Glastonbury 2007 starts here...

(If I say it often enough I might believe it)

this is still kind of FCFS in that they haven't said that they are limiting the pre-registration numbers.

also, anyone not computer literate enough to sign up for this online won't be literate enough to get one times ticket will they? do they even bother with the phone lines anymore?

Those of us who were there in April 2004 still meet up, once a year, to trade stories and relive the blood, sweat and sheer terror.

But ont he whole this is to prevent the computer illiterate going, which smacks of some sort of Sarah Jane Adventures plot to turn us all into some giant HUMANG computah or something, to take over the world.

CURSES, the rain has foiled my plan.

thinking about various ones in spain this year

Well...

-- Tom (freakytrigge...) (webmail), Today 10:31 AM. (Groke) (later) (link)

OTfuckin'M!

(damn my SHELFISH friends and their poxy "weddings")

Last time I went, they had a four-star restaurant tent! (I know, I had to pinch myself!)

But what if you don't want to sell it for a profit, but just to recoup your money after Grannydeath? And what if you get a new haircut, or start wearing glasses, or suffer horrible facial injuries in a freak smiling accident?

And you just know that hundreds of people will be sent tickets with someone else's picture on it...

miserable start.

http://www.glastonburyregistration.com/

v straight forward (as long as you have a scanned passport-style photo), address details can be edited it seems.

emily was on the radio this morning and seems totally interweb-phobic, urging ppl to go to millets rather than do it online, the odd person. she also mentioned "phoning up for tickets", wtf???

One year at Big Day Out (Aussie Glasto) I saw a local well known alterno DJ, a kind of aus Peelie, with his 10 yo son, who had a mohawk. It was so CUTE.

http://www.theververeturn.com

Seconded

Right then, my body has been spending the last day or so making it abundantly clear to me it is very unhappy indeed with the way in which I have treated it over the past few days, particularly the poor diet, the standing around in the rain for hours, the atrocious personal hygeine and the fact that I thought it was a good idea to walk around for hours largely soaked after falling over in the mud on Sunday evening. But I'm feeling a bit better now, and an extra day off to recover, plus a load of clips of the best bits has reminded me that I actually really, really enjoyed it. Anyway, my festival in a nutshell:

Thursday:

Brothers Bar perry = classic if phenomenally popular this year. There were more stewards marshalling the perry queue than the bus queue on Monday morning. Seriously.

London Bootleg Orchestra accompanying Icelanding Check-1-2 band on the Jazz World Stage = noisy.

Banksy sculpture in Stone Circle = can't remember a bludy thing to be honest.

Crashing and burning early = dud.

Friday:

Rain = dud
Acoustic Beer Tent = classic
Hastily purchased dad stool = k-classic
Gogol Bordello = grate, despite rain
Amy Winehouse = ditto
Super Furry Animals = brought sun out hooray
Bloc Party = great, and sensibly heavy on the first album
Simian Mobile Disco = much better live than on record
Friend in Glade Bar giving me free bouze all weekend = as classic as it gets
Arcade Fire = bloody brilliant
Bjork = Absolute star, especially with lasers. And when Mark Bell morphed Hyperballad into Freak by LFO I went mental.
Boshing to the soundtrack to Bugsy Malone in the Lost Vagueness tent at 6am = classic Glasto moment

Saturday:

Early morning medicinal beer = classic
CSS - Okay, but more hampered than most by the rain. Classic Lovefoxx helium baloon action though.
Klaxons plus Other Stage sound system = match made in hell. Rubbish.
Erol in one of the smaller dance tents = fantastic
Editors - ARGH MOST BORING BAND EVER
!!! in the Glade - great but there's no need for that singer to be there
Iggy and the Stooges - FUCKING AWESOME BEST BAND OF THE WEEKEND
Feeling of camaraderie as about 15 of us wandered round the site for hours pointing at things and going "ooh" - classic
Lost Vagueness Tent in full-on Poptimism mode - brilliant
Boshing to Smells Like Teen Spirit - very amusing

Sunday:

Major wobble of the 'what am I doing here?' variety early on = dud
Sitting with my brother and friends watching random shit on the Jazz World Stage while drinking beer = classic
Vitalic in the Dance Tent = OMG AWESOME
Dave Clarke afterwards = ditto
Chemical Brothers = astonishing, best time I've seen them despite playing hardly any of the old classics (attention Blueski, no Private Psychedelic Reel!).
Chemical Brothers light show = wow
Subsequent downpour, bad night's sleep, queing for hours for the bus, and being so ill I couldn't eat for like 30 hours = monstrous dud

Actually, looking back on that, Glastonbury was brilliant. Reassuring to know that all the crap you have to go through is still outweighed by the frankly colossal amount of fun it is possible to have.

i'm still convinced i made the right decision. i don't have the spirit/enthusiasm to have been able to enjoy another muddy one. plus i had the bestest weekend.

waht is boshing?

Do you think the massive popularity of Brothers was due to the fact that people now know about it cos they've drunk it in bars?

It was crazy - by thursday evening the whole jazz field was a graveyard of green bottles. and by friday they weren't selling them by bottles.

i liked brothers much more when it was a bit of a secret.

by thursday they already weren't selling them by bottles, i got there at 10 or so, couldn't see ilxors, tried to buy perry, got some poured down my neck (outside not inside) by someone accidentally. apparntly at one point they got the police to make ppl queue "properly" lol

Brothers is a lot easier to get nowadays so I wouldn't be as fussed about drinking it at Glastonbury - but then i've never been properly pissed at Glasto because of queuing impatience + never being able to carry enough booze on to the site.

(attention Blueski, no Private Psychedelic Reel!).

what did they finish with instead?

i've never been properly pissed at Glasto because of queuing impatience

don't like piss wine

That is a slight drawback.

it's called "vin de peepee"

aka "vin da loo"

Amy Winehouse on Saturday afternoon. Jeezo. I arrived late and was walking across field with a friend. She was singing Love Is A Losing Game as I trudged and I was suddenly in tears. A stunning, stunning, performance, seeing as I wasn't even geared up for it, was miles back with people chatting around me. Loved her version of Poor Little Rich Girl too. It was a very Specials-heavy weekend, all in all.

Saw her again at Jazz World stage later on and sadly it wasn't the same: bad sound, disappointingly identical set and she just seemed drunker and unable to anything but go through the motions. I dunno, earlier at the Pyramid just one of those magic Glastonbury moments, like Arthur Lee in 2003.

Other thoughts:

My pop-up tent was a triumph, especially when packing up in the rain on Monday morning.

I liked the woman singing in the Avalon bar on Thursday night. There's always someone like that.

The Hold Steady was a pretty amazing event. I'm still not sure I'd ever want to listen to them at home, but the atmosphere and audience fervour was something to behold. It was like some kind of indie Nuremberg rally.

I think Artic Monkeys was probably great if you were near the front or watching it on telly, but from where I was standing it wasn't really big enough for a headline Pyramid performance. Wish I'd seen Hot Chip or Bjork and her intriguing reactable. All the headliners I most wanted to see were on Friday, bah.

"It's nice to be at Glastonbury. Everyone's going on about global warming and that. But I reckon the biggest problem facing the world today is the mainstream attitude of most indie bands" - The Cribs' lead singer.

Iggy & The Stooges surprisingly amazing. Never been that bothered but what a show. Funny as fuck when he encouraged a stage invasion and then couldn't get rid of everyone afterwards.

Vitalic excellent but wish I'd met up with smashed up Matt DC for crazy dancing. Was there on my own in my only dance village excursion of the weekend.

Green Fields lovely as ever. I heart hippies.

"The other day I was walking down the street and the sun was shining, everything was beautiful, everything seemed right with the world, and I wondered why anyone ever felt the need to take drugs. Then I remembered I was on drugs." - Simon Munnery

Pete & Carsmile up on stage doing Singstar Busted (was in Busted? Was kind of wasted at that point) in the world's biggest pub was good, but they were robbed of a full performance. Pete looked angry.

Shame about the mud. But I kept dry, mostly.

The Who were dreadful. Pete Townshend still going on about having invented the internet.

Took 5 and half hours to get out of the site, but girls gave us chocolate buttons and everyone was pushing each other's cars and it was nice. Took another 5 and three quarter hours to get to London cause we foolishly chose the A303-M3 option and a coach of Australians had crashed. Not badly.

I love Glastonbury.

Oh, and I really got quite gooey about the children at Glastonbury. Considering the somewhat appalling conditions they were having to deal with, they seemed to be coping with it all so well. It's as if they know when everyone's having to deal with something and that it's not the time to act up.

I nearly cried when I saw a mum carrying one toddler and walking with an five-year-old across the Circus field at its stickiest, though. The little girl's welly came off in the mud and she'd stepped too far foward to get back into it. I trudged across to put it back in and then the she couldn't lift her other leg out, it had got so stuck by then. So I pulled that one out and the mum, who seemed almost too shell-shocked to speak, thanked me and then said to her daughter "I don't think we can do this".

And then there were the proper, artful-dodger type festival kids. Two of whom, no older than nine, suddenly appeared in some Lost Vagueness tent we were dancing in at 2am on Monday morning and started juggling with fire. I think they got told to go outside and do it.

Oh, I forgot to mention Dame Shirley Bassey coming on (and up) to Get the Party Started. And the rest.

Loved her version of Poor Little Rich Girl

Hey Little Rich Girl, I meant. It's been a long weekend.

i loved the kids in little trolley things.

nice recollections Alba, although all this talk of kids is odd. i think i've only ever seen about ten there in total.

was it really noticeable just how much busier it was? friends elsewhere say yes altho they've been pretty down on the experience generally when reporting back (and it wasn't their first one). it seems if you're able to come away having really enjoyed it and been ultimately glad you went in spite of all the badness that's half down to your 'right' attitude and half down to the nature of the festival itself, even now.

There were loads of kids! Maybe I hang out in the right areas (though I never actually went in the Kidz field itself, officer).

I did think there were a few too many people there, mainly in terms of the pressure of the camping areas - was all packed in fields by noon on Thursday where it had always been fine before. You could blame that on the gazebos, though.

it seems if you're able to come away having really enjoyed it and been ultimately glad you went in spite of all the badness that's half down to your 'right' attitude and half down to the nature of the festival itself, even now.

Yeah, like everything, innit.

i'm just musing on whether a sodden Glasto is the ultimate test of (British?) character in that respect.

I think so. It does take me a day or so to adjust but adjusting norms of comfort and everything else is part of what makes a festival special for me.

Just watching some of the many hours I recorded on my Humax now. I do have a strange nostalgia for the old days of the C4 coverage, in the years before I ever went. The titles had some kind of a windmill thing and a 70s song going "lay-dai-dai-da-da". What was that song?

I wonder if I still have my old VHS recorded C4 coverage of '95 ft. Lamarr, Radcliffe and Marijine Salad as hosts.

That'll be "Deborah" by Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Yes, I do have that vhs, but the TV reception was sooo bad. An acoustic "Delicious" by Sleeper was a highlight (really)

Thank you, Mark!

95 = last time I went.... I think. I have really vague memories of one in the late 90s, although that may have been a reading....

95 when only music magazines talked about the event. were the BBC even covering it live on radio at that point?

sounds good this year. do wish id gone in a way, though if theres one thing im not good with its mud. part of me thinks i should go when its muddy and just basically get muddy right at the beginning and then think fuck it, instead of trying to avoid it the whole time

honestly if you have wellies and you're reasonably fit the mud is so not an issue. you don't even get that mucky unless you fall over or someone kicks mud all over you. having said that i have WELLY RASH around the sides of my legs oh noes.

I got properly stuck in the really sticky mud outside the Lost Vagueness chapel in the early hours of Saturday morning. Two people had to actually pull me free.

The only time it's really hard to avoid getting muddy is when you get back to your tent and it's raining hard and you have to somehow get your wellies and waterproofs off before you get inside. A porch helps. The one downside of my pop-up was the lack of porch, but it was big enough to set aside wet and dirty areas in the corner, with newspaper laid down and stuff.

Yes, I'm with Alba on the upside. The thorough miserableness that permeated my being at 11:45am Monday is now fading in my memory to be replaced by rose coloured / mud-splattered spectacles about the whole thing. I really am a sucker!

My Lost Vagueness Muddy Bear Paws now seem like a highlight!

Oh, and I really got quite gooey about the children at Glastonbury. Considering the somewhat appalling conditions they were having to deal with, they seemed to be coping with it all so well.

But children love playing in dirt! It's the parents I wonder about sometimes.

95 when only music magazines talked about the event. were the BBC even covering it live on radio at that point?

-- blueski, Wednesday, June 27, 2007 5:56 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Link

it was on channel 4 from 1994 -- not like all evening or anything but i rememebr it well.

definitely, before that even, i'm sure i was like 13/14 watching it on tv and wondering how you got to be one of the people hanging out at the side of the stage who weren't in the band or doing sound or anything and wanting to be one of them. finally that dream came true in 05 :)

there were far more kids than i've ever seen before.

quick overview of my weekend:

http://carsmilesteve.livejournal.com/53754.html

Grr get thee and yr 3 wheel buggies to the Big Chill!

yrs
a.n hatz0r
(who wasn't even there this year!)
(so thre!)

CarsmileSteves manifesto to improve Glastonbury. A supporters trust!
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/06/lets-make-glastonbury-better/

I think he's got something there.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1096/651895877_0e63d65802_o.jpg

BEST. POST. EVER.

Michael Eavis wants younger fans at Glasto 2008
http://www.nme.com/news/glastonbury/29650

wtf sounded like there was a massive increase in no. of kids there this year

i wish Eavis had said 'more younglings'

Didn't notice any more kids than usual, to be fair.

i'm just going by anecdotes. interesting tho as Eavis' gripe lines up with the whole 'people growing up quicker but staying younger longer at the same time'. increasing festival capacity only to result in more people over 30 going doesn't sound ideal tho. maybe he should just go the whole hog and allocate a big portion of the tickets only to under 21s next year.

:"Most of this year's tickets were sold online.

"They're likely to be older people, with the money for the fast connections,

It doesn't work like that, Eavis! Though perhaps teenagers are less likely to get up in time on a Sunday morning.

...with the money for the HUNDRED AND FIFTY QUID TICKET more like.

why doesn't he set aside FIFTY per cent and flog them only at shops where u have to go and queue up outside and bring proof that you're younger than 25.

Imagine then being under 25, with all that pressure to go there and be impolite and unrespectable to keep Eavis happy.