These are the good times, leave your cares behind
It's time for the annual mega-bulletin from actually-not-at-all-muddy Glastonbury. Food-related reports will appear in a separate post, just for 
lathany. Photos are on Flickr (though heavily overcast skies mean a lot of rather flat-looking snaps this year...)
If you're not familiar with my Glastonbury write-ups, they're mostly for the reference of my future self. They go on and on.
Wednesday
3 Daft Monkeys
I don't know if you were paying attention on Wednesday, but it was hot. Glastonbury had also announced that they would be searching bags more thoroughly than usual ("in light of recent events"), so the queues to get in would be more substantial than usual. We thought: do we want to carry heavy rucksacks for a considerable distance, then stand in blazing sunshine for hours?
Nope. So we faffed about at home, and went out for lunch, and eventually sauntered down a queue-free A303, breezed in through the gates, and found a lovely spacious bit of grass to pitch a tent on. At least, if you are willing to accept a twenty-five minute slog through still-quite-hot-weather with bags as "breezing". In view of the weather forecast, we'd dithered over whether to carry wellies. On the 'no' side: no significant rain forecast, ground is dry, they're extra weight to carry in this hot weather. On the 'yes' side: it is Glastonbury you idiot, take your wellies. In the end a car park steward agreed to make the final decision (leave them in the car) so that we had someone to blame if it was the wrong call.
As readers from other years may remember, we have to get ourselves down to the Cider Bus to meet Carolyn at 9pm. She always stands up us (some nonsense about living in Hong Kong now) but fortunately we found (a) some cider and (b) ChrisC's friend Xian and some friends of his. They departed off for some mysterious staff commitment in Block9, and we ambled on to the bandstand.
3 Daft Monkeys (or occasionally 2 Daft Monkeys) are one of those bands who are always playing multiple gigs at Glastonbury, but whom we never watch. Anyway, they had a huge crowd around the little bandstand, all dancing away, so we stopped to join in. I think we saw 3 Daft Monkeys. There were four of them.
We pottered off to bed, pausing only to browse round a t-shirt stall and watch a huge fireworks-and-bonfire-combo repeated in triplicate across the hillside.
Thursday
Andrew Maxwell-Morris, New York Brass Band, Elle & the Pocket Belles, Rusty Shackle, Napalm Death, [Mik Artistic], The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, Oh My God! It's the Church
While we were dithering on Wednesday over when to set off, ChrisC was examining news reports to see how bad the queues were. One article described "bored festival-goers chanting oh, Jeremy Corbyn to pass the time". Which sounded unlikely.
Apparently this is a thing which has been happening all summer (though it's passed me by). And apparently it's been happening at football matches for a lot longer, for pretty much any player with a five-syllable name. Once you know that it fits the bass intro riff from Seven Nation Army it all makes a lot more sense.
At around four in the morning on Thursday I woke up and pottered along to the toilets. Half a field away, a lone voice sang to the dawn: Ohh, Jeremy Corbyn.
After I'd got back to bed, someone in a tent close-ish by must have come back hungry. "I'm going to have some chicken curry!" he bellowed tunefully. "When I say 'chicken', you say 'curry'! Chicken!"
He was answered by a resounding silence.
Although more tents turned up in the middle of the night, our area remained bewilderingly spacious all weekend. Our neighbours were perfectly pleasant, though we never really got chatting to anyone.
ChrisC suggested I should get my kedgeree requirement sorted out early on in the festival, so we headed in that direction - and there was nearly a tantrum when the stall wasn't there. It was, fortunately, about twenty feet away at a different angle, so I didn't have to drum my heels and scream. With the festival not really started For Real yet, we ambled about sticking our heads in on the smaller stages and generally checking that not too many other things had maliciously moved. The weather stayed reasonable - decent, but not baking - and we sat around watching a huge group of space cowboys assemble. I don't know why - but there they were, all spangly lycra, psychedelic print flares, fake Freisan fur gilets and fringed jackets, toting glittery water pistols and bubble guns. Really quite a lot of them.
Our first deliberately-attended band of the festival was the always-excellent New York Brass Band (they are from York and they are new; they are not from New York). Greenpeace's field was as high-octane as usual, their stage decorated with life-size furry orang utans asking you to "defend forests", and NYBB were belting brass out into the pleasant sunshine. This year they'd brought a vocalist, who had a huge voice and added things like I Will Survive and Freed From Desire (which I haven't heard since approximately 1998) to the repertoire. Then the band's timeslot was up, so they simply jumped off the stage and carried on playing, conga-ing through the audience. It was getting almost hot again, so we hid out in the shade of the Permaculture garden, sitting on a nice wooden bench and sharing a copy of the Glastonbury Free Press.
We caught up briefly with
satyrica, as is traditional, over a cuppa at the Tiny Tea Tent. The spangly draperies lurched around us rather alarmingly, as the wind was getting up, but never quite blew away while we compared notes on what to see.
I'd described Elle & the Pocket Belles to Satyrica as being the kind of band where you know within 3 seconds of listening exactly what you're getting. Which is fine, because I quite like a bit of 1940s doo-wop and will happily listen to them noodling through classics and their own compositions. As it turned out, I wasn't quite correct: a Glenn Miller cover was all in keeping, but I wasn't expecting Jackie Wilson or Run DMC covers. Another band that were great fun, and had the whole of the Avalon Cafe dancing along.
ChrisC headed off to listen to The Smyths (a Smiths tribute band) and I departed back to the Green Fields for the massage I'd booked earlier. I was early, so sat about chatting to people until summoned into the tent - at which point I discovered that deep-tissue massage is painful. Effective, I think, because I slept that night without any bits of me going dead, but bloody painful. It certainly wasn't the pleasantly relaxing half-hour I'd had planned.
All the therapists in the Healing Fields work for "donations", rather than charging a fixed price (as far as I know). Due to a lack of forward planning and not having the right money, I felt I slightly under-donated for my half-hour; the masseur however seemed surprised. "All of that?" he asked. Possibly this is just me bringing my London sense of prices to rural Somerset :)
I set off to join ChrisC, but got distracted by Rusty Shackle, an excellently raucous folk-y band on the Croissant Neuf bandstand. Like most of the this-festival-isn't-quite-started-yet Thursday bands, they were throwing in a good dose of cover versions and had a large and enthusiastic crowd. But a band who can start with a French waltz, turn it into the Hokey Cokey, and then segue seamlessly into the Cheeky Girls? Bring it on.
I was just getting my phone out to tell ChrisC I'd had a better offer from the bandstand and was going to stand him up when a message came in warning me that Williams Green was absolutely packed and I might not get in. Ah, well. I stayed put :)
Glastonbury's south-east corner - home of late night venues and all things weird - was busy but not heaving when we braved it in the early evening. Given that all the structures are temporary, they are epic - giant Easter Island heads, Mayan-inspired sculptures, a massive man-made cave with a waterfall, towering piles of blocks, the infamous NYC Downlow complete with crashed tube train, a meatpacking warehouse... and sound systems everywhere. The south-east corner is loud, even at tea-time. Then we rounded a corner and found Napalm Death. Who are also loud. I'm not sure I really listened to them, but I definitely experienced them briefly, before running into Mel and Graham waiting for TMTWNBBFN.
Once we'd had our eardrums further blasted by The Men, We hung out with Mel and Graham for a while at the Avalon Arms (a lovely wooden pub, also erected every year) then went our separate ways. We'd hoped to catch the strange, faux-preacher act Oh My God! It's the Church at the Bimble Inn (also a pub, but in this case made of tent) but it was packed. And hot. And possessed of a weirdly slopey floor which means if you're at the back you can't see the stage. We hung around for a few songs - party covers, everyone singing along to Gangsta's Paradise and Hey Ya!, then gave up.
Of course, the slopiness of the floor is only weird if you think of it as the floor of a pub. For a farmer's field, it's probably pretty flat.
We meant to go home, but the giant spider-stage next door was having a full dress rehearsal for their new "landing show". So we watched the Lords of Lightning battle at high voltage, and watched Arcadia's mechanical insects crawl along wires to kidnap the acrobatic dancers. Some of the dancers' boots were full of fireworks, and the massive gas jets above the stage went off periodically. Then we went home.
Friday
Hacienda Classical, The Pretenders, Rews, Black Honey, Nothing But Thieves, First Aid Kit, The Young 'Uns, Kris Kristofferson, [Royal Blood], Ride, [Clean Bandit], The Flaming Lips
I set off on something of a quest on Saturday morning: to find a particular set of sinks. Taps aren't too hard to come by at Glastonbury, but sinks are rare. Also: almost everywhere has "push" taps. The kind that you push and nothing happens... nothing happens... then you get a high-pressure gallon of water. Back before they moved the John Peel stage two years ago, there was a particular set of toilets with a particular set of sinks with friendly taps. I figured I'd locate them, have a proper wash, and wash my hair.
It took me flippin' ages to find them. And when I did, they seemed to be having terrible water pressure issues that meant they barely worked. The hair-washing got crossed off the to-do list and I had to scurry about to get down to the Pyramid before Hacienda Classical came off.
Hacienda Classical is a full-on orchestra with occasional celebrity guests doing covers of bands associated with the Hacienda club in Manchester. Which... didn't really work all that well. At least, that's what I thought until they launched into Ride on Time (guest vocalist, plus everyone's favourite Bez on hilarious dancing) and I was completely won over.
Round on the Other stage, The Pretenders were a little... underwhelming. I'm not sure it was their fault. The stage's sound seemed patchy, thin and gusty - a problem which I think persisted all weekend. The Other stage has no repeater speakers (unlike the Pyramid, which has two banks of them) and towards the back of the field the sound just wasn't very audible.
We noodled back and forth between the Other stage and John Peel - most notable were Rews, whom I'd never heard before. And boy do they make a lot of racket for just two of them, definitely one to keep an eye on. Nothing But Thieves celebrated their sound man's birthday by pouring him a pint on stage and getting the crowd to pass it back to the sound desk. Surprisingly, it made it all the way back to the birthday chap without mishap.
I scurried off to the Acoustic stage to hear the Young 'Uns, doing fabulous unaccompanied folk songs for a scandalously small audience. Their repertoire veers (sometimes crazily) between story songs, political songs and traditional songs. ("How do you follow that?" one of them asked after their new single, which memorialises a gay man who killed himself after a lifetime of his parents refusing to accept him. "How do you follow a song about true love and equal rights? Of course, with three sea shanties with all the sexist and racist verses left in...")
They closed with my favourite John Ball, dedicated to the recently-departed and much-loved Teesside singer Vin Garbutt.
This year's band schedule was full of annoying clashes: in this case, Mark Lanegan versus Kris Kristofferson. We opted for Mr Kristofferson, though quietly conceded it was slightly a box-ticking exercise, but that we should grab the chance while it was there. He was... fine. By his own admission he hadn't a great voice in the first place, and it's deteriorating. However, it was nice to sit on the grass and listen to some of his classics.
I had had an intention to try and catch more new bands this year, but I lived in Oxford in the 90s so found myself inexorably drawn back up to John Peel to hear Ride. Afterwards we pootled round in The Wood (and climbed up to a treehouse-boat, and admired the view) and ran into Steve who reviewed Ride: slightly too much new stuff and not quite enough Twisterella. I concurred.
We swapped notes on bands, food and circus walkabout acts with him for a while, and reminisced about Ride. Then there was another of those annoying clashes: The xx or Future Islands? On one hand, I saw The xx recently. On the other, Future Islands won't play the set I want... eventually I opted for Future Islands, and was surprised by the large crowd they drew. Although admittedly the crowd's enthusiasm for the singer's weirder dance-moves was borderline disconcerting. The peculiarly intense lady called Steph who watched them next to me was also a little disconcerting, but I escaped with nothing worse than a large glitter tattoo of a feather on one arm :)
ChrisC opted for Radiohead. I opted not to because... well, me and Radiohead don't really get on. I like Pablo Honey. No one else is with me on that one. I pottered about (and finally got round to that hair wash) and then walked from the tent to the Park (a surprisingly long way) for the Flaming Lips.
Who remain, by the way, utterly deranged but in a brilliant and entertaining way. They kicked off with smoke, confetti canons, giant multicoloured beach balls and All The Lights. Do you think a stage show is improved if it features the singer riding a giant multicoloured unicorn? Would a cover of Space Oddity be better if the singer was inside an inflatable sphere, crowd-zorbing over the audience? The answer to both those questions is yes, by the way. The Flaming Lips are amazing - and their songs aren't bad either. They went off stage, blew up a massive inflatable rainbow, and came back for a raucous encore of She Don't Use Jelly and a shimmery Do You Realise??
You can keep your Radiohead :-)
We hung around in the Park for a while, then managed to leave at Peak Busy when security were just trying to implement a one-way system in and out of the area. Sadly, they weren't actually communicating this very effectively, which left us fighting to get out for some time before an exasperated in-comer harangued us for trying to come out of the entrance. (In fairness to security, they were somewhat distracted by a lady on a mobility scooter who was having a bit of a hard time getting through the crowds at all.)
Saturday
The Bootleg Beatles, Afriquoi, British Sea Power, The Egg, Ralph McTell, singer-from-She-Drew-The-Gun, Steve Knightley, Billy Bragg, Kaiser Chiefs, The Avalanches, The National, Father John Misty, The Foo Fighters
I can kind of take or leave the Beatles, to be honest, but ChrisC predicted that the Bootleg Beatles would draw a big party crowd and be a great start to the day. I don't think they quite lived up to that expectation, but they provided some fun sing-alongs with their "new material" (they were performing a c. 1968 set, I think - they invited you to attend their other show later in the weekend if you wanted "the old stuff").
Without any pressing necessity to be at any particular stage, we headed out to the circus fields. There, we found the Ambling Band ambling around with their pink-painted brass instruments. And some gymnasts, and a small recreation of Wimbledon (complete with a ball on a fishing line for action replies). And we found Marcus Du Sautoy in a tent so stuck our noses in, but found him doing very young-kid-centric stuff that didn't actually seem very well-explained, so headed out again. And then it chucked it down, so we elected for Jeremy Hardy doing stand-up in the cabaret tent as an alternative to getting wet. We carried on drifting about, with a vague intention of working towards John Peel, but got distracted by a band called Afriquoi playing a curious and compelling mixture of African beats and standard dance music. They were on the West Holts stage - a venue where I rarely know many of the artists, but which has a great tendency to pull me in as I pass.
For once, The Egg were on a stage at exactly the time they were meant to be (and it wasn't stupid o'clock in the morning), so we popped into the Glade for a spot of EDM. While we've been going to Glastonbury, the Glade has changed from a sound system with few bits of canvas roofing among some trees to a full-on stage. This year, its ceiling was covered with a thing which (for lack of descriptive powers) I'm going to liken to a giant doily. Even in the daylight, it was remarkably pretty.
As I mention most years, you're not allowed to go to Glastonbury and not have a bit of Billy Bragg, so we went to Saturday's "Big Bill's Radical Roundup", billed as featuring Steve Knightley and She Drew The Gun. We also got a bonus Ralph McTell, leading a huge singalong of Streets of London. We ran into a colleague of ChrisC's, and his wife, who were excited that Jeremy Corbyn was appearing next on that stage. I'm not that inspired by the idea of seeing politicians speak in person, and felt vaguely guilty as we exited to go to the Other Stage. However, the Kaiser Chiefs are a solid festival band, and give excellent value (even more than a decade after most of their big hits).
I was keen to get away from the Other Stage after that, because there was grave risk of Liam Gallagher. Sadly, lots of people felt quite the opposite and it was quite a fight to get out as the leaving and arriving crowds butted directly into each other (and both tried not to trip over all the people sitting comfortably in their camping chairs/on their blankets) in front of the stage.
We fled back to West Holts, but after a bit of sitting around there was an announcement that Toots & the Maytals weren't going to be playing. They'd failed to make it onto the site on time, so we moseyed around the circus fields again. I was just marvelling at some beautiful giant flamingo puppets, when ChrisC abruptly pointed behind me. A comedian had just jumped off the Summerhouse Stage shouting "bread fight!" and the normally quite civilised deck-chair seating for the stage was now completely full of people throwing bread at each other. Why was this happening? Where did all the bread come from? What had led up to it? All things we will, I imagine, never know :)
We escaped just in time for The Avalanches, who were being mildly batshit on West Holts. The overall impression was of people running all over the stage, and a lot of crazy video backdrops. Oh, and an unexpected cover of Guns of Brixton.
On Saturday, the choice of main stage headliners was: Foo Fighters, Alt-J, The Jackson, Phoenix, Warpaint, and Hothouse Flowers. I don't know much about the last one, but would happily have taken any of the first five. I decided - since the Foos were doing a monster 2.5 hour set - that I'd watch the beginning, then run round the back and catch most of Alt-J. And I... didn't. I almost didn't make it to the beginning of the Foos at all, because Father John Misty was being so appealing on a stage I had to walk past, but then was quite won over by Mr Grohl &co, and stayed for the whole of the set. Often, watching from quite a long way back, you find that people are chatting and not paying attention. For the Foo Fighers, everyone seemed to be singing and dancing along right to the perimeter. To some extent, a crowd can make or break a gig and in this case it was definitely make. And even he seemed surprised at the extent to which, if you have a woo-along bit in your song, the crowd will pick it up. The Foos went slightly over curfew (which they probably wouldn't have done if Mr Grohl had done less waffling in between songs), closing with Everlong and fireworks.
We sat at the back of the Pyramid field surveying the landscape while the crowds departed (still woo-ing along to Best of You), then headed off home. Skirting around John Peel stage, temporarily shielded from the racket of Silver Hayes (an area full of all-night dance stages), I could hear a curious bonging sound. And what does one do where there is an eerily illuminated area of woodland emitting mysterious bonging? Exactly. One heads towards it. And because this is an arts festival not a horror film, one finds an art installation - in this case, the Illumphonium. A strange and (in the dark, hard to see) tangle of metal bars were strung between trees and emitting a backbeat. The public was invited to hit the bars, thus releasing the gentle, ethereal bongs into the night.
Sunday
She Drew The Gun, [Marsh Fires], [Sound of the Sirens], Noble Jacks, [Cassetteboy], Dropkick Murphys, Beans on Toast, Perhaps Contraption(?) Barry Gibb, Blaenavon, Chic, [Courteeners], London Grammar, [Ed Sheeran], Metronomy
On Sunday morning we reluctantly pulled ourselves out of bed, packed up everything, and delivered bags and tent to the car (the better for a fast getaway later). The car parks are just a series of fields, each identified by a giant pink flag (West 55, in our case). Sadly, despite the giantness of the flags, the numbers are often still not quite big enough to see when you're on the wrong side of a field. We joined forces with a lost Radiohead fan who was trying to find his car to retrieve more beer, and eventually located our respective parks. He strongly recommended a band called Sheep, of whom we'd never heard... we had a fairly odd conversation until we realised we'd both misheard: he was recommending Chic.
You may notice that I've not said much this year about mud. There wasn't any. Although the blazing sunshine didn't last past Wednesday, we had what I'd call almost perfect festival weather: occasional bits of sunshine, mostly cloud cover, some minor showers. The showers do a lot to keep the dust down, and the clouds mean that standing in fields isn't painfully burny. After She Drew the Gun we finally made it to the top of The Park field, sticking our noses into the Rabbit Hole for a noisy punk band, and pausing to admire this year's sand sculpture. Without much in the way of weather to contend with, the edges had remained sharp and crisp. Theresa May gurned her way out of a wheatfield, and Jeremy Corbyn clung on grimly to the back of a wolf.
With no particular end in mind, we strolled through the Green Crafts fields. It's a whole separate world there, with people calmly whittling things, forging things, carving things. A whole zoo of wicker animals prowled across the grass, possibly scared by the lumpy clay human rising up from the "come and have a go" sculpting area. Eventually we reached Avalon, and all of our ears pricked up. ChrisC went left into the Avalon Cafe (I think it was once a cafe with a stage attached, it's now a stage with a bit you can buy food at...). I went right into the Avalon main stage, where two women were wielding guitar and mandolin, respectively, like weapons. I stayed until the end of the song, at which point they went off into rambling stage banter and I decided ChrisC had made the better choice. So I joined him and we watched the end of Noble Jacks ("they sound like a Levellers support act") who had a substantial and enthusiastic crowd.
Cassetteboy - delivering video mash-ups mocking politicians - has slightly outgrown his traditional home of The Glade, and neither ChrisC nor I (arriving separately) managed to wiggle our way into a spot where we could see properly. We both decided to abandon it for the Dropkick Murphys, braying hell out of Irish music and traditional songs on the closest main stage.
Glastonbury staple Beans on Toast had done his one (only one!?) gig the previous day, when we were elsewhere. Then, courtesy of the @secretglasto Twitter feed, there was suddenly another one announced. So we hotfooted it back to The Greenpeace stage for a chilled-out hour of rambling songs. Of course, the big "secret set" news of the day was that The Killers were going to be playing on John Peel. Even @secretglasto wasn't sure about it in the morning, but by early afternoon one of the Info stands had gaffer taped a bit of cardboard to its tent roof: "Killers John Peel 5:45. SHHH!"
I'd have quite liked to see the Killers, but did the sums: massive band, smallish stage. If I want to get in, I need to be there a good couple of hours early. Bah. Can't be faffed with all the crowds and waiting. So we did the traditional thing to do on a Sunday afternoon: ran away to the circus. We found a nice patch of shade, and lounged in it, listening to a wandering jazz-brass band whom I think were Perhaps Contraption. As we sat there, a crowd of people sneaked behind us, crouched low, wiggling their hands before and behind themselves and making small yodelling noises. OK, when that happens, there is only one explanation. Yup, there he was. An older man in a green felt hat was at the front of the crowd. I don't know his name, I call him the Crowd Wizard. His special talent is his ability to make large crowds of people do silly things. His crowd was following him, and he led them round the back of Perhaps Contraption to form a combined audience and backing choir. Then Glastonbury's own marching band, Masters of the Kazooniverse, turned up - plumed hats bobbing in the sunshine, and followed by a dancing all-ages crowd to whom they'd distributed plastic kazoos. Meanwhile we just sat on the grass, the Glastonbury printing press rumbling away behind us, and watched the mayhem.
When we finally moved into the next field, we found the beautiful flamingos again, a mechanial tortoise made largely out of suitcases and (rejoice!) Bootworks theatre company. There were two jukeboxes standing in a gazebo, and a small, expectant crowd. So we joined the crowd, and watched the flamingos and eventually some Bootworks people showed up. Their show concept was simple: a soundtrack of pop snippets plays, and the jukebox's fronts open alternately to show someone dressed as the relevant singer, miming along. Which doesn't sound that interesting, really. But the speed of the costume changes, the inventiveness of the costumes and props, and the performances from the two mimers combined to make this a completely awesome 5 minutes.
We bounced back and forth between Williams Green and the Pyramid, catching bits of Barry Gibb and Chic, and being sucked in by a completely unknown guitar band called Blaenavon. I can't really get the hang of 70s disco (it all sounds a bit the same to me), but both Barry Gibb and Chic had huge, headliner-sized crowds dancing in the (now actually quite hot) sunshine.
Around the site, the LCD information screens (which normally display fairly banal notices about logistics and not getting dehydrated) all said "Don't go to John Peel, it is at capacity and closed". Even the Glastonbury app, which had been pretty silent all weekend, managed an notification telling me to stay away from the John Peel stage. By the time we made it up there, some hours later, there was still a huge crowd - presumably people who'd gone to see the Killers and then stuck around for Goldfrapp. We watched London Grammar and Metronomy, both with big and enthusiastic crowds.
In between, the plan had been to catch a bit of the start of Ed Sheeran. However, it didn't quite work out. Once again, we got stuck in one of those melees of two crowds trying to go in opposite directions, as people streamed to and away from Ed Sheeran. After ten minutes or so of jostling and making little progress we elected to give up and turned back. ChrisC ended up acting as a pilot boat for a pushchair that was somewhat stuck in the throng. (I also tried, but was less successful... the pushchair's human gratefully high-fived ChrisC once we made it into open space.)
Metronomy came off stage, and John Peel did what it does to close down every year: dances to the "greatest song ever". The crew all pile on stage, and such audience as hasn't already left puts its arms round each others shoulders in huge lines. I can never remember which song they use; right now I can, but I'm going to miss it out, so I can be surprised again in the future (when I've forgotten...) And we walked off, bidding goodbye to the stages. Next year is a "fallow year" when the festival doesn't happen, so as we waved to each of them we said we'd see them in 2019.
Last year, due to poor walking abilities and horrific mud in the car parks, we skipped out before the headliners came off. This year, we didn't. So we joined a huge crowd of people - including all the day trippers - heading out to the car parks. We jumped in the car, and joined a queue that barely moved for an hour. Everyone waited pretty patiently, though, and eventually we began to shift and escaped into the night.
[Originally posted at http://venta.dreamwidth.org/530301.html]
lathany. Photos are on Flickr (though heavily overcast skies mean a lot of rather flat-looking snaps this year...)
If you're not familiar with my Glastonbury write-ups, they're mostly for the reference of my future self. They go on and on.
Wednesday
3 Daft Monkeys
I don't know if you were paying attention on Wednesday, but it was hot. Glastonbury had also announced that they would be searching bags more thoroughly than usual ("in light of recent events"), so the queues to get in would be more substantial than usual. We thought: do we want to carry heavy rucksacks for a considerable distance, then stand in blazing sunshine for hours?
Nope. So we faffed about at home, and went out for lunch, and eventually sauntered down a queue-free A303, breezed in through the gates, and found a lovely spacious bit of grass to pitch a tent on. At least, if you are willing to accept a twenty-five minute slog through still-quite-hot-weather with bags as "breezing". In view of the weather forecast, we'd dithered over whether to carry wellies. On the 'no' side: no significant rain forecast, ground is dry, they're extra weight to carry in this hot weather. On the 'yes' side: it is Glastonbury you idiot, take your wellies. In the end a car park steward agreed to make the final decision (leave them in the car) so that we had someone to blame if it was the wrong call.
As readers from other years may remember, we have to get ourselves down to the Cider Bus to meet Carolyn at 9pm. She always stands up us (some nonsense about living in Hong Kong now) but fortunately we found (a) some cider and (b) ChrisC's friend Xian and some friends of his. They departed off for some mysterious staff commitment in Block9, and we ambled on to the bandstand.
3 Daft Monkeys (or occasionally 2 Daft Monkeys) are one of those bands who are always playing multiple gigs at Glastonbury, but whom we never watch. Anyway, they had a huge crowd around the little bandstand, all dancing away, so we stopped to join in. I think we saw 3 Daft Monkeys. There were four of them.
We pottered off to bed, pausing only to browse round a t-shirt stall and watch a huge fireworks-and-bonfire-combo repeated in triplicate across the hillside.
Thursday
Andrew Maxwell-Morris, New York Brass Band, Elle & the Pocket Belles, Rusty Shackle, Napalm Death, [Mik Artistic], The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, Oh My God! It's the Church
While we were dithering on Wednesday over when to set off, ChrisC was examining news reports to see how bad the queues were. One article described "bored festival-goers chanting oh, Jeremy Corbyn to pass the time". Which sounded unlikely.
Apparently this is a thing which has been happening all summer (though it's passed me by). And apparently it's been happening at football matches for a lot longer, for pretty much any player with a five-syllable name. Once you know that it fits the bass intro riff from Seven Nation Army it all makes a lot more sense.
At around four in the morning on Thursday I woke up and pottered along to the toilets. Half a field away, a lone voice sang to the dawn: Ohh, Jeremy Corbyn.
After I'd got back to bed, someone in a tent close-ish by must have come back hungry. "I'm going to have some chicken curry!" he bellowed tunefully. "When I say 'chicken', you say 'curry'! Chicken!"
He was answered by a resounding silence.
Although more tents turned up in the middle of the night, our area remained bewilderingly spacious all weekend. Our neighbours were perfectly pleasant, though we never really got chatting to anyone.
ChrisC suggested I should get my kedgeree requirement sorted out early on in the festival, so we headed in that direction - and there was nearly a tantrum when the stall wasn't there. It was, fortunately, about twenty feet away at a different angle, so I didn't have to drum my heels and scream. With the festival not really started For Real yet, we ambled about sticking our heads in on the smaller stages and generally checking that not too many other things had maliciously moved. The weather stayed reasonable - decent, but not baking - and we sat around watching a huge group of space cowboys assemble. I don't know why - but there they were, all spangly lycra, psychedelic print flares, fake Freisan fur gilets and fringed jackets, toting glittery water pistols and bubble guns. Really quite a lot of them.
Our first deliberately-attended band of the festival was the always-excellent New York Brass Band (they are from York and they are new; they are not from New York). Greenpeace's field was as high-octane as usual, their stage decorated with life-size furry orang utans asking you to "defend forests", and NYBB were belting brass out into the pleasant sunshine. This year they'd brought a vocalist, who had a huge voice and added things like I Will Survive and Freed From Desire (which I haven't heard since approximately 1998) to the repertoire. Then the band's timeslot was up, so they simply jumped off the stage and carried on playing, conga-ing through the audience. It was getting almost hot again, so we hid out in the shade of the Permaculture garden, sitting on a nice wooden bench and sharing a copy of the Glastonbury Free Press.
We caught up briefly with
satyrica, as is traditional, over a cuppa at the Tiny Tea Tent. The spangly draperies lurched around us rather alarmingly, as the wind was getting up, but never quite blew away while we compared notes on what to see.
I'd described Elle & the Pocket Belles to Satyrica as being the kind of band where you know within 3 seconds of listening exactly what you're getting. Which is fine, because I quite like a bit of 1940s doo-wop and will happily listen to them noodling through classics and their own compositions. As it turned out, I wasn't quite correct: a Glenn Miller cover was all in keeping, but I wasn't expecting Jackie Wilson or Run DMC covers. Another band that were great fun, and had the whole of the Avalon Cafe dancing along.
ChrisC headed off to listen to The Smyths (a Smiths tribute band) and I departed back to the Green Fields for the massage I'd booked earlier. I was early, so sat about chatting to people until summoned into the tent - at which point I discovered that deep-tissue massage is painful. Effective, I think, because I slept that night without any bits of me going dead, but bloody painful. It certainly wasn't the pleasantly relaxing half-hour I'd had planned.
All the therapists in the Healing Fields work for "donations", rather than charging a fixed price (as far as I know). Due to a lack of forward planning and not having the right money, I felt I slightly under-donated for my half-hour; the masseur however seemed surprised. "All of that?" he asked. Possibly this is just me bringing my London sense of prices to rural Somerset :)
I set off to join ChrisC, but got distracted by Rusty Shackle, an excellently raucous folk-y band on the Croissant Neuf bandstand. Like most of the this-festival-isn't-quite-started-yet Thursday bands, they were throwing in a good dose of cover versions and had a large and enthusiastic crowd. But a band who can start with a French waltz, turn it into the Hokey Cokey, and then segue seamlessly into the Cheeky Girls? Bring it on.
I was just getting my phone out to tell ChrisC I'd had a better offer from the bandstand and was going to stand him up when a message came in warning me that Williams Green was absolutely packed and I might not get in. Ah, well. I stayed put :)
Glastonbury's south-east corner - home of late night venues and all things weird - was busy but not heaving when we braved it in the early evening. Given that all the structures are temporary, they are epic - giant Easter Island heads, Mayan-inspired sculptures, a massive man-made cave with a waterfall, towering piles of blocks, the infamous NYC Downlow complete with crashed tube train, a meatpacking warehouse... and sound systems everywhere. The south-east corner is loud, even at tea-time. Then we rounded a corner and found Napalm Death. Who are also loud. I'm not sure I really listened to them, but I definitely experienced them briefly, before running into Mel and Graham waiting for TMTWNBBFN.
Once we'd had our eardrums further blasted by The Men, We hung out with Mel and Graham for a while at the Avalon Arms (a lovely wooden pub, also erected every year) then went our separate ways. We'd hoped to catch the strange, faux-preacher act Oh My God! It's the Church at the Bimble Inn (also a pub, but in this case made of tent) but it was packed. And hot. And possessed of a weirdly slopey floor which means if you're at the back you can't see the stage. We hung around for a few songs - party covers, everyone singing along to Gangsta's Paradise and Hey Ya!, then gave up.
Of course, the slopiness of the floor is only weird if you think of it as the floor of a pub. For a farmer's field, it's probably pretty flat.
We meant to go home, but the giant spider-stage next door was having a full dress rehearsal for their new "landing show". So we watched the Lords of Lightning battle at high voltage, and watched Arcadia's mechanical insects crawl along wires to kidnap the acrobatic dancers. Some of the dancers' boots were full of fireworks, and the massive gas jets above the stage went off periodically. Then we went home.
Friday
Hacienda Classical, The Pretenders, Rews, Black Honey, Nothing But Thieves, First Aid Kit, The Young 'Uns, Kris Kristofferson, [Royal Blood], Ride, [Clean Bandit], The Flaming Lips
I set off on something of a quest on Saturday morning: to find a particular set of sinks. Taps aren't too hard to come by at Glastonbury, but sinks are rare. Also: almost everywhere has "push" taps. The kind that you push and nothing happens... nothing happens... then you get a high-pressure gallon of water. Back before they moved the John Peel stage two years ago, there was a particular set of toilets with a particular set of sinks with friendly taps. I figured I'd locate them, have a proper wash, and wash my hair.
It took me flippin' ages to find them. And when I did, they seemed to be having terrible water pressure issues that meant they barely worked. The hair-washing got crossed off the to-do list and I had to scurry about to get down to the Pyramid before Hacienda Classical came off.
Hacienda Classical is a full-on orchestra with occasional celebrity guests doing covers of bands associated with the Hacienda club in Manchester. Which... didn't really work all that well. At least, that's what I thought until they launched into Ride on Time (guest vocalist, plus everyone's favourite Bez on hilarious dancing) and I was completely won over.
Round on the Other stage, The Pretenders were a little... underwhelming. I'm not sure it was their fault. The stage's sound seemed patchy, thin and gusty - a problem which I think persisted all weekend. The Other stage has no repeater speakers (unlike the Pyramid, which has two banks of them) and towards the back of the field the sound just wasn't very audible.
We noodled back and forth between the Other stage and John Peel - most notable were Rews, whom I'd never heard before. And boy do they make a lot of racket for just two of them, definitely one to keep an eye on. Nothing But Thieves celebrated their sound man's birthday by pouring him a pint on stage and getting the crowd to pass it back to the sound desk. Surprisingly, it made it all the way back to the birthday chap without mishap.
I scurried off to the Acoustic stage to hear the Young 'Uns, doing fabulous unaccompanied folk songs for a scandalously small audience. Their repertoire veers (sometimes crazily) between story songs, political songs and traditional songs. ("How do you follow that?" one of them asked after their new single, which memorialises a gay man who killed himself after a lifetime of his parents refusing to accept him. "How do you follow a song about true love and equal rights? Of course, with three sea shanties with all the sexist and racist verses left in...")
They closed with my favourite John Ball, dedicated to the recently-departed and much-loved Teesside singer Vin Garbutt.
This year's band schedule was full of annoying clashes: in this case, Mark Lanegan versus Kris Kristofferson. We opted for Mr Kristofferson, though quietly conceded it was slightly a box-ticking exercise, but that we should grab the chance while it was there. He was... fine. By his own admission he hadn't a great voice in the first place, and it's deteriorating. However, it was nice to sit on the grass and listen to some of his classics.
I had had an intention to try and catch more new bands this year, but I lived in Oxford in the 90s so found myself inexorably drawn back up to John Peel to hear Ride. Afterwards we pootled round in The Wood (and climbed up to a treehouse-boat, and admired the view) and ran into Steve who reviewed Ride: slightly too much new stuff and not quite enough Twisterella. I concurred.
We swapped notes on bands, food and circus walkabout acts with him for a while, and reminisced about Ride. Then there was another of those annoying clashes: The xx or Future Islands? On one hand, I saw The xx recently. On the other, Future Islands won't play the set I want... eventually I opted for Future Islands, and was surprised by the large crowd they drew. Although admittedly the crowd's enthusiasm for the singer's weirder dance-moves was borderline disconcerting. The peculiarly intense lady called Steph who watched them next to me was also a little disconcerting, but I escaped with nothing worse than a large glitter tattoo of a feather on one arm :)
ChrisC opted for Radiohead. I opted not to because... well, me and Radiohead don't really get on. I like Pablo Honey. No one else is with me on that one. I pottered about (and finally got round to that hair wash) and then walked from the tent to the Park (a surprisingly long way) for the Flaming Lips.
Who remain, by the way, utterly deranged but in a brilliant and entertaining way. They kicked off with smoke, confetti canons, giant multicoloured beach balls and All The Lights. Do you think a stage show is improved if it features the singer riding a giant multicoloured unicorn? Would a cover of Space Oddity be better if the singer was inside an inflatable sphere, crowd-zorbing over the audience? The answer to both those questions is yes, by the way. The Flaming Lips are amazing - and their songs aren't bad either. They went off stage, blew up a massive inflatable rainbow, and came back for a raucous encore of She Don't Use Jelly and a shimmery Do You Realise??
You can keep your Radiohead :-)
We hung around in the Park for a while, then managed to leave at Peak Busy when security were just trying to implement a one-way system in and out of the area. Sadly, they weren't actually communicating this very effectively, which left us fighting to get out for some time before an exasperated in-comer harangued us for trying to come out of the entrance. (In fairness to security, they were somewhat distracted by a lady on a mobility scooter who was having a bit of a hard time getting through the crowds at all.)
Saturday
The Bootleg Beatles, Afriquoi, British Sea Power, The Egg, Ralph McTell, singer-from-She-Drew-The-Gun, Steve Knightley, Billy Bragg, Kaiser Chiefs, The Avalanches, The National, Father John Misty, The Foo Fighters
I can kind of take or leave the Beatles, to be honest, but ChrisC predicted that the Bootleg Beatles would draw a big party crowd and be a great start to the day. I don't think they quite lived up to that expectation, but they provided some fun sing-alongs with their "new material" (they were performing a c. 1968 set, I think - they invited you to attend their other show later in the weekend if you wanted "the old stuff").
Without any pressing necessity to be at any particular stage, we headed out to the circus fields. There, we found the Ambling Band ambling around with their pink-painted brass instruments. And some gymnasts, and a small recreation of Wimbledon (complete with a ball on a fishing line for action replies). And we found Marcus Du Sautoy in a tent so stuck our noses in, but found him doing very young-kid-centric stuff that didn't actually seem very well-explained, so headed out again. And then it chucked it down, so we elected for Jeremy Hardy doing stand-up in the cabaret tent as an alternative to getting wet. We carried on drifting about, with a vague intention of working towards John Peel, but got distracted by a band called Afriquoi playing a curious and compelling mixture of African beats and standard dance music. They were on the West Holts stage - a venue where I rarely know many of the artists, but which has a great tendency to pull me in as I pass.
For once, The Egg were on a stage at exactly the time they were meant to be (and it wasn't stupid o'clock in the morning), so we popped into the Glade for a spot of EDM. While we've been going to Glastonbury, the Glade has changed from a sound system with few bits of canvas roofing among some trees to a full-on stage. This year, its ceiling was covered with a thing which (for lack of descriptive powers) I'm going to liken to a giant doily. Even in the daylight, it was remarkably pretty.
As I mention most years, you're not allowed to go to Glastonbury and not have a bit of Billy Bragg, so we went to Saturday's "Big Bill's Radical Roundup", billed as featuring Steve Knightley and She Drew The Gun. We also got a bonus Ralph McTell, leading a huge singalong of Streets of London. We ran into a colleague of ChrisC's, and his wife, who were excited that Jeremy Corbyn was appearing next on that stage. I'm not that inspired by the idea of seeing politicians speak in person, and felt vaguely guilty as we exited to go to the Other Stage. However, the Kaiser Chiefs are a solid festival band, and give excellent value (even more than a decade after most of their big hits).
I was keen to get away from the Other Stage after that, because there was grave risk of Liam Gallagher. Sadly, lots of people felt quite the opposite and it was quite a fight to get out as the leaving and arriving crowds butted directly into each other (and both tried not to trip over all the people sitting comfortably in their camping chairs/on their blankets) in front of the stage.
We fled back to West Holts, but after a bit of sitting around there was an announcement that Toots & the Maytals weren't going to be playing. They'd failed to make it onto the site on time, so we moseyed around the circus fields again. I was just marvelling at some beautiful giant flamingo puppets, when ChrisC abruptly pointed behind me. A comedian had just jumped off the Summerhouse Stage shouting "bread fight!" and the normally quite civilised deck-chair seating for the stage was now completely full of people throwing bread at each other. Why was this happening? Where did all the bread come from? What had led up to it? All things we will, I imagine, never know :)
We escaped just in time for The Avalanches, who were being mildly batshit on West Holts. The overall impression was of people running all over the stage, and a lot of crazy video backdrops. Oh, and an unexpected cover of Guns of Brixton.
On Saturday, the choice of main stage headliners was: Foo Fighters, Alt-J, The Jackson, Phoenix, Warpaint, and Hothouse Flowers. I don't know much about the last one, but would happily have taken any of the first five. I decided - since the Foos were doing a monster 2.5 hour set - that I'd watch the beginning, then run round the back and catch most of Alt-J. And I... didn't. I almost didn't make it to the beginning of the Foos at all, because Father John Misty was being so appealing on a stage I had to walk past, but then was quite won over by Mr Grohl &co, and stayed for the whole of the set. Often, watching from quite a long way back, you find that people are chatting and not paying attention. For the Foo Fighers, everyone seemed to be singing and dancing along right to the perimeter. To some extent, a crowd can make or break a gig and in this case it was definitely make. And even he seemed surprised at the extent to which, if you have a woo-along bit in your song, the crowd will pick it up. The Foos went slightly over curfew (which they probably wouldn't have done if Mr Grohl had done less waffling in between songs), closing with Everlong and fireworks.
We sat at the back of the Pyramid field surveying the landscape while the crowds departed (still woo-ing along to Best of You), then headed off home. Skirting around John Peel stage, temporarily shielded from the racket of Silver Hayes (an area full of all-night dance stages), I could hear a curious bonging sound. And what does one do where there is an eerily illuminated area of woodland emitting mysterious bonging? Exactly. One heads towards it. And because this is an arts festival not a horror film, one finds an art installation - in this case, the Illumphonium. A strange and (in the dark, hard to see) tangle of metal bars were strung between trees and emitting a backbeat. The public was invited to hit the bars, thus releasing the gentle, ethereal bongs into the night.
Sunday
She Drew The Gun, [Marsh Fires], [Sound of the Sirens], Noble Jacks, [Cassetteboy], Dropkick Murphys, Beans on Toast, Perhaps Contraption(?) Barry Gibb, Blaenavon, Chic, [Courteeners], London Grammar, [Ed Sheeran], Metronomy
On Sunday morning we reluctantly pulled ourselves out of bed, packed up everything, and delivered bags and tent to the car (the better for a fast getaway later). The car parks are just a series of fields, each identified by a giant pink flag (West 55, in our case). Sadly, despite the giantness of the flags, the numbers are often still not quite big enough to see when you're on the wrong side of a field. We joined forces with a lost Radiohead fan who was trying to find his car to retrieve more beer, and eventually located our respective parks. He strongly recommended a band called Sheep, of whom we'd never heard... we had a fairly odd conversation until we realised we'd both misheard: he was recommending Chic.
You may notice that I've not said much this year about mud. There wasn't any. Although the blazing sunshine didn't last past Wednesday, we had what I'd call almost perfect festival weather: occasional bits of sunshine, mostly cloud cover, some minor showers. The showers do a lot to keep the dust down, and the clouds mean that standing in fields isn't painfully burny. After She Drew the Gun we finally made it to the top of The Park field, sticking our noses into the Rabbit Hole for a noisy punk band, and pausing to admire this year's sand sculpture. Without much in the way of weather to contend with, the edges had remained sharp and crisp. Theresa May gurned her way out of a wheatfield, and Jeremy Corbyn clung on grimly to the back of a wolf.
With no particular end in mind, we strolled through the Green Crafts fields. It's a whole separate world there, with people calmly whittling things, forging things, carving things. A whole zoo of wicker animals prowled across the grass, possibly scared by the lumpy clay human rising up from the "come and have a go" sculpting area. Eventually we reached Avalon, and all of our ears pricked up. ChrisC went left into the Avalon Cafe (I think it was once a cafe with a stage attached, it's now a stage with a bit you can buy food at...). I went right into the Avalon main stage, where two women were wielding guitar and mandolin, respectively, like weapons. I stayed until the end of the song, at which point they went off into rambling stage banter and I decided ChrisC had made the better choice. So I joined him and we watched the end of Noble Jacks ("they sound like a Levellers support act") who had a substantial and enthusiastic crowd.
Cassetteboy - delivering video mash-ups mocking politicians - has slightly outgrown his traditional home of The Glade, and neither ChrisC nor I (arriving separately) managed to wiggle our way into a spot where we could see properly. We both decided to abandon it for the Dropkick Murphys, braying hell out of Irish music and traditional songs on the closest main stage.
Glastonbury staple Beans on Toast had done his one (only one!?) gig the previous day, when we were elsewhere. Then, courtesy of the @secretglasto Twitter feed, there was suddenly another one announced. So we hotfooted it back to The Greenpeace stage for a chilled-out hour of rambling songs. Of course, the big "secret set" news of the day was that The Killers were going to be playing on John Peel. Even @secretglasto wasn't sure about it in the morning, but by early afternoon one of the Info stands had gaffer taped a bit of cardboard to its tent roof: "Killers John Peel 5:45. SHHH!"
I'd have quite liked to see the Killers, but did the sums: massive band, smallish stage. If I want to get in, I need to be there a good couple of hours early. Bah. Can't be faffed with all the crowds and waiting. So we did the traditional thing to do on a Sunday afternoon: ran away to the circus. We found a nice patch of shade, and lounged in it, listening to a wandering jazz-brass band whom I think were Perhaps Contraption. As we sat there, a crowd of people sneaked behind us, crouched low, wiggling their hands before and behind themselves and making small yodelling noises. OK, when that happens, there is only one explanation. Yup, there he was. An older man in a green felt hat was at the front of the crowd. I don't know his name, I call him the Crowd Wizard. His special talent is his ability to make large crowds of people do silly things. His crowd was following him, and he led them round the back of Perhaps Contraption to form a combined audience and backing choir. Then Glastonbury's own marching band, Masters of the Kazooniverse, turned up - plumed hats bobbing in the sunshine, and followed by a dancing all-ages crowd to whom they'd distributed plastic kazoos. Meanwhile we just sat on the grass, the Glastonbury printing press rumbling away behind us, and watched the mayhem.
When we finally moved into the next field, we found the beautiful flamingos again, a mechanial tortoise made largely out of suitcases and (rejoice!) Bootworks theatre company. There were two jukeboxes standing in a gazebo, and a small, expectant crowd. So we joined the crowd, and watched the flamingos and eventually some Bootworks people showed up. Their show concept was simple: a soundtrack of pop snippets plays, and the jukebox's fronts open alternately to show someone dressed as the relevant singer, miming along. Which doesn't sound that interesting, really. But the speed of the costume changes, the inventiveness of the costumes and props, and the performances from the two mimers combined to make this a completely awesome 5 minutes.
We bounced back and forth between Williams Green and the Pyramid, catching bits of Barry Gibb and Chic, and being sucked in by a completely unknown guitar band called Blaenavon. I can't really get the hang of 70s disco (it all sounds a bit the same to me), but both Barry Gibb and Chic had huge, headliner-sized crowds dancing in the (now actually quite hot) sunshine.
Around the site, the LCD information screens (which normally display fairly banal notices about logistics and not getting dehydrated) all said "Don't go to John Peel, it is at capacity and closed". Even the Glastonbury app, which had been pretty silent all weekend, managed an notification telling me to stay away from the John Peel stage. By the time we made it up there, some hours later, there was still a huge crowd - presumably people who'd gone to see the Killers and then stuck around for Goldfrapp. We watched London Grammar and Metronomy, both with big and enthusiastic crowds.
In between, the plan had been to catch a bit of the start of Ed Sheeran. However, it didn't quite work out. Once again, we got stuck in one of those melees of two crowds trying to go in opposite directions, as people streamed to and away from Ed Sheeran. After ten minutes or so of jostling and making little progress we elected to give up and turned back. ChrisC ended up acting as a pilot boat for a pushchair that was somewhat stuck in the throng. (I also tried, but was less successful... the pushchair's human gratefully high-fived ChrisC once we made it into open space.)
Metronomy came off stage, and John Peel did what it does to close down every year: dances to the "greatest song ever". The crew all pile on stage, and such audience as hasn't already left puts its arms round each others shoulders in huge lines. I can never remember which song they use; right now I can, but I'm going to miss it out, so I can be surprised again in the future (when I've forgotten...) And we walked off, bidding goodbye to the stages. Next year is a "fallow year" when the festival doesn't happen, so as we waved to each of them we said we'd see them in 2019.
Last year, due to poor walking abilities and horrific mud in the car parks, we skipped out before the headliners came off. This year, we didn't. So we joined a huge crowd of people - including all the day trippers - heading out to the car parks. We jumped in the car, and joined a queue that barely moved for an hour. Everyone waited pretty patiently, though, and eventually we began to shift and escaped into the night.
[Originally posted at http://venta.dreamwidth.org/530301.html]