Get you Gum Boots on, it time for Glastonbury!

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Lets make no mistake about it - both Jen and I are festival junkies, and Glastonbury ('Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts'or just 'glasto') is the Mecca of festivals - this is gonna be good!

The adventure starts in Herne Hill - where Tom lives- collecting the essential supplies. This includes as much booze as we figure we can physically carry, plenty of toilet paper, and whatever foods you can cook up in a tiny little camp stove. Sorted, ready to go, but where is Rich (Tom's workmate who's picking us up)??. Well he got stuck at work for a bit longer than expected and then caught in London afternoon traffic. Oh well, it looks like we might be pitching tents in the dark! So we put the movie 'This is Spinal Tap' on in preparation for the epic weekend of rock n roll that is before us!

We meet the lovely Rich not long later, squeeze everything including ourselves into the car and are on our way. Tom has compiled a couple of road trip cd's to listen to as we glide along the highway - unfortunately Bruce Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' just doesn't feel the same in the London traffic carpark! But eventually we hit the 303 highway (cue Kula Shaker's '303'). We then ask our English friends, 'so do we go anywhere near stonehenge on this trip?' Both of them laugh, and we soon know why as our highway passes within a stone's throw (literally!) of this ancient, mysterious wonder of the world. While it looks beautiful in the setting sun, its quite hard to appreciate anything so close to a major highway, let alone when zooming by at 80 miles an hour. And anyway, there was a more important stonehenge that we were hoping to see this weekend!

Late in the car trip we (minus driver Rich) decide we'd better lighten the load that we're about to carry to the campsite and crack open a beer or two. Our energetic and excited mood upon reaching the carpark evaporates pretty quickly as we lug all our supplies past camping area after area that are already packed full of earlier arrivers. Some friendly volunteers tell us of a promised land a few valleys away where there are reports of empty green fields. It didn't quite fit the 'empty' description, but at last we found a tiny area amongst other tents to stake a claim and erect our tents. By now it was well and truly dark, but we persevered, and at around 1:30am sat down to enjoy some celebratory beers before collapsing to sleep.

In the morning light we are able to take in our surroundings - on what is otherwise a cattle farm, a massive temporary city of tents, stages, toilets and markets has appeared. This day, Thursday, is not actually an official festival day - its more a day to get used to your surroundings, chill out and possibly explore the site. We do all of this, before heading in to the festival area in the late afternoon, where a few of the stages are opening up early. At Jen's request our first target is a stage where 90s electro-boy-band East 17 (remember 'alright, alright, everythings gonna be alright'??) are set to play. To Jen's dismay, and the boys' relief, a different act is onstage, and so we wander on. It starts to rain, as we dig into our 'pie ministers' then we find a place to sit down and inhale the fresh country air. No sooner had we put our bums on some wooden benches in the middle of a paddock, than a busking rockabily street band begin setting up next to us to play us, and other passers-by some tunes. A funny conversation ensued:

one of the girls we camped with: 'hey do you guys play requests?'
bass player (heavy, possibly irish accent): 'no sorry, we just do originals'
jeff: 'how bout if we request one of your songs? Whats a good one?'
bass player: sure, our best number is 'wheyt dewn suerp'

(amongst ourselves)
rich: I think he said 'We don't soak'
jeff: no no i heard 'We don't soap'
jen: nope, 'we don't sow'
tom: or maybe 'we don't surf?'

Thankfully we sorted this out in time, with the bass player patiently repeating himself. And to our delight they fulfilled our request by playing a rocking version of 'WAY DOWN SOUTH!'. Incidently, we soon figured out why this song had been suggested by the bass player - not only is it the only song he got to sing, but it also features a lengthy bass solo. In the excitement of it all we bounce our bums a little too hard on the makeshift seating and it soon collapses! oh well... After, though not because of this, our group splits ways to explore different pockets of the festival on pre-opening night. The mood was definitely exciting and full of anticipation as we hit the sack on Thursday night, resting up for the start of the festival-proper.

The line up for Glastonbury 2009 was nothing short of daunting. We had spent much of Wed and Thurs studying timetables to decide who to see, and sacrificing who we must miss. The headlining acts each day, i.e. those playing in the massive paddock that is known as the Pyramid Stage, were dominated by old rockers and reformed bands from yester-year. Neil Young set such a high standard on the Friday night, starting with 'Hey Hey, My My', sending his guitar on sprawling tangents in a 17 minute version of 'Down by the River', having the crowd singalong to 'Heart of Gold' and 'Needle and the Damage Done.' Just about every song of his ended with a massive rock ending - lots of feedback, drum fills and crashing cymbals - with the exception of finale 'Keep on rockin in the free world', which had at least 6 big rock endings, the crowd loving each one of them! Then, what could be a better encore than to have Young and band play an awesome rendition one of my all time favourites, the Beatles 'A Day in the Life.'

Saturday night's headline Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band played a remarkably different greatest hits set to Neil Young. In contrast to the small 4 piece band, and sprawling songs of Neil Young, Springsteen had the massive and audibly 'tight' ensemble that is the E Street Band. We arrived almost an hour late for this set, but were't to be disappointed as hits such as 'Dancing in the Dark', 'Promised Land' and 'Glory Days', intermixed with the lesser known, but just as great 'Ghost of Tom Joad' and 'The Rising' gave us another 2 hours of dancing away from way up the back.

The old rockers were joined by the old Two-Tone Skankers too! The Specials had the crowd bouncing and playing air saxophone on Friday afternoon, while we all danced and sang along to 'Baggy Trousers', 'Our House' and 'It Must Be Love' by Madness on Sunday afternoon. The Madness men also appear to be prolific breeders, as they completely filled the stage with their offspring for their final number!

But maybe the most exciting old rockers, were Spinal Tap , there perhaps to take the piss out of their ageing rock colleagues with their 'back from the dead, one night only world tour'. These 'mock rock stars' drew a massive and excited crowd, with us right up near the front row. There were ridiculous numbers of Marshall Amps on stage (all turned up to 11!), ridiculously large drumkits, but would there be a stonehenge (as feaured in their movie)??. Their afternoon set began fittingly with 'Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You', feautured 4 bass guitars for 'Big Bottom' (including Jarvis Cocker from Pulp!), and to all of our delight, a blow up miniature stonehenge and dancing dwarves for 'Stonehenge'!

But there were some younger performers at the Pyramid Stage too. East London rapper Dizzy Rascal had the crowd in a spin with one of the best introductions of the festival - A modified cover of the Ting Tings song ('they call me rude boy, they call me wiley...thats not my name!') merging into his signature tune - 'he's a rascal, a dizzy rascal'. At the other end of the musical spectrum b] Regina Spektor had us all wrapped around her finger with delightfully sweet, funny and poignant songs. Unfortunately it didn't seem that the crowd really got the dark and brooding Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , who were badly placed between the poppy joy of Madness and Blur (band names, not a reference to our state of mind) on Sunday evening.

Away from the main stage we discovered the beautiful Park Stage. Here Jen finally believed me in regard to an Emiliana Torrini song which she swore never existed ('my heart is beating like a jungle drum, ba dah boom booom boom') and we watched sun fade and the moon rise on a Saturday night to the beautifully rusty vocals of M Ward . Elsewhere Easy Star All Stars payed reggae and dub homage to Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Radiohead, Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip played to a far more appreciative and energetic crowd than we had witnessed in Basil, and Peter, Bjorn and John had us confused as to whether it was actually a Saturday night when we saw them start the morning on the 'other stage' - they were that energetic! Also caught a snippet of Bloc Party , the Yeah Yeah Yeahs , loved the Eagles of Death Metal on the big stages and chilled out to Badly Drawn Boy at the faraway Avalon Stage.

We had spent much of the first few days of the festival heading from stage to stage to catch as many of the bands that we could possibly see. As a result however, this meant that we hadn't spent nearly enough time exploring the quirky far side of the festival site. So on Saturday afternoon until the wee hours of Sunday morning Jen and I threw out the band timetable (well, put it in the back pocket at least) and went cruising! Within Trash City we found an almost abandoned town by day, with crazy electro music being played on a big stage and dancefloor that was in fact a giant spider. Really, we were sober!... A little further down the way we came across the land known as Arcadia. Here we passed a drinking Orangutan to get to the spaceship (see the photo for proof!), where we danced our bums off and drank cider to a 9 peice ska band ( Smerrin's Antisocial Club?? ), complete with dancers dressed as the Riddler and some other unknown superhero. The crowd here was really getting into the spirit and gearing up for what was quickly becoming Saturday night. After a return back to the main festival area for M Ward and Springsteen, we headed back towards Trash City, Arcadia and another gem of an area known as Shangri-La. We had a 2am ho-down to possibly the fastest playing celtic-rockabilly-punk band in the world. Here one of the older gents in the audience, struggly to keep up, yelled to the band 'you know, you can start off slow and then get faster!'. To which the band replied 'I thought we were starting off slow!' Checked out a few more funky little performance areas, including seeing Mick Jones (ex- the clash!) and his current band the rotting hill gang . Finally headed back to the tent for some sleep, as the sun came up on Sunday morning...

Despite the quality of all the other bands, over all the other days (and the massive hangover which was thankfully starting to wear off!), the final night was an absolute highlight. We had ducked away to a smaller stage to catch a bit of the harmonious Magic Numbers - whom the crowd absolutely loved. Between songs, a gentleman was invited up onto stage, introduced as 'a guy who came up and met us before the set'. This nice man then spotted his girlfriend in the crowd, professed his love for her, and asked for her hand in marriage!! Well, we can only guess this is what he asked, as by the time he had said 'I love you so much' the crowd had cottoned on to what was happening and roared almightily in approval and joy, thus drowning out what he was saying on the microphone! They both received many congratulations as the walked through the crowds, and the Magic Numbers played their most beautiful of love songs especially for the occasion. After a few more magic numbers, we rushed back to the Pyramid stage for the massive first performance or the reformed Blur .

For the uninitiated, Blur were probably the best English band of the 1990s and early 2000s. And judging by the reception to their first song 'Shes So High' it is clear how popular they are in this country. Throughout the set the crowd shows little sign of last night festival fatigue, dancing along to the likes of 'Boys and Girls' and 'Beetlebum' and singing our lungs out to 'Country House'. After this track, they play the soulful 'Tender' which has everyone of the 80-odd thousand crowd singing the refrain 'oh my baby, oh my baby, oh why oh why'. The band finishes the song, but the entire crowd decides they haven't finished just yet, singing the refrain over and over without music - it was quite a beautiful experience, enough to make singer Damon Albarn break down in tears! But they weren't finished yet! Song 2 went wild in the encore and orchestral 'The Universal' wrapped up the Glastonbury experience just perfectly!


Both Jen and I were a bit apprehensive prior to the festival - because there was such hype and expectation about Glastonbury, surely we were going to be leave a bit disappointed. But no, we left knowing that this was the best festival we~ve been to! The music was great, but the whole set up, the vibe and experience of it was a blast..

How do we beat it??? Well we hear that there is this festival in the US where everyone travels out into the desert with their own supplies for the week - Burning Man here we come!

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Photos

skankin english men
they danced so hard to Madness that they collapsed in a heap at the end of their last song

Comments

[anonymous]

excellent, you have sold me i will have to go now!! damn about E17, i loved them. i would put that song on repeat in yr 7 and be a plc gangster with my adidas clip trackie pants on and my white nike sneakers... veery cool i promise :) hehehe. enjoy brasil and i love you both very much. xoxoxox miss you lots xoxoxo

[Sheridan]

wow
Sounds like you both had a ball, fantastic!. We got to see a duo called the Roadies in Kings Canyon NT. Although fun and interactive, they can't really match Glastonbury!!!