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ventaYou know the drill by now, don't you? I go to Glastonbury, I come back, and then I write about it at phenomenally tedious length. The bands I saw are listed at the start of each day. []s denote a band I either saw only a little of, or wasn't paying much attention to.
Wednesday
De Fuego
Often, round these parts, departing for Glastonbury is a finely-honed military operation. This year it kind of snuck up on us, and Tuesday night saw us flinging things vaguely at bags and wondering whether indispensable items had gone. However, by Wednesday morning all was well and we wombled off down the A303.
For those of you who don't know the A303, it's the main road past Stonehenge and it switches between dual and single carriageway. At busy times - like when everyone is trying to get to a festival in Somerset - it's a very slow road. In particular, the road drops down to one lane just as everyone gets distracted by a giant prehistoric wossname in a nearby field. Even if no one runs into anyone else, there's always a big jam there. I think if I were the local council, I'd have put off my roadworks at that very spot for a week, but there you go.
Actually, the traffic wasn't that bad once we passed Stonehenge. We motored round the minor roads to Worthy Farm, we trundled over the rickety temporary roadways to the fields allocated for carparking (I do not recommend doing this in a low-slung coupé), and we parked. We walked down the hill, presented our tickets for wristbands and walked onto the site. All without a single queue.
The Dairy Ground campsite was busy, but with sizeable gaps between tents (where by sizeable I mean "almost big enough to put another tent in"). So we did, and we set off to prowl around, taking in large plates of mixed curries, rice and vegetable fritters from Glastonbury stalwarts No Bones Jones. Then we commenced our circumnavigation of the farm to check what was new, what was back, what had moved...
We sat on carpets in the Small World stage tent, watching a Flamenco guitar duo called De Fuego and drinking spiced massala tea (£1.50 for a mug, 50p deposit on the china mug). The Park - the newish area curated by Emily Eavis - had acquired a new sculpture called The Tree of Life and we climbed it via a spiral staircase, standing on the viewing platform as it slowly rotated. Just below the stone circle, a passing bloke sat down at a free-range piano and played some hectic boogie-woogie before launching into a well-known plinky-plonky intro and the crowd who'd gathered round began to sing in unison.... I never thought I'd miss you, half as much as I do... We watched fireworks, sat on painted benches drinking cider, and marvelled at the giant flaming bonfire above the stone circle (two days later, the ashes were still smouldering).
Not bad for a festival that doesn't officially start til Friday morning ;)
Thursday
[Keston Cobblers Club], [Balina Whalers], Gaz Brookfield, Tankus the Henge, Ed Gerhard, Sieze the Day, [Django Django], Alt-J
I began Thursday as I traditionally like to, by heading off to the Healing Field and finding myself a nice shiatsu massage. My favourite practitioner wasn't there, but I found a pleasant guy who unknotted my shoulders for me - for once, lying outside in the sunshine while he made various bits of me go crack. In fact, there was so much sunshine that afterwards ChrisC and I threaded our way through the ornamental garden, and tucked ourselves into a blue domed tent near a pretty water-feature to have a little sit down in the shade.
Eventually we stirred, setting ourselves the challenge of finding Toad Hall (a new venue) and Strummerville (a tiny corner of the site dedicated to Joe Strummer). Both of these were surprisingly easy - Strummerville was only just waking up, putting out a circle of beaten-up sofas and armchairs round its campfire space. We lounged around a while, chatting to a guy in the next chair who'd been working on the gates taking tickets.
We left plenty of time to get up to the Croissant Neuf bandstand for Gaz Brookfield; just as well since we had to keep pausing as we walked past other stages. We found![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
satyrica at the bandstand, and as the forecast rain showed up, managed to slide ourselves undercover in the Tiny Tea Tent for tea and chatting.
We managed to do a reasonably good job of remaining under cover while it rained - watching Tankus the Henge (a sort of five-man brass-toting version of Chas 'n' Dave) on Satyrica's recommendation, then returning to Toad Hall for pleasant slide guitar (Ed Gerhard) and manic political folk ranting (Seize the Day).
We were rather late heading down to meetbrrm for our now-traditional Thursday evening sausage and tartiflette because we had to deal with a mildly unscheduled tent flood - trying to jam a tent into a slightly-too-small space and peg it down into badly-cracked loose earth leads to a poorly-pitched tent. Which then leads to significant bits collapsing :(
The three of us managed to find a bit of shelter against the now-mostly-negligible rain (just so the cider didn't get diluted) and half-listened to the band on in William's Green. ChrisC came back to report that he'd solved one of the weekend's scheduling dilemmas (Dinosaur Jr or Alt-J?) by finding out the next "secret" band on in William's Green was Alt-J. Excellent! Sadly, even with an actually secret "secret" gig the tent was still jammed and after half a track we fought our way back out again and watched from a respectable 15 feet or so away.
Friday
Jupiter & Okwess International, Teleman, Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra, Peace, [Rita Ora], [Savages], Tribes, [Palma Violets], Dinosaur Jr, Django Django, [Billy Bragg], Portishead, [The Horrors]
After the 2011 festival, I noted that the corporate "Q Daily" newspaper had been replaced by a truly awful organ called the Glastonbury Firelighter. This year, the Glastonbury Free Press was going to be printed on-site on a vintage and exciting-sounding printing-press. Sadly, an early-morning call at the info stall produced no newspaper. Disappointingly, the vintage technology had suddenly gone sullen and wouldn't be coaxed into life again until it was time to print Sunday's edition.
The bands started in earnest, with ChrisC and I departing in different directions immediately - me to sit in the sunshine in the Park and watch the rather lovely Teleman and he to (apparently) jump up and down like crazy to the Hives. We met at a carefully pre-arranged location to watch Amanda Palmer - a flight-related incident meant both she and her band had lost all their costumes and equipment, but had begged and borrowed enough for a set and were amazing (they also get "cover of the festival" award for the mass singalong version of Common People). Since Beady Eye had played a "secret" set earlier in the day Amanda Palmer had asked if Liam Gallagher would like to come onstage and present her with flowers during her song Oasis. "How do I know you're not fookin' slaggin' me off?" he'd asked (she does a credible Gallagher impression). She assured him that she wasn't, she was singing a lovely song all about abortion, but apparently he still declined.
Then we ran (almost literally) up to the John Peel tent to see Peace, and ran back down again in time to miss almost all of Savages, and eat curry listening to Tribes. Feeling that that was enough running for just now, we ambled gently through the circus areas, looking at peepshows, people on stilts, a lady juggling fire while balanced on a ladder, and a man walking a very wobbly tightrope over a river while playing the violin (he made it!)
Then it was back into the bands again; Dinosaur Jr hold the dubious distinction of being the only band that made me get my earplugs out all weekend. We also discovered that you can hear the Park stage remarkably well from the very top of the hill above the tipi field despite it being some distance away. Acoustics are weird. By now I had also learned that you could hear theDance Village Silver Hayes remarkably well from the place I'd chosen to camp. Now that there are multiple stages running til 4, 5 or even 6am it's really quite tricky to find somewhere that isn't bloody noisy.
The evening saw me eating a "Buddha bowl" for tea - vegan mussulman curry, brown rice, kimchi, steamed greens, mixed seeds - and it was really remarkably tasty. Though it didn't come with as good a tag line as the stall in West Holts which calls itself Ghandi's Flip-Flop, and advertises "non-violent curries for the civilly disobedient".
Saturday
The Staves, [The 1975], Beans on Toast, Slamboree, [Bombay Royale], [Azealia Banks], The Strypes, Daughter, Johnny Marr, Primal Scream, Savages, [The Beat feat. Billy Bragg], The Rolling Stones, Hurts.
I think in previous years' write-ups I've barely mentioned much about food. The range of food and drink on offer is truly amazing. I started Saturday with freshly squozen watermelon, apple, lime and ginger juice which kept me going until the huge vegetarian feast-plate from
Leon at lunch time.
Sitting in the Greenpeace field by the model igloo, and model polar bear, in the snow (their issue this year was "Save The Arctic") a Greenpeace volunteer carefully shepherded kids to a safe distance as she led out a real polar bear. My first thought was bloody hell! that's ridiculously dangerous! And what the hell are Greenpeace doing bringing a polar bear to a festival? Then my brain kicked in, and I realised that surely it wasn't actually a polar bear. It was incredibly convincing, though (and I heard at least one other person having the same reaction as I did). I suspect the two women who walked into the igloo just before the bear came out, and left shortly after it went back in, may have had something to do with it... but bloody hell it was a good polar bear.
Having watched Beans on Toast, we followed him down the hill to another stage to see a band he's recently joined - the sort of violently multi-coloured, politically-edged, circus-tinged raucous collective of singers and musicians and acrobats and dancers that I thought had quite gone out of fashion. Anyway, Slamboree are still doing it and they're hugely entertaining.
We then pinged wildly about between stages trying to catch as much as possible of the bands that all clashed most inconveniently (disappointingly, the main casualty was Two Door Cinema Club, who I hear were great). Primal Scream were sounding good, but seemed to suffer from a terribly uninterested audience - my guess is that everyone at the front was just holding themselves places for the Stones' set later. Sadly, Bobby Gillespie responded by becoming more and more laconic and even Rocks (with extra backing vocals from Haim) failed to get a properly enthusiastic response.
It was very noticeable that from early evening onwards, everyone was streaming towards the Pyramid. Savages' frankly terrifying, but brilliant, set was performed to a tiny crowd while the Pyramid field became more and more packed. I was, actually, not particularly excited about seeing the Rolling Stones but thought I ought to show up for the start just to tick them off the list. Sadly, the sound was awful - really tinny and thin (the Q Review we bought on exit claimed that the repeater speakers weren't turned on until the BBC broadcast began). Eventually I lost the will to live, and fought my way all the way up to the top corner of the field to flee back to the safety of the John Peel tent and electro duo Hurts. Who were amazing, for the short bit of their set I saw.
Other years, almost all the late-night action has been concentrated in the south-east corner of the farm. The place gets packed, and despite there being masses of interesting stuff to see, the crowds make it so unenjoyable I've rarely bothered much. This year Arcadia, the giant spider-stage made from (allegedly) three custom and excise scanning machines and seven jet engines (and a lot of other stuff) had crawled out and parked near the Other stage. We watched its opening show - fire tornadoes, the "Lords of Lightning" duelling in Tesla suits, acrobats, pyrotechnics, lasers and projections - with dropped jaws. Then we left the pounding bass of its DJs to the enormous crowd, and scurried back to the tent.
Sunday
[Zulu Winter], Bridie Jackson and the Arbour, The Demon Barbers XL, [JJ Grey & Mofro], Vampire Weekend, Editors, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Smashing Pumpkins, The xx, The Egg.
Although the Glastonbury Free Press was allegedly up and running again, the info point had a makeshift cardboard sign up saying "no papers yet". I don't know if they managed a full print run, but I didn't see one all day - not even discarded on the floor anywhere.
Bridie Jackson and the Arbour were the winners of the festival's Emerging Talent competition this year. Bridie is also the person who runs the choir my mum sings in [*], so bang on 11:30 I was sitting at attention on the floor of the Avalon tent, working steadily through a large box of salmon kedgeree and waiting for them to come on stage. They're definitely worth a listen - and were (I think) the only other serious contender for cover-of-the-festival for their version of Cry Me A River.
We took a light amble through the SE corner, which is largely closed in the daytime. Still impressive though - huge temporary structures built as stages, little warrens of passages with tiny venues and... stuff everywhere. It never ceases to amaze me what a prodigious amount of effort goes into building things for the festival, and making it not just functional but interesting, quirky or beautiful.
The circus fields always seem to be at their best on Sundays, with top-quality performance artists and/or nutters everywhere. People in stiff, formal Chinese garb carrying parasols followed people around, offering them shade and mild confusion. Street theatre and stiltwalkers were everywhere, and a huge crowd was watching a brilliant robot doing stand-up. We watched festival favourites Bang On do their junk-drumming show. A guy I always think of as The Crowd Wizard was there - his act consists almost entirely of getting very large groups of people to do silly things in concert (I have no idea how he bills himself), but he's impressive and fascinating. People were having trapeze lessons and...
Well. We had a plan that, starting from the Cabaret tent where we'd just heard the end of performance-poet Dizraeli, we would head to see I Am Kloot if nothing more interesting got in the way. You may have noticed I Am Kloot do not appear in my list of bands. Because someone was building a cardboard model of the tower that sits atop Glastonbury Tor. A lifesize model. It was already impressively detailed and a good 30ft high when we showed up, and was being cheerfully taped together by a mob of volunteers. Every fifteen minutes or so, the smaller children were herded away, and anyone big enough picked up the model to slide another layer of boxes in. And the parcel tape frenzy began again. A French guy who spoke little English was masterminding it, but there was very little overall plan - just grab a reel of tape and get stuck in. So we did :)
(killalla, if you recognise that bag I'm carrying it is indeed the one that used to belong to you. And jolly useful and comfortable it is, too!)
After a while we wandered on, and when we came back the tower had had to be abandoned not-quite-completely built due to extreme sideways lurching. It was carefully stabilised with guy ropes, but the combined, undirected workings of very small children and quite pissed adults hadn't quite given it the structural integrity it needed. On cue, one set of guys was released, and people hauled on the others, and over it toppled. A crowd led by one of the stewards raced in and dived... and in moments there was just a huge pile of cardboard and a huge and varied crowd having immense fun with it.
Then a box walked past. On close inspection, it had large eye-holes, a pair of very small feet sticking out the bottom, and a hole in one side so it could hold its dad's hand. Not long after, the field was full of walking boxes as people of all sizes started making themselves robot costumes. Above it all, a man in evening dress and a topper strolled slowly above us on a high-wire.
This year I intended - I really did - to take myself to Green Crafts one morning and find a workshop. Somehow it never quite happened. I'm disappointed, because as we wended our way through the area on Sunday the range on offer was impressive. I could have carved a spoon, or made a willow sculpture, or turned something on a treadle lathe or made a bath bomb... or just about anything else.
Then we jumped back into the melee, running between the main stages to see the evening's bands. Nick Cave went for his usual apocalyptic choice of screaming obscenity-packed obscurities at a (rather small but) entranced audience. Smashing Pumpkins win "most obliging band of the festival": when they were announced I'd commented that I wasn't a huge fan, but would like to hear Disarm, Tonight and Bullet With Butterfly Wings. I turned up in front of the stage just as they began Disarm, and they played those three songs in that order before carrying on to do the remaining hour or so of their set. When the headliners came off we made our way once more up to the Park and, munching toast, popped in to the Rabbit Hole to see The Egg. I've always loved the Egg in the past, but they seemed to be acting more as a house band, providing backing for various vocalists; fun enough but it was really quite late, and I wanted my bed :)
Monday featured fantastically long queues to get out of the car park, but an otherwise fairly trouble-free journey home down the M4. Glastonbury is still awesome :)
[*] Note for the mother: Kevin was along watching them, too! And despite my scary appearance and dubious festival hat, even recognised me when I went to say hello.
Wednesday
De Fuego
Often, round these parts, departing for Glastonbury is a finely-honed military operation. This year it kind of snuck up on us, and Tuesday night saw us flinging things vaguely at bags and wondering whether indispensable items had gone. However, by Wednesday morning all was well and we wombled off down the A303.
For those of you who don't know the A303, it's the main road past Stonehenge and it switches between dual and single carriageway. At busy times - like when everyone is trying to get to a festival in Somerset - it's a very slow road. In particular, the road drops down to one lane just as everyone gets distracted by a giant prehistoric wossname in a nearby field. Even if no one runs into anyone else, there's always a big jam there. I think if I were the local council, I'd have put off my roadworks at that very spot for a week, but there you go.
Actually, the traffic wasn't that bad once we passed Stonehenge. We motored round the minor roads to Worthy Farm, we trundled over the rickety temporary roadways to the fields allocated for carparking (I do not recommend doing this in a low-slung coupé), and we parked. We walked down the hill, presented our tickets for wristbands and walked onto the site. All without a single queue.
The Dairy Ground campsite was busy, but with sizeable gaps between tents (where by sizeable I mean "almost big enough to put another tent in"). So we did, and we set off to prowl around, taking in large plates of mixed curries, rice and vegetable fritters from Glastonbury stalwarts No Bones Jones. Then we commenced our circumnavigation of the farm to check what was new, what was back, what had moved...
We sat on carpets in the Small World stage tent, watching a Flamenco guitar duo called De Fuego and drinking spiced massala tea (£1.50 for a mug, 50p deposit on the china mug). The Park - the newish area curated by Emily Eavis - had acquired a new sculpture called The Tree of Life and we climbed it via a spiral staircase, standing on the viewing platform as it slowly rotated. Just below the stone circle, a passing bloke sat down at a free-range piano and played some hectic boogie-woogie before launching into a well-known plinky-plonky intro and the crowd who'd gathered round began to sing in unison.... I never thought I'd miss you, half as much as I do... We watched fireworks, sat on painted benches drinking cider, and marvelled at the giant flaming bonfire above the stone circle (two days later, the ashes were still smouldering).
Not bad for a festival that doesn't officially start til Friday morning ;)
Thursday
[Keston Cobblers Club], [Balina Whalers], Gaz Brookfield, Tankus the Henge, Ed Gerhard, Sieze the Day, [Django Django], Alt-J
I began Thursday as I traditionally like to, by heading off to the Healing Field and finding myself a nice shiatsu massage. My favourite practitioner wasn't there, but I found a pleasant guy who unknotted my shoulders for me - for once, lying outside in the sunshine while he made various bits of me go crack. In fact, there was so much sunshine that afterwards ChrisC and I threaded our way through the ornamental garden, and tucked ourselves into a blue domed tent near a pretty water-feature to have a little sit down in the shade.
Eventually we stirred, setting ourselves the challenge of finding Toad Hall (a new venue) and Strummerville (a tiny corner of the site dedicated to Joe Strummer). Both of these were surprisingly easy - Strummerville was only just waking up, putting out a circle of beaten-up sofas and armchairs round its campfire space. We lounged around a while, chatting to a guy in the next chair who'd been working on the gates taking tickets.
We left plenty of time to get up to the Croissant Neuf bandstand for Gaz Brookfield; just as well since we had to keep pausing as we walked past other stages. We found
satyrica at the bandstand, and as the forecast rain showed up, managed to slide ourselves undercover in the Tiny Tea Tent for tea and chatting. We managed to do a reasonably good job of remaining under cover while it rained - watching Tankus the Henge (a sort of five-man brass-toting version of Chas 'n' Dave) on Satyrica's recommendation, then returning to Toad Hall for pleasant slide guitar (Ed Gerhard) and manic political folk ranting (Seize the Day).
We were rather late heading down to meet
brrm for our now-traditional Thursday evening sausage and tartiflette because we had to deal with a mildly unscheduled tent flood - trying to jam a tent into a slightly-too-small space and peg it down into badly-cracked loose earth leads to a poorly-pitched tent. Which then leads to significant bits collapsing :( The three of us managed to find a bit of shelter against the now-mostly-negligible rain (just so the cider didn't get diluted) and half-listened to the band on in William's Green. ChrisC came back to report that he'd solved one of the weekend's scheduling dilemmas (Dinosaur Jr or Alt-J?) by finding out the next "secret" band on in William's Green was Alt-J. Excellent! Sadly, even with an actually secret "secret" gig the tent was still jammed and after half a track we fought our way back out again and watched from a respectable 15 feet or so away.
Friday
Jupiter & Okwess International, Teleman, Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra, Peace, [Rita Ora], [Savages], Tribes, [Palma Violets], Dinosaur Jr, Django Django, [Billy Bragg], Portishead, [The Horrors]
After the 2011 festival, I noted that the corporate "Q Daily" newspaper had been replaced by a truly awful organ called the Glastonbury Firelighter. This year, the Glastonbury Free Press was going to be printed on-site on a vintage and exciting-sounding printing-press. Sadly, an early-morning call at the info stall produced no newspaper. Disappointingly, the vintage technology had suddenly gone sullen and wouldn't be coaxed into life again until it was time to print Sunday's edition.
The bands started in earnest, with ChrisC and I departing in different directions immediately - me to sit in the sunshine in the Park and watch the rather lovely Teleman and he to (apparently) jump up and down like crazy to the Hives. We met at a carefully pre-arranged location to watch Amanda Palmer - a flight-related incident meant both she and her band had lost all their costumes and equipment, but had begged and borrowed enough for a set and were amazing (they also get "cover of the festival" award for the mass singalong version of Common People). Since Beady Eye had played a "secret" set earlier in the day Amanda Palmer had asked if Liam Gallagher would like to come onstage and present her with flowers during her song Oasis. "How do I know you're not fookin' slaggin' me off?" he'd asked (she does a credible Gallagher impression). She assured him that she wasn't, she was singing a lovely song all about abortion, but apparently he still declined.
Then we ran (almost literally) up to the John Peel tent to see Peace, and ran back down again in time to miss almost all of Savages, and eat curry listening to Tribes. Feeling that that was enough running for just now, we ambled gently through the circus areas, looking at peepshows, people on stilts, a lady juggling fire while balanced on a ladder, and a man walking a very wobbly tightrope over a river while playing the violin (he made it!)
Then it was back into the bands again; Dinosaur Jr hold the dubious distinction of being the only band that made me get my earplugs out all weekend. We also discovered that you can hear the Park stage remarkably well from the very top of the hill above the tipi field despite it being some distance away. Acoustics are weird. By now I had also learned that you could hear the
The evening saw me eating a "Buddha bowl" for tea - vegan mussulman curry, brown rice, kimchi, steamed greens, mixed seeds - and it was really remarkably tasty. Though it didn't come with as good a tag line as the stall in West Holts which calls itself Ghandi's Flip-Flop, and advertises "non-violent curries for the civilly disobedient".
Saturday
The Staves, [The 1975], Beans on Toast, Slamboree, [Bombay Royale], [Azealia Banks], The Strypes, Daughter, Johnny Marr, Primal Scream, Savages, [The Beat feat. Billy Bragg], The Rolling Stones, Hurts.
I think in previous years' write-ups I've barely mentioned much about food. The range of food and drink on offer is truly amazing. I started Saturday with freshly squozen watermelon, apple, lime and ginger juice which kept me going until the huge vegetarian feast-plate from
Leon at lunch time.
Sitting in the Greenpeace field by the model igloo, and model polar bear, in the snow (their issue this year was "Save The Arctic") a Greenpeace volunteer carefully shepherded kids to a safe distance as she led out a real polar bear. My first thought was bloody hell! that's ridiculously dangerous! And what the hell are Greenpeace doing bringing a polar bear to a festival? Then my brain kicked in, and I realised that surely it wasn't actually a polar bear. It was incredibly convincing, though (and I heard at least one other person having the same reaction as I did). I suspect the two women who walked into the igloo just before the bear came out, and left shortly after it went back in, may have had something to do with it... but bloody hell it was a good polar bear.
Having watched Beans on Toast, we followed him down the hill to another stage to see a band he's recently joined - the sort of violently multi-coloured, politically-edged, circus-tinged raucous collective of singers and musicians and acrobats and dancers that I thought had quite gone out of fashion. Anyway, Slamboree are still doing it and they're hugely entertaining.
We then pinged wildly about between stages trying to catch as much as possible of the bands that all clashed most inconveniently (disappointingly, the main casualty was Two Door Cinema Club, who I hear were great). Primal Scream were sounding good, but seemed to suffer from a terribly uninterested audience - my guess is that everyone at the front was just holding themselves places for the Stones' set later. Sadly, Bobby Gillespie responded by becoming more and more laconic and even Rocks (with extra backing vocals from Haim) failed to get a properly enthusiastic response.
It was very noticeable that from early evening onwards, everyone was streaming towards the Pyramid. Savages' frankly terrifying, but brilliant, set was performed to a tiny crowd while the Pyramid field became more and more packed. I was, actually, not particularly excited about seeing the Rolling Stones but thought I ought to show up for the start just to tick them off the list. Sadly, the sound was awful - really tinny and thin (the Q Review we bought on exit claimed that the repeater speakers weren't turned on until the BBC broadcast began). Eventually I lost the will to live, and fought my way all the way up to the top corner of the field to flee back to the safety of the John Peel tent and electro duo Hurts. Who were amazing, for the short bit of their set I saw.
Other years, almost all the late-night action has been concentrated in the south-east corner of the farm. The place gets packed, and despite there being masses of interesting stuff to see, the crowds make it so unenjoyable I've rarely bothered much. This year Arcadia, the giant spider-stage made from (allegedly) three custom and excise scanning machines and seven jet engines (and a lot of other stuff) had crawled out and parked near the Other stage. We watched its opening show - fire tornadoes, the "Lords of Lightning" duelling in Tesla suits, acrobats, pyrotechnics, lasers and projections - with dropped jaws. Then we left the pounding bass of its DJs to the enormous crowd, and scurried back to the tent.
Sunday
[Zulu Winter], Bridie Jackson and the Arbour, The Demon Barbers XL, [JJ Grey & Mofro], Vampire Weekend, Editors, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Smashing Pumpkins, The xx, The Egg.
Although the Glastonbury Free Press was allegedly up and running again, the info point had a makeshift cardboard sign up saying "no papers yet". I don't know if they managed a full print run, but I didn't see one all day - not even discarded on the floor anywhere.
Bridie Jackson and the Arbour were the winners of the festival's Emerging Talent competition this year. Bridie is also the person who runs the choir my mum sings in [*], so bang on 11:30 I was sitting at attention on the floor of the Avalon tent, working steadily through a large box of salmon kedgeree and waiting for them to come on stage. They're definitely worth a listen - and were (I think) the only other serious contender for cover-of-the-festival for their version of Cry Me A River.
We took a light amble through the SE corner, which is largely closed in the daytime. Still impressive though - huge temporary structures built as stages, little warrens of passages with tiny venues and... stuff everywhere. It never ceases to amaze me what a prodigious amount of effort goes into building things for the festival, and making it not just functional but interesting, quirky or beautiful.
The circus fields always seem to be at their best on Sundays, with top-quality performance artists and/or nutters everywhere. People in stiff, formal Chinese garb carrying parasols followed people around, offering them shade and mild confusion. Street theatre and stiltwalkers were everywhere, and a huge crowd was watching a brilliant robot doing stand-up. We watched festival favourites Bang On do their junk-drumming show. A guy I always think of as The Crowd Wizard was there - his act consists almost entirely of getting very large groups of people to do silly things in concert (I have no idea how he bills himself), but he's impressive and fascinating. People were having trapeze lessons and...
Well. We had a plan that, starting from the Cabaret tent where we'd just heard the end of performance-poet Dizraeli, we would head to see I Am Kloot if nothing more interesting got in the way. You may have noticed I Am Kloot do not appear in my list of bands. Because someone was building a cardboard model of the tower that sits atop Glastonbury Tor. A lifesize model. It was already impressively detailed and a good 30ft high when we showed up, and was being cheerfully taped together by a mob of volunteers. Every fifteen minutes or so, the smaller children were herded away, and anyone big enough picked up the model to slide another layer of boxes in. And the parcel tape frenzy began again. A French guy who spoke little English was masterminding it, but there was very little overall plan - just grab a reel of tape and get stuck in. So we did :)
(
killalla, if you recognise that bag I'm carrying it is indeed the one that used to belong to you. And jolly useful and comfortable it is, too!)After a while we wandered on, and when we came back the tower had had to be abandoned not-quite-completely built due to extreme sideways lurching. It was carefully stabilised with guy ropes, but the combined, undirected workings of very small children and quite pissed adults hadn't quite given it the structural integrity it needed. On cue, one set of guys was released, and people hauled on the others, and over it toppled. A crowd led by one of the stewards raced in and dived... and in moments there was just a huge pile of cardboard and a huge and varied crowd having immense fun with it.
Then a box walked past. On close inspection, it had large eye-holes, a pair of very small feet sticking out the bottom, and a hole in one side so it could hold its dad's hand. Not long after, the field was full of walking boxes as people of all sizes started making themselves robot costumes. Above it all, a man in evening dress and a topper strolled slowly above us on a high-wire.
This year I intended - I really did - to take myself to Green Crafts one morning and find a workshop. Somehow it never quite happened. I'm disappointed, because as we wended our way through the area on Sunday the range on offer was impressive. I could have carved a spoon, or made a willow sculpture, or turned something on a treadle lathe or made a bath bomb... or just about anything else.
Then we jumped back into the melee, running between the main stages to see the evening's bands. Nick Cave went for his usual apocalyptic choice of screaming obscenity-packed obscurities at a (rather small but) entranced audience. Smashing Pumpkins win "most obliging band of the festival": when they were announced I'd commented that I wasn't a huge fan, but would like to hear Disarm, Tonight and Bullet With Butterfly Wings. I turned up in front of the stage just as they began Disarm, and they played those three songs in that order before carrying on to do the remaining hour or so of their set. When the headliners came off we made our way once more up to the Park and, munching toast, popped in to the Rabbit Hole to see The Egg. I've always loved the Egg in the past, but they seemed to be acting more as a house band, providing backing for various vocalists; fun enough but it was really quite late, and I wanted my bed :)
Monday featured fantastically long queues to get out of the car park, but an otherwise fairly trouble-free journey home down the M4. Glastonbury is still awesome :)
[*] Note for the mother: Kevin was along watching them, too! And despite my scary appearance and dubious festival hat, even recognised me when I went to say hello.
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-05 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-05 01:47 pm (UTC)I've only seen a couple of photos of the gig - extraordinarily they don't seem to have filmed it.
The only national coverage was the daily fail, and her "boob accident". Obviously they've never been to a show before....
no subject
Date: 2013-07-05 01:52 pm (UTC)The Other stage (on which she played) was being webcast, and they certainly had cameras on it because the footage was up on screens either side of the stage. I don't think the webcasts are available anywhere, though.