at 7:20, to pack bags and pack up the tent. In the pouring rain. There was some scheme this year where left-behind tents would be collected, cleaned and sent somewhere useful so grateful thanks to our neighbours who'd left a large tent which we used to dump bags in while we packed up. A long, muddy slog to the car (along a carefully planned route which used made roads) in the pouring rain got us there at 10:20. Getting in the car and leaving, queueing as people spun their wheels hopelessly in the mud; we finally got out at about midday.
On the A303 was a sign saying "A303 Eastbound closed", and suggestions to follow a little diamond diversion. We were surprised when we were the only people who turned off for the diamond diversion - we took a 20 mile detour and rejoined the road. We don't believe it was closed at all. It was one of those foldy-out signs, and I reckon it had either been left open by mistake or opened by mischievous types. Then two hours of queueueueuing because a crash really had closed the A303 further on. A brief stop for lunch, then on again.
On the A34 was a sign saying "A34 Northbound closed", and suggestions to follow a little triangle diversion. It was another foldy out sign and we petulantly ignored it. And, would you believe, the A34 wasn't closed. Not even a little bit. In any direction. Eventually home about twelve hours after we got up - which is rubbish compared to other years, though I realise compared favourably to many people's experiences.
[*] Contrary to belief, I'm reliably informed there are other kinds. You know, where the sun shines and there's no mud.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-29 04:16 pm (UTC)IIRC they did Raw Power (1974 or so, the last album before they split and probably still their best-known one) as Iggy and the Stooges, so there is some precedent.
Sounds like you saw some great stuff, but all the same on balance I'm glad I was here at home in the dry!
no subject
Date: 2007-06-29 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-29 05:52 pm (UTC)I suspect the UK God of Rain was aiming for Glastonbury, but missed; maybe it has a bit of trouble telling one music festival from another...