Graun journalist spends all day reading nme.com and fails to really read the glastowatch story she links to which shows a screencap from metcheck when it said that SEVERAL MILES of rain would fall per day, temperatures would top 2000°C and the wind would be over 1000mph….
Also Science dude in the original Times story is relatively reserved, basically there’s this weather pattern that happens kind of at the end of June, but really isn’t that predictable and it’s not really a real monsoon, really…
The accuweather.com forecast will DO ME FINE to be honest (it currently says no rain after monday night, overcast but reasonably warm all weekend)
CarsmileSteve in Blog 7 / FT / Proven By Science • 3 Comments
News reaches us from blackleg our intrepid reporter, MattDC, that scenes like the above are no longer permissable at Glastonbury as THE MAN has BANNED brothers from selling plastic 2 litre bottles of their yellow nectar. We are not yet sure if this is due to the plastic making a right old mess or the fact that each bottle contains approximately 14 units of alcohol.
If you have joined our Pilton Boycott this year (and thank you all 850,000 of you* that have) but are still hankering after peary goodness, brothers is now available quite widely. Use their excellent ciderfinder to find yr nearest stockist!
UPDATE: This just in “Theres a dude selling rockingdadchairs! ACTUAL ROCKING DADCHAIRS! Omg”
*based on reports in previous years of a million people trying to get tickets on the first day
CarsmileSteve in FT / Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
Pete already mentioned this in the comments to our previous speculation but I think this deserves a post of it’s own just in case you missed it: Jay-Z definitely confirmed to headline Glastonbury this year.
Says Mr Eavis: “He will appeal to the young people and under-25s for sure, so that’s a big pull for them,” he said.
“It’s not like the traditional one we do, like Radiohead, Coldplay and Muse and Oasis.”
I dunno, I hear that being a Glastonbury headliner brings LOADS of problems! Like, now Jay-Z will have to worry about Nas giving him hash cookies before his normal cookies before he goes on stage and he’ll end up giggling his way through all the sweary bits!
Note how I subtly avoid mentioning the Neil Diamond issue… pah Anne Diamond would be better… and she no doubt needs the cash far more than rub old Neil.
Sarah in FT • 3 Comments
following the actually not great time i had last year (PLEASE, someone take forward the supporters trust idea with my blessing), i have comprehensively and unequivically sworn off going to glastonbury this year (it will be the first one i’ve missed since 1995), but for those of you still interested, it’s the same registration process as last year (pound to a penny that they extend it past the end of february again as well), no doubt with the same passing on of emails to mean fiddler to cross promote events.
but, hey, good news for all the “teens” out there who have been staying away in droves over the last few years as the site has filled with 30-something middle managers like me, Michael (or MC ME (OBE) to his “homies” in the pilton ‘hood) has got some exciting news:
I’m putting on a black American headliner, who’s absolutely terrific that’s going to appeal to those people.
so if you are “those people” i’m sure you’ll have a lovely time. Speculation is RIFE about who this person might be, from Little Stevie Wonder to Natalie Cole, but we can EXCLUSIVELY reveal that one major star has, in fact, attended Glastonbury previously, although he did encounter a few challenges or, some might say, “problems”, which we list for you below: more »
CarsmileSteve in Blog 7 / FT • 26 Comments
It’s amazing how ideas come to you sometimes. There I was, surrounded by mud and rain and more mud, cursing the lack of urinal at the top of the New Band Tent (call it by it’s name) Field when it suddenly struck me. All the issues I had with Glastonbury reminded me of something, see if you can spot it:
1. “Father knows best” autocratic owner increasingly getting in to bed with commercial interests that seem to have only negative impacts on the punter
2. Said punters being treated like cattle with little thought for our comfort or welfare
3. Increasing costs and declining facilities
4. Being constantly told by media/controlling interests that you’re part of the best festival in the world, when you can clearly see the cracks round the edges
5. The complete lack of feedback mechanisms for us to get our views across to those in charge
Yes, being at Glastonbury is exactly like being a football fan, and what have football fans done about this? Formed Supporters Trusts, by the hundred! more »
CarsmileSteve in Blog 7 / FT • 20 Comments
I guess its too late to go round Mr and Mrs Suns gaff and see if little Jimmy Sun wants to come out and play? Am watching Gypsy nonsense in puppy parlour!
– Pete, Sun 20:30
Who? Doctor The Who?
– Pete, Sun 19:40
VITALiC! Fucking COME ON!
– awesomewells, Sun 19:30
Ooh my feet! Mark Pompom and then Vitalic and then potential bin death. Only the calamacho can save me now!
– Pete, Sun 18:15
We’re sitting having a lovely pint of real ale about 10ft from whisperin’ bob harris
– Carsmile, Sun 17:15
Sweary old Dame Shirley has got this party started
– triffidfarm, Sun 17:10
I have realised what glastonbury needs! A “supporters trust” so the concerns of the fans can be articulated to the management
– Carsmile, Sun 12:00
more »
Alan in Blog 7 / FT • 7 Comments
There will be much, much more on this front but from a pure visceral piece of musical fun there was really only one place to be in Glastonbury. That was the Roots stage in the Dance Village which unfortuantely also seemed to only ever have about thirty punters in it. Nae matter. The festival finished with Seeed: and their Glastonbury Dancehall Dancing competition which was tremendous fun (and Seeed’s German dancehall was pretty top too). They also get bonus points for asking “Glastonbury: Are You (Still) Alive!”
However same stage, two nights before, while 808 State were playing their own records at themselves I stumbled across Swami. who used to be DJ Swami but is now a six piece bhangra rock rap act who for sheer energy wiped the floor with anything on the John Peel Stage (and could probably teach the Go! Team a little bit about being a live act). More information on Swami here. Don’t mind the moody photo, they were lovely boys on stage.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 / New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
There are other ways to Glastonbury, and I have used pretty much every one. The train does not differ hugely from the coach experience, except if you get on one of the full ones you won’t have a seat and it will be a bit cattle trucky. But the first four times I went to Glastonbury, we went by car.
This can be great fun of course. You get to listen to your Glastonbury mix tapes and the radio on the way down, including shout outs from Radio One. The M4 trip is not unlike Tom’s tube experience below, as you get closer more camper vans seem to be on the road, more cars filled with gear.
And then you turn off to the only part of the drive I now miss (the rest, as you will see can be deadly). Chippenham Safeways. Why we always turned off at Chippenham I don’t know, but there was nearly always a giddy rush around the supermarket to buy bouze and other inappropriate objects (plastic bread and primula often being high on the list). Value lager bagged, apples away you would get back in the car for the FIVE MILE TRAFFIC JAM. Well the forty mile drive to the FIVE MILE TRAFFIC JAM.
There was a bit of superstition about the traffic jam. Basically as far as we could divine, it started just where your radio could pick up Radio Avalon, so you hoped for weak transmitters. My first year this all too place at about midnight and our lucky driver managed to take two shortcuts through farms. But generally it was a slow crawl until you got to the site, and were placed in the car park the furthest away from the site.
Of course this was all in the terrible scally days, and is probably much more professional now. But sine going by coach, I appreciate the joys of jumping the queue as our air-conned coach glides past the mugs in their cars.
Of course, the journey back is a different matter entirely.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
Things I drunk at Glastonbury:
Wherry Bitter
Brothers Bar Perry
Carslberg Lager
Red Wine from a Wine Box
Hot chocolate with whiskey in (cheers Anna)
Strongbow (a Tom misorder)
Burrow Hill Cider
Rum and Orange punch (cheers Emma and Alan)
Calamacho (red wine and diet pepsi)
Racist Calamacho (white wine and sprite)*
Sangria from the wine stall
I may not have drunk them all at the same time, but frankly by 2am Monday morning you would not have betted against it.
*It has been pointed out that this is merely a white wine spritzer, nevertheless I maintain there is something vaguely sophisticated about spritzers, and on Sunday night we were far from sophistication.
Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
Tom Ewing’s Bit
THE RAPTURE
Almost everybody else I was with hated the Rapture. I loved them. I know the songs on the much-leaked album quite well, but that wasn’t why. The thing was, by Sunday afternoon I was sick of Glastonbury, I just didn’t know it. I was sick of the sunshine, the good feelings, the optimism, the chirpy cynicism of those cunting Q handouts, the remorselessly chugging music – I may even have been sick of indie girls in bikini tops. The Rapture, a band who have released no actual records in Britain and whose most famous song was known to maybe one-thousandth of the Festival, were put on the second-biggest stage at six in the evening. Did they win the crowd over? Did they bollocks – they played the spikiest, trebliest, scrappiest set of the whole weekend. Camp falsetto, ear-basting guitars, baking-soda disco rhythms – it was fucking horrible and I adored every second. Finally Bez came on to reward us and remind the Rapture about ‘fun’. They played ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ and we freaky-danced like the good little masochists we were.
THE DARKNESS
My theory: much great pop music eventually turns out to be ridiculous, and more ridiculous music turns out to be great. Adam Ant’s axiom: ridicule is nothing to be scared of. If you love ridiculous music, as The Darkness might but probably wouldn’t tell you, make it more so. They gaze into the powdered face of schlock-metal and do not blink. Justin Hawkins has flames on his belly and a nice line in the splits. He also has two or three thunderously fine tunes – just as well, otherwise The Darkness would be pastiche, a metal Barron Knights, not the weekend’s most winning band.
CANDLE-POWERED BOATS
The apex of hippie craftsmanship.
JOHN CALE
Cale headlined to a half-empty new bands tent on the Saturday night, most of his crowd I’d guess lured away by Radiohead. I’d take one of Cale’s frozen-over ballads over any Radiohead song (even the very good ones!), and sorry to sound like a snob but Music For A New Society templates the Thom Yorke stance and pushes it into places that I suspect are just too stark for a five-piece band to go. It’s such a powerful record that I don’t even like it, but I certainly respect it, and respect is what carried me through most of John Cale’s set. New songs, made with synths and laptops and old session rockers by the sound of it – away from the man’s aura I suspect that they were rubbish, and there was much relief among the Dads when ‘Venus In Furs’ started up. Highlight for me was a gleeful ‘Paris 1919′ – directly afterwards Cale, with a horrid glint in his eye, played a gut-churning V/Vm style glitch-grind racket. After two disgusting minutes he started singing and we realized this was a version of ‘Fear’. The man next to me had been shouting for it all night.
2 MANY DJS
The not-so-secret of 2 Many DJs is out: their set, give or take a Benny Benassi, is an indie disco. We twigged this when they played ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ – the looks of delighted recognition among Steve, me, Alan et al were I fear a piteous sight. ‘Cannonball’ we knew about from the album of course (their set had a dispiriting ‘hits’/'new stuff’ dynamic to it, its only flaw really), but when they started on ‘Fool’s Gold’ we could only laugh. ‘They’re just taking the piss now,’ said Steve. Next stop Kennedy.
THE LONDON LLOYD WEBBER ORCHESTRA
If by any chance you’re reading this, and you were camping by the new bands tent this year, and on the Sunday night your Moby-induced chill was disturbed by a bunch of fuckwits playing Performance: The Greatest Hits Of Andrew Lloyd Webber on the world’s cheapest cassette recorder, and singing along, and holding the player above their heads, and trying to do a comedy falsetto to ‘Memories’, and then putting on some dancehall which sampled ‘Eye Of The Tiger’…we’re very sorry, very sorry indeed.
Andrew Farrell’s Bit
I probably said half a dozen times over the weekend that festival bands are to bands what airline movies are to movies (or internet downloads to singles): if it looks like it might be a good idea, there’s no reason not to try it. You’re hanging around anyway, right?
So people go to stuff, and wander into to stuff, and experience things they hadn’t intended to (cause that’s the point, maaaan). So there’s probably no reason to imagine that everyone at the Vice Party on friday night (in what used to be the Rizla Tent) was there to listen to Erol Alkan, or the Audio Bullys or because it was a great time last year, or even because it was open after midnight. It might’ve been some or more or less of these, but they were there to dance.
And Erol slapped on the chart hits, and at some point a serious bassline was heard, and whooping started. Everyone liked the hell out of this, whatever it was, and it was going to start. And it was White Stripes’s Seven Nation Army, and everyone went on loving it. And singing. And dancing. And dancing.
And then it was Saturday Night, and 2manyDJs, and the continued search for that moment again. And they play Seven Nation Army to an equally loud reception, and then a few minutes later, the guitars play a song I’ve known for ten years, and me and my friends are rocking out to The Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary, and so’s everyone. DJ Swamp had the slot before and was rubbish, playing a trick-heavy set that included murdering Smells Like Teen Spirit. As luck would have it, 2manyDJs are packing Lithium, and they show how to do it.
And then it was Tuesday back in Dublin, and I’m dropping by a computer game store on the way into work, and they’re playing a bootleg of Bootylicious over Smells Like Teen Spirit, which I’ve heard before, and thought it was pretty clever, and I realise that it isn’t just clever, it’s great. I used to love one, and now I love the other as well, and I’m not alone. Both the songs have ascended to the same heaven, and they’re still not the same song. It’s girls versus boys and both sides win.
(Ironically, Erol’s proper set in the Dance Tent was pretty much identical to the Vice one)
Steve Hewitt’s Bit
RECOLLECTIONS OF THURSDAY CANCELLED DUE TO PERRY
Friday, and, before the rain, The Darkness. Now, I was quite pro The Darkness before this and it was my enthusiasm that got several people off their behinds and over to the pyramid at the unreasonable time of half past ten. And it was so worth it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band win over an audience quite so spectacularly. Where to start? Costume changes, Justin playing guitar behind his head, that cover of street spirit? Don’t give me that blah, blah, they must be ironic and knowing bollocks, this is PROPER ROCK with screechy high-pitched vocals and everything, but more importantly, an ability to write damn good pop tunes and share the fantastic time you are having with the audience. To use a phrase not often heard since the Gay Dad debacle, The Darkness are The Best New Band In Britain.
Saturday, and after wandering back from the cabaret tent via dancing to The Smiths outside the herbal high tent and the tastiest chips ever (well that’s what they tasted like at the time, I was possibly not entirely sober), I walked past the dance tent, silent and deserted, the ground inside strewn with thousands of empty beer cups and water bottles. Four pure white scans roved over detritus, making their patterns for their own amusement seemingly. I stood and watched for a couple of minutes until the lighting guy moved onto his next pre-set for the following day.
Sunday afternoon, and after feeling a bit tired and low in the morning, I met up with the gang once more in time for the Sugababes. Looking around at the sunburnt smiling mob I felt yet another (non-chemically enhanced, I assure you) rush of love for this four days of madness. Oh and the Sugababes were alright too, but it’s not really about the music.
Then to top it off I spotted the ace of trumps in indie t-shirt bingo (if that’s not too mixed a metaphor), a Sultans Of Ping FC WHERE’S ME JUMPER t-shirt. The girl wearing it seemed somewhat bemused when I told her she’d won, pity we didn’t have an actual prize to give her…
admin in FT • No Comments
