Campaign For Real Fail
So you'll already have seen (and if not, scroll down) my review of all the bands and films and cabaret we caught at Glastonbury. But I've been told a million times that Glastonbury Is Not About The Music, It's About The Experience. So what did we experience that was unscheduled or just damned exciting?
Well, we worked in a real ale tent a lot, trying to bluff knowledge of the ales when people asked "can you recommend a light ale?" to us. This was almost entirely crap. On the third shift, we had Neil Morrissey, the 90s actor, "working alongside us" for an hour, which can be translated as "barging in on most of our orders to try and plug the ale he and a cohort called Fox have brewed, modestly entitled 'Morrissey Fox'". Of course, a camera crew filmed the greying Morrissey doing this to a crowd of punters who, and I'm not making this up, were exclusively and entirely plants brought along by the TV hacks, evidenced by nobody wanting serving from anyone else on the grounds "they were with the TV" or "wanted to be served by Neil". On the offchance that a real customer walked in, we had to navigate our way past the camera crew, who didn't seem to be aware that standing in the dead centre of a working bar meant that nobody was able to bloody do anything, and past Bob The Builder hard-selling his real ale. Egad.
On the fourth shift, one of the tent poles collapsed, leaving us unable to work and nobody able to enter the bar. Still, the dickheads refused to let us sneak off and watch Goldfrapp and instead opened the bar DESPITE the health and safety issues, having half of us stood outside the tent taking orders, then walking back inside the tent to ask somebody to pour the ordered drinks. This was absolutely horrible, a total waste of time and presumably a violation of the festival's H&S. When it did reopen, it was only because they'd re-erected the tent pole with GAFFER TAPE FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
On the exploring side, a whole area known as Trash City was built, entirely for Glastonbury, featuring a gay bar (which we couldn't get into), half an aeroplane and a triceratops/truck constructed from scrap metal. One building, which was playing techno, was filled with found items, broken dolls, dancers looking like Tim Burton characters, and beds to lounge about on. Naturally we dug all of it, but it'll be best remembered by us for a octopus-structured seating area which blasted out more rave music from its epicentre while breathing fire from towers at each end. Dancing on top of that in the rain was hot. We went there on Thursday night, while the festival was still fairly quiet; when we attempted to visit on Saturday, it was impenetrable due to sheer volume of people. Alas this meant we missed The Fire-Tusk Painproof Circus and the excitingly-titled Tranny Olympics. A proposed explore of the Shangri-La area was kyboshed for similar overpopulation reasons.
We could not find the Joe Strummer tribute that is the Stone Circle. We did reach the end of Glastonbury, at its highest peak looking down on the madness below while silence was all around us. I visited The Jam Tent and played some guitar alongside people hitting percussion, playing a broken-down piano and so forth.
In terms of people, among the usual bridal gowns, people dressing like furries and so forth, the guy dressed as one of The Residents, a guy wheeling his small daughter around in a cart, and the T-shirt "I Facebooked Your Mom" stood out for whatever reason. I was wearing skull make-up while serving on Sunday, but I'm sure you don't care about that.
The people we camped with and worked with, from the Coventry CWU, were diamonds, of course, many of whom I'd never met before and who we struck up speedy rapport with. That said, outside of working, we spent little time with them. The best conversation that I recall with them was based on a porn version of The Exorcist ("Your mother sucks cocks in hell... and so do I" *porn music*), while I'm told Nu-Rave Hoopla was fun too, but I was unconscious. We also happened upon Derry (Dewi?) from Reading 2006, who had his own Glasto cliche experience by vanishing into the midsts of Glastonbury, addled with magic mushrooms and with no idea where he was.
On the coach journey there (which was not the mythical 18 hours), we watched 'The Return of the King', which, due to variable sound levels, I was mostly watching in a sort of '300' "what stupid thing is coming up next?" kinda way. There's the giant spider, there's the pirates getting wasted by ghosts, there's the pterodactyl being flown by Afrika Bambaataa, etc. On the journey back, we were shown 'The Two Towers' AND 'The Bourne Ultimatum'- as you might have guessed, the journey back was much longer. 'Bourne Ultimatum' is the only Jason Bourne movie I've seen- I'd been strenuously avoiding them- and predictably enough, its combination of tense music, Matt Damon's vacuum of personality, and jumping off roofs, through windows, straight into a fight scene, is hilariously macho, although slickly edited and nicely fluid.
So yes, that was Glastonbury. Coming up next, its little brother Latitude, in which Blondie, Sigur Ros and Death Cab For Cutie are offered up for us to miss because we're busy working. I look forward to that equally as much. Coming up over the next few weeks, Godiva, our fence hopefully being fixed, and doubtless little else.
Well, we worked in a real ale tent a lot, trying to bluff knowledge of the ales when people asked "can you recommend a light ale?" to us. This was almost entirely crap. On the third shift, we had Neil Morrissey, the 90s actor, "working alongside us" for an hour, which can be translated as "barging in on most of our orders to try and plug the ale he and a cohort called Fox have brewed, modestly entitled 'Morrissey Fox'". Of course, a camera crew filmed the greying Morrissey doing this to a crowd of punters who, and I'm not making this up, were exclusively and entirely plants brought along by the TV hacks, evidenced by nobody wanting serving from anyone else on the grounds "they were with the TV" or "wanted to be served by Neil". On the offchance that a real customer walked in, we had to navigate our way past the camera crew, who didn't seem to be aware that standing in the dead centre of a working bar meant that nobody was able to bloody do anything, and past Bob The Builder hard-selling his real ale. Egad.
On the fourth shift, one of the tent poles collapsed, leaving us unable to work and nobody able to enter the bar. Still, the dickheads refused to let us sneak off and watch Goldfrapp and instead opened the bar DESPITE the health and safety issues, having half of us stood outside the tent taking orders, then walking back inside the tent to ask somebody to pour the ordered drinks. This was absolutely horrible, a total waste of time and presumably a violation of the festival's H&S. When it did reopen, it was only because they'd re-erected the tent pole with GAFFER TAPE FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
On the exploring side, a whole area known as Trash City was built, entirely for Glastonbury, featuring a gay bar (which we couldn't get into), half an aeroplane and a triceratops/truck constructed from scrap metal. One building, which was playing techno, was filled with found items, broken dolls, dancers looking like Tim Burton characters, and beds to lounge about on. Naturally we dug all of it, but it'll be best remembered by us for a octopus-structured seating area which blasted out more rave music from its epicentre while breathing fire from towers at each end. Dancing on top of that in the rain was hot. We went there on Thursday night, while the festival was still fairly quiet; when we attempted to visit on Saturday, it was impenetrable due to sheer volume of people. Alas this meant we missed The Fire-Tusk Painproof Circus and the excitingly-titled Tranny Olympics. A proposed explore of the Shangri-La area was kyboshed for similar overpopulation reasons.
We could not find the Joe Strummer tribute that is the Stone Circle. We did reach the end of Glastonbury, at its highest peak looking down on the madness below while silence was all around us. I visited The Jam Tent and played some guitar alongside people hitting percussion, playing a broken-down piano and so forth.
In terms of people, among the usual bridal gowns, people dressing like furries and so forth, the guy dressed as one of The Residents, a guy wheeling his small daughter around in a cart, and the T-shirt "I Facebooked Your Mom" stood out for whatever reason. I was wearing skull make-up while serving on Sunday, but I'm sure you don't care about that.
The people we camped with and worked with, from the Coventry CWU, were diamonds, of course, many of whom I'd never met before and who we struck up speedy rapport with. That said, outside of working, we spent little time with them. The best conversation that I recall with them was based on a porn version of The Exorcist ("Your mother sucks cocks in hell... and so do I" *porn music*), while I'm told Nu-Rave Hoopla was fun too, but I was unconscious. We also happened upon Derry (Dewi?) from Reading 2006, who had his own Glasto cliche experience by vanishing into the midsts of Glastonbury, addled with magic mushrooms and with no idea where he was.
On the coach journey there (which was not the mythical 18 hours), we watched 'The Return of the King', which, due to variable sound levels, I was mostly watching in a sort of '300' "what stupid thing is coming up next?" kinda way. There's the giant spider, there's the pirates getting wasted by ghosts, there's the pterodactyl being flown by Afrika Bambaataa, etc. On the journey back, we were shown 'The Two Towers' AND 'The Bourne Ultimatum'- as you might have guessed, the journey back was much longer. 'Bourne Ultimatum' is the only Jason Bourne movie I've seen- I'd been strenuously avoiding them- and predictably enough, its combination of tense music, Matt Damon's vacuum of personality, and jumping off roofs, through windows, straight into a fight scene, is hilariously macho, although slickly edited and nicely fluid.
So yes, that was Glastonbury. Coming up next, its little brother Latitude, in which Blondie, Sigur Ros and Death Cab For Cutie are offered up for us to miss because we're busy working. I look forward to that equally as much. Coming up over the next few weeks, Godiva, our fence hopefully being fixed, and doubtless little else.