Big power rock is back in the form of Springsteen headline glasto. Fan-fanny(pack)-tastic… let’s delve more into this after we’ve gone through the formalities.
So finally I broke my Glasto cherry, and it hurt slightly, no bleeding but was a little sore afterwards, but I can’t wait to go back for seconds. I’ve been to a couple of festivals previously so know about the joys of walking in other peoples sh*t, getting plastic fantastic over a random act, and being utterly disappointed with the over priced food and drink. But this is the Mecca of all festivals, and whatever else anyone says they don’t eff about at Glasto.
It takes around 2 hours to walk the diameter of the festival site (let alone the perimeter apparently), which means you have to enter Glasto with the mindset that you will basically miss a good 70% of all the bands you would want to see. So focus on that 30% and then anything else in between is a bonus. You can be mercenary and work out individual gig costs and work out how much you’re saving, tapping away on the calculator as your partner looks away rolling her eyes thinking “what a dick.” But let’s not go into that now.
The reason I decided to go to Glasto this year was for a friends stag do. Absolutely brilliant idea, instead of going up to some Newcastle with cheap(er) beer and prostitutes Ryan Air weekend away, why not go to somewhere inevitably you’re going to get pissed and probably do something stupid anyway.
All the usual formalities aside I’ll briefly go through some highlights and leave it at that.
Little Boots playing the John Peel tent. She’s got a nice poppy style, is rather sexy when she starts playing her Tenorion and stylophone and despite sometimes sounding a bit too nice sounding over the electro styles she put on a great show. Her piano/tenorion/stylophone version of Meddle is superb, youtube that for her Jools Holland performance.
Of the bigger acts, Springsteen had to be seen. Only for the fact I’m offay with his greatest hits and watching Silvio from the Sopranos play guitar was something that had to be done. I have such fond memories of Springsteen in that signing Born in the USA was when I broke my karaoke cherry, and also Dancing in the Dark was the moment when my car blew up in Montana, where we had to stay in an Holiday Inn Express on Thunder Road (superb). Anyway after lying on the floor, looking at the sky as the crowd literally wanted to step on our throats for being utter ‘space taking mother effers’ (because we’re in a field and there are space issues), we stood up to watch a mixture of utter sh*t songs and beautiful numbers. What has to be said the band were tight as hell, very good crowd interaction, good hamming up and some serious hairspray 80s rock. I was fisting the air at one point and loving it like I was an extra in a Brat Pack prom scene. He hammed it up, went on for ages, my feet hurt but he did play dancing on the dark. At the time I was in a mixture of pain and enjoyment, but watching it back afterwards I could feel the energy, the reason why I just love music. It was one of the moments you appreciate after you take yourself outside the situation. Still he didn’t play Born in the USA which was a little bit annoying, but he’s “The Boss” *arf *arf
Other bigger bands that we saw included Rolf Harris (fun filled), Bloc Party (not bad), White Lies (a bit too fist pounding, but still good) and Maximo Park (excellent showman’s). We missed Blur, Prodigy, Bat for Lashes, Doves, QTip, Yoda, Jarvis Cock….. Sorry just thinking about it makes me cry. And this is why you have to remember that you will have to just get over it.
However my favourite moment of the festival had to be after napping during the Hotel’s set in the John Peel tent (there is a photo of me on the internet sleeping I’m sure as saw a professional photographer get their snap ), and then a quick chill in the sun we went to the Pussy Parlor. We thought, stag do need some sort of filthy action for the hell of it, but it turned out to be a tent which was made into some round saloon bar with some serious funk tracks being bashed out. Our jaws dropped and we felt like we left Glastonbury and entered somewhere special. People were dancing like no mans business, and we had to join in sweating away like a rapist in a nunnery. Now why would I use such a horrible analogy, well the DJ was none other than Mr Craig Charles (only joking by the way I know he’s innocent and has to carry that around with him, and hence forth any jokes might make Lister a little touchy). The tunes that came out, the vibes and just the randomness of it all really made me think that this is why you come to Glastonbury. You make time for the bands you want, but you need to make time to enjoy it all to fall in love with the place, with new bands, with beautiful DJs who can’t mix for sh*t because they were drunk (see photo), and just generally the people around you.
With the sun blazing as well it was just an all smiles experience, and the beauty of it all if I speak to someone else who went there, they most probably had a totally different experience to what I have had, but amazing none the less.
Ivan
Facebook
MySpace
Soundcloud
Twitter
Youtube