I'd like to try something. I'd like you to put into the comments just what the Glastonbury festival means to you. What image does it conjure up? What message, if any, does it convey? What are the positives and negatives of the great music festival?
Do you have tickets? Do you stay up into the night watching the bands. or is the whole thing a massive irrelevance to you.
Put into a few words or phrases..
Some starters.
Young
Diverse
Noisy
Middle Class
Self Induldgent
Environmentalism
Drug ridden
Free Spirited
Huge
Fun
Over to you.
My father was very prescient. He said in 1977 that young people's music is rubbish. Finally he is correct.
ReplyDeleteMud
ReplyDeleteAchingly trendy
(aching in other ways too)
extra points for making someone in a kaftan jump in a ditch
Expensive
ReplyDeleteCorporate
Massively over hyped
Wet
Fun
ReplyDeleteExpensive, but not for what you get.
Diverse music.
Families catered for.
Varied.
The beginning of summer
ReplyDeleteMud
ReplyDeleteOpen ditch for a loo.
ReplyDelete40/50 somethings looking shit after a night in a tent.
I saw MUSE at Reading a couple of years back. Booked into the local Travel Lodge. The only way to do it.
PS - The atmosphere at such events is fabulous. Hardly any trouble or police needed. Quite the contrast to the Notting Hill Carnival.
distant
ReplyDeletepassé
vibrant
eco loons
"He turns revolt into a style" - someone (Nik Cohn?) on Elvis Presley
ReplyDelete"Turning rebellion into money" - the Clash
Modern Glastonbury is just the 70s gone mainstream. About as alternative as McDonalds. I think the big change was some time between 83 and 88, when one could no longer take a vehicle on site and sleep in it, or run a freelance curry house or cider shop from it.
Now you can "glamp" in a VIP area, if you have the cash.
Open space,indulgent, self congratulatory, muddy, druggy heaven.
ReplyDeleteF all.
ReplyDeleteNot interested. Didn't even know it was on.
ReplyDeleteImmensely enjoyable but at a price.
ReplyDeleteThe enjoyment is proportionate to the amount spent.
But then I've done Glyndebourne too.
Passé. It was OK up until about '98.
ReplyDeleteReading? Last time we did Reading we hired a 5-berth cruiser (festival site is right next to the river) and buggered off during the day from breakfast to mid afternoon, mooring up again at the site for the main gigs. Only prob was the popularity of the towpath for couples looking for a place for a quiet shag ...
Now Genesis at Knebworth in '76 - THAT was a gig ....
Used to be great, but now like all festivals has been marketed to death as an essential life experience and is therefore overrun with pretentious ok-yah types all trying desperately to be different by camping in a Kath Kidston tent.
ReplyDeleteI did most of my festival going in my teens. They all have a preponderance of self indulgent types there for the "experience".
ReplyDeleteGeneral rules back then was that new festivals (at the time that was Ozzfest/Download, V Festival, etc) have a good atmosphere but once a festival became established it attracted the worst people.
I never did Glastonbury but going by those rules I can only imagine how bad it is.
No need for police? Probably about 50% of festivals I went to had at least one minor riot at some point. They're not reported because they're so common.
I've heard interesting things about the American "festivals". They tend to be more commercial, shorter, family orientated, most people don't camp, etc. Not a true festival by UK standards but apparently they're pretty good if you're too old for the rain and mud and are done with "proper" festivals. I wouldn't mind trying one.
(Glastonbury) is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
ReplyDeleteNot often Karl Marx nails it in the contemporary world.
Muddy
ReplyDeleteIts OK but used to be better, back in the day.
Bit boring now.
K - I said there were no police. Not that they weren't needed - that there really WEREN'T any (a van parked outside and that was it.)
ReplyDeleteNo rioting either. Not even a hint of it in the air. Same with beer festivals actually. Copious amounts of booze but no police and no hint of trouble.
So where does football and the NH Carnival get it wrong ?
Not been for 15 years, but it was enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteWatched some good comedy, danced to REM at the tail end of the brightest part of their career and got godawfully muddy.
Got a whiff of what it was to become with a couple of piggy eyed skinheads looking rather confused at Bjorn Again rather than simply enjoying the sun and silliness.
The main issue with the British festivals is, well, the British Yoof. Been to a few festivals on the continent, and the dickhead quotient tends to be much smaller whilst the organisers could, well, organise. Something the British ones don't particularly excel at.
Can never understand why people in their 30s/40s/50s want to go to a music festival. Grow the fuck up.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid I'd have been mortified if there were 'old' people walking round. How rubbish would that be? Glastonbury = the sad geriatricification of our culture.
As an aside, I know one 40-ish year old went to a festival and found himself dancing with a group of nubile young females. Bumping and grinding was marvellous until one of the pretty young things shouted 'I wish my dad was as cool as you'....
PS - can you do SOMETHING about those text confirmation things please - they're nearly impossible to read.
Nope sorry. Text confirmation is google.
ReplyDeleteMrs Q's sister us at Glastonbury. She's 35 .. Just about sneaks in?
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It was OK up until about '98.
ReplyDeleteReading? Last time we did Reading we hired a 5-berth cruiser (festival site is right next to the river) and buggered off during the day from breakfast to mid afternoon, mooring up again at the site for the main gigs. Only prob was the popularity of the towpath for couples looking for a look out here place for a quiet shag .
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