Reviews – Live
Glastonbury 2008
Long after the fuss has died down, as the Winter sets in, we’ve decided to treat you to a little slice of Summer with the ultimate Glastonbury account from our man in the field, Caspar Gomez
Ever read an account of Glastonbury that got it right? They’re almost always some jaded London hack giving a drab concert review of the Pyramid and Other stages, concentrating on a load of samey indie bands, interspersed with comments about mud, whether there is any or not. These hacks, and I see them year after year, spend most of their time in the hospitality area where they’re also camped, which is basically Camden/Shoreditch transposed to Somerset, so they can sit about chatting to the same people they always chat to in the same mildly cynical way, as if they’re really a bit above/outside everything. In the meantime, the rest of us are spread over a vast area, enjoying one billion kinds of mayhem in an entirely different universe from The Fratellis. The best accounts of Glastonbury are badly written blogs all over the ‘net wherein wide-eyed enthusiasts let their amazement take control whilst recounting what they and their mates got up to. Who cares about the Kings of Leon? I mean, really, if it’s all about The Editors live in a field, why don’t you fuck off to Reading/Leeds and eat shit-burgers and drink piss with the NME massive. Anyway, enough ranting, here’s my Glasto for you:
THURSDAY
The day of going to Glastonbury is like Christmas when you’re a kid, adrenalized anticipation at the pit of the stomach. I went down on Thursday. I once arrived onsite Wednesday but was so blasted by Sunday that I didn’t much enjoy the evening’s bands. Four days seems just right (although you may be built differently). The train down gradually filled with revellers, Castle Cary is the station nearest the festival and it was writhing. There had been a fire in a local scrapyard and the buses transporting punters to the site suffered delays. The queue for the bus was a frustrating hour but, once aboard, the buzz of excitement grew, and I shared a bottle of French cider with the guy in the next seat. Upon sight of the multi-coloured canvas city lying in those very English vales, a wave of approving shouts spontaneously burst forth.
After collecting all my passes – the aforementioned hospitality area is very useful for cutting across the site – I pitched up high on the hill opposite the Pyramid stage. The great thing about being this side of the site is there are no sound systems blasting when you finally call it a night. I unpacked all my nong nongs and quiver fizz – hidden as if I were going through customs due to Castle Cary’s occasional tendency towards sniffer dogs, etc – and hit the Burrow Hill Cider Bus. They had a new rule: no filling bottles, flagons, etc, so I bought three pints separately and loaded an empty water bottle.
However many times I go to Glastonbury and however much I think I know the score, I’m always blown away when I first arrive and this year was no different. I wandered for an hour or two, adjusting to the environment, getting my psychic bearings for the oncoming marathon. Stalls selling all manner of tasty food abounded, as ever, and I grabbed a cardboard box of sausage and mashed potato to set me up, washed down with Burrow Hill cider. Then it was time to crack into the quiver fizz and nong nongs. Glasto is, after all, about clambering up the pleasure mountain and any rope-ladders to the peaks are welcome.
The weather, thus far, had been warm and sunny, but suddenly as darkness fell the sky let rip, not just a shower but a full downpour. I swore at the clouds above. Sometimes it really does seem that God himself has it in for Glastonbury. I bought a cheap pink pac-a-mac, which went very nicely with my black cowboy-hatted attire. As it turned out the rain was an aberration and we were saved the Somme-like mudbath of 2007 as the sun arrived from Saturday onwards.
I headed through the rain, past strange Mutoid Waste sculptures of giant creatures made of rusting metal, into the far flung fields where my mate Pedro Negro’s band The Amigos were playing a venue called The Bimble Inn, a small space under canvas with a bar and course mats about which people were sitting chatting, avoiding the drizzle.
The Amigos major in gritty funk grooves, interspersed with ska and hedonic attitude [check http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=59643686] – imagine a frenetic gumbo of The Clash, Alabama 3 and the Blockheads and you’re a fifth of the way there. As they began, another friend Don Carlton suddenly appeared looking faraway-eyed. Turned out he’d drunk a litre of vodka and as soon as the band launched into a cover of ‘White Lines (Don’t Do It)’ he began a frantic dance wherein his backpack bashed into everyone. My pal Tizzy and brother Rev, who had also turned up, had to avoid his rampaging but then Don disappeared, later to lose the backpack and, indeed, all memory of the night. The Amigos entertained but were really just warming up for multiple other dates over the weekend. Afterwards we stood about. The night was warm, the rain had stopped and my brother’s band-mates in the Dead Silence Syndicate appeared. Somehow, hours passed in a pleasing babble of quiver fizz and nong nongs, consumed unsubtly in a huddle behind a trailer to much amusement. As dawn began glowing in the cloudy sky Tizzy produced a stash of some designer powder but I knew it was time to leave or sign up for the long haul. I left her with my bro’s band and headed back to the tent for some sleep so that I could hit the ground running when the festival proper began the next day…
FRIDAY
I’m no fan of Kate Nash but, strangely, performing the morning’s Wet Wipe ablutions to her distant nouveau ladette burblings was pleasant enough. Then the first job of the day was to eat vast quantities of food, as there will come a point when the only thing I can force down will be ‘Chou Chou’ nuts, chocolate-coated peanuts roasted in copper drums by vendors around the site (and a great source of energy, drug monsters). Fuzzy and full, I wandered up to the Park Stage, Emily Eavis’s 2007 innovation that tends towards the trendy and indie, but spliced with unexpected big names (such as this year’s Franz Ferdinand and Last Shadow Puppets surprise sets). Having eaten three meals, lager was in order along with Santogold live. The latter never happened as I’d misread my programme so instead I went to the Oxygen Bar and further cleared my head with five minutes of flavoured O2. This doesn’t exactly give a buzz but reconstitutes the night-damage so fast you can feel it, a pleasant feeling. As I sat with tubes stuck up my nostrils the staff were bopping around to the music of Richard Cheese (www.richardcheese.com), a new one on me, whose sly Vegas-style cover versions put a smile on my face, notably a none-more-Dean-Martin take on Slipknot’s ‘People = Shit’.
Mildly revitalized I ran into a bleary Don Carlton whose eyes were red, partly from mourning his lost backpack, but mostly because of the litre of vodka. He meandered off, not ready to begin the day’s mission quite yet. Back on the ever-refilling bottle of Burrow Hill Cider I sploshed about the soggy site, watching people-pushed trolleys piled with wood and duvets, checking stalls piled high with artfully faded Mr Men tee-shirts, generally indulging in random autonomy away from the usual schedules.
Down at the East Dance tent I sensed raucousness so paced into the middle of the crowd. A weird thing about gigs is that a third of the way stage-wards there will be a scrum of those who don’t have the psychological impetus to push nearer. Once you’ve passed them, there’s almost always plenty of room. The TCR Allstars were spraying out breakbeat energy, Rennie Pilgrem jumping from instrument to instrument as MC Chickaboo hyped expertly on the mic. Sneaky Sound System were next, Australia’s biggest band who bloomed from a Sydney club night. The crowd was awash with Sneaky-logoed Frisbees, flying hither and thither and a palpable sense of occasion was aided by a vocal Antipodean presence. On record their pop-dance is like an ‘80s-centric Scissor Sisters, but live they emphasise the club grooves. Technical problems at the start soon passed and vocalist Miss Connie is a charismatic front-woman so by the time they reached their anthem ‘UFO’, everyone was belting out, “I saw a UFO and nobody believes me,” and it was only 4.00 PM.
On the way back to the tent for a change of clothes I stopped to check out The Gossip at the Pyramid but, with the exception of ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’, which whipped up a small frenzy, they were just another shouty indie band on a stage way too large for them. With the evening the quiver fizz and nong nongs reappeared, and I stomped purposefully out. First stop, one of the tents in the Dance Village field for New York disco queens Hercules & Love Affair, but despite glamour their every song plods along and they project nothing. Happily I ran into my brother. We walked past the Other Stage where The Hoosiers were doing something inconceivably dull with guitars, something that was tired ten, possibly twenty years ago. We mocked them and made our way to the Shangri La backstage, to a bar where a wasted-looking dude played ancient rockabilly and jump blues, danced to by children and their mums. My brother settled and ate some noodles while I quaffed vodka & cranberry and more quivver fizz. The approaching evening boded well, clouds with sun-glowing fringes glimmering. My bro’ headed back to his tent in a field so far-flung I’d never seen it in all my Glastonbury visits. There we found the drummer from his band, just rising from his post-Tizzy powder session. Now the band needed to regroup and prepare for two gigs so I left them and headed back to the fray.
Nothing quite took off. Mostly because I was at the incorrect location, confusing venues like an amateur. I stood for aeons in a tent wondering why Roisin Murphy had mutated into a couple of blokes playing none-more-Hoxton bootybass electro (it was actually The Count & Sinden I later found out). It was only when prog baby and junior Sasha, James Zabiela, hit the decks that I realised I was in entirely the wrong place for Fatboy Slim. I stuck with it and grooved for a while but then the ‘journey’ grew a little long in the tooth and I hoped Frankfurt electronic veterans Booka Shade would provide sustenance. They didn’t, boasting no showmanship and a deep plodding set that didn’t induce screams or sweat. I headed to Trash City where my bro’s band Dead Silence Syndicate were playing. They major in edgy drum & bass with a furious MC (check http://www.deadsilence.co.uk/). My bro’ plays the cello dressed as if for Wigmore Hall or some classical venue. The band, though, have a snarling underground attitude, perhaps representing the travellers who once were Glasto’s mainstays (on the Dead Silence site Glastonbury is referred to as “just some big commercial fest, selling overpriced food and playing overpaid, overdressed, overrated pop bands”. Truth to tell, though, their bark is worse than their bite and they were all about a rampaging show. This they delivered twice with aplomb, each time with an associate who’s the spit of Michael Eavis coming onstage to break up the party and tell them to “Get off my land,” accompanied by fierce thrash drum and bass. Between gigs, I ended up carrying kit between stages, prodded and pushed by gently over-zealous security. Afterwards Don Carlton reappeared and, along with my bro’, we went into NYC Downlow, the gay disco that by 5.00 in the morning was just perfect, stinking of amyl, with debauched looking trannies lazily cavorting at the front, and sleazy obscure disco-house bouncing away. One Roland 303-addled acid house number completely took my lid off. Then my bro’ said he was going to get on it. I decided I wanted to eat another day whole and sounded the retreat, leaving him to Lord knows what mischief.
SATURDAY
Rising today the bleariness levels had increased but not too detrimentally. The good news was that all traces it had ever rained were gradually disappearing. I began the day with a couple of giant waxed cups of lemonade from a stall that made it from real lemons and loads of glucose. The head started to clear. Unfortunately, what should have been a Pyramid Stage giggle to start the day – a set from rock’n’roll popster Shakin’ Stevens – wasn’t. He may have sold more singles during the ‘80s than anyone else but he’s a miserable sod. A good-natured crowd had gathered, many holding banners, even a life-size cardboard green door in honour of his hit of that name. He didn’t even play it, however, and unsmilingly trawled through a set that at least included ‘Oh Julie’ and ‘This Ole House’.
After a mountain of food, I hit The Park to see Lykke Li who, of course, wasn’t even playing, so I embraced beer and oxygen instead. I found myself staring at some people making large impressive monsters, dragons and alien lobster creatures, out of sand. A voice accosted me. It was Manning, a photographer friend.
The sun was out and we sat on grass, a joy that’s the great loss of muddy festivals. We drank beer, the warmth outside accentuating lazy pleasure. We began telling festival loo anecdotes, laughing often and energetically. Typical of blokes having a drink, everyone tried to outdo the last tale, but such competition only added to the joviality. I told a Bestival tale of when I was in a Portaloo and just as I was about to imbibe some quivver fizz in privacy, there was a rumbling from below and the loo appeared to belch as a big bubble of gas raised the seat slightly. The smell was indescribably unpleasant but I nailed the quiver fizz, retching, and stumbled out into the baffled queue with my eyes watering.
A friend of Manning’s mentioned that he’d always wondered how some of the loos got into the state they did – how did people manage to smear their doings everywhere? Then he told graphically of how, the night before, he’d gone for a poo and, in his addled state, had missed. He looked at the results of his endeavours and realised he’d become one of those people, then ran off in shame.
Time flew with such scatological afternoon babble until we took a walk to the Glade where Radioactive Man was mixing old hardcore tunes with breaks and electro. Worn tramp-like ravers were trotting on the spot, their eyes bobbling out of their skulls. Then DJ Rubbish came on. He wandered “across the stage and back again, running around like a farmyard hen,” as he succinctly put it, rhyming oddball inanity off the top of his head, clad in a bandana and boxer’s robe. It was difficult to imagine how Cassetteboy would perform live since their albums consist of puerile, though hilarious, cut-ups poking fun at contemporary culture. They appeared onstage clad as monkey cowboys and clowned around to a CD of their ‘greatest hits’, their filthy version of Harry Potter, their brutal mockery of Jamie Oliver, their fantastic sonic gambit wherein Martin Luther King Jnr appears to play ‘Deal Or No Deal’. It didn’t work as theatre or as a gig, yet as an absurd and very funny Glastonbury interlude it was perfect.
Afterwards we stopped at a trailside bar, far from the festival’s centre, to drink vodka & cranberry juice. Here we saw a fantastic lost-it. This guy was horrendously off it. Lord knows what he was on but he was staggering around with an almost equally deranged pal, practically unable to walk. They saw some hallucination they liked in our area, stopped and wobbled like vagrants in a hurricane, making indecipherable attempts at language. Both were around 40, though it was hard to tell as they were agelessly debauched. My nominee for Damage Case Of The Year 2008 had a thick string of drool hanging from his chin, about 12 inches worth, a hefty wire of it with a blob on the end that, as he grinned and swayed, swung in an arc around him causing those nearby to move swiftly out of his way. Then they were gone, leaving us wondering what their lives were like for the rest of the year.
Parting ways with Manning, I made my way to the open air G Stage in the Dance Village. Here a thick crowd were raving hard to Sub Focus whose style of drum & bass was raw and organic, verging on breakcore. Whatever name you want to give, it was hot popular stuff but, unfortunately, when he left the decks, the crowd disappeared for the band I’d come to see. Japanese Popstars are a big deal in their native Ireland and have the potential to be the first pure electronic dance act to cross over in a while. Theirs is stadium techno that’s yet to find a stadium and those who stayed at the G Stage danced hard in the hazy evening sun, myself included.
Having a press pass I wandered backstage afterwards and Ed, my affable Dance Village connection, pointed me in the band’s direction. It suddenly occurred to me as I clumped up to them, rosy-faced, sweaty, intense, waving my cloudy, toxic-orange water-bottle of Burrow Hill scrumpy, that I must cut a curious figure to those who’d just arrived onsite as they had. It made me think briefly how far from reality Glastonbury can be. Happily the Irish trio were polite. I heard afterwards that later that night they saw UFOs in the sky, so maybe they too got stuck into that Burrow Hill cider. Or something stronger.
The human traffic jam on the way to the Pyramid Stage was extreme, threatening even, but I pushed my way to the middle of the crowd and, in that way which seems flowingly natural when high, made festival friends with a couple of young students called Rowan and Katy who became my accomplices for a couple of hours. Amy Winehouse came on and performed a set that was later slated by the press but which I thought the liveliest and most enjoyable of the times I’ve seen her perform. She usually appears glazed but today her wastedness took ebullient form. She sang beautifully and between songs (and what songs!), she burbled things such as, “Kanye West’s new album should be called ‘Kanye Is A Cunt’,” then towards the end of her set lowered herself into the crowd and had a mild fracas. It was all a bit unhinged but lively, aggressively upbeat and certainly not dull. Isn’t that what Amy Winehouse is supposed to do? Isn’t that what we expect of our rock’n’roll stars? Or is that only the men? Or did I miss a meeting? By the time she strutted offstage the crowd was vast, everybody humming with anticipation. Would Jay Z live up to his reputation and outman Noel Gallagher’s ill-informed remarks.
It was clear from the moment the huge screens either side of the stage blasted into an intense Negativland-style collage of public figures and hip hop associates bigging up the Jiggaman, interspersed with Noel’s disses, that he was onto a winner. He came on and strummed his way through ‘Wonderwall’ to a brain-drowning roar of approval. From then on, without any guests, his set was riveting Las Vegas hip hop, party music which was as boomin’ as it was mostly mindless. Weirdly, this multi-millionaire American businessman was here as the underdog fighting back and the Glasto crowd loved that as much as they loved bellowing along to ‘99 Problems But A Bitch Ain’t One’. Afterwards an elated, bedazzled crowd emigrated to all corners of the site. I headed up to the Shangri-La and Trash City stages where dancing moments were enjoyed on previous nights. It seemed that now everybody was there and the area was so overrun that security had to channel the crowd hither and thither.
Happily I ran into Don Carlton. We spent a good while in the melee blathering cheerily until he expressed enthusiasm for quivver fizz and nong nongs so we indulged accordingly. We sat on a makeshift wall swigging a bottle of Makers Mark bourbon, watching the babbling masses jiggle by to the multiple rhythms of the Glastonbury night, all surrounded by a yellow-orange glow, hedonism haloed by electricity. After a while it became clear we weren’t going to get into any of the venues so we made a pilgrimage to the Stone Circle, high above the festival, a mini-Stonehenge overflowing with jugglers, campfires, acid cases and groups of friends murmuring, laughing, suddenly yelling catchphrases. All sorts are sitting ruminating, the hiss of nitrous oxide gas a constant presence and the comforting glow of spliffs speckling the darkness like fireflies. Don and I sat and talked and talked and talked, a personal moment amidst the chaos, occasionally rushing over to one of the gaggles with their cream-dispensers and balloons, taking a nitrous hit and feeling that rush, like poppers without the headache factor. Dawn arrived eventually as it always must and, final vodka & cranberry in hand, we made our way back to our tents and awaiting sleeping bags.
SUNDAY
I awoke feeling distinctly ropey. My body treats me well, given how I treat it, but physical discomfort was surfacing. The sun aided my cause as did cups of glucose-saturated lemonade and a dripping hunk of apple sauce-lathered hog roast. While my brain chugged to life like a rusty starter motor, I found a friendly stall owner and offered him a couple of quid to let my mobile phone charge. Some stalls were charging £7 and had queues but, since all stalls have electric plugs and I’d brought my charger along, I gave it a shot and the fellow was game. When both my mind and my phone were ready, I strolled over to Balkan Beatbox at the Jazz Stage where I met Manning. Balkan Beatbox made a valiant effort, their punchy club music/world music cocktail was rewarded with pogoing at the front, but most sat with their lunch and grey-socketed eyes in the watery sunshine, recovering.
Manning and I hit a wine bar in a caravan. There were a few wine bars on site and they all played truly awful music, Phil Collinsy, Bryan Adamsy dross that you go to festivals to escape. We bought a couple of brandy-charged champagne cocktails and ran away from the Surrey office party ear carnage. Manning wanted to take some daylight shots of NYC Downlow so we trekked back to the fringes. It’s a Glastonbury Sunday and the committed are really going a bit soft focus, teetering into messiness, even the pro’s, and that’s lovely to see. An aeroplane fuselage that had been deposited next to NYC Downlow was no exception. On top sat an array of queens, besmirched characters and Burlesque fancy dressers chirping been-awake-forever chatter and affable abuse, passing round a bottle of spirits. Manning snapped away.
On the way back we pushed through a vast crowd spilling from the Leftfield Tent. Onstage Tony Benn was holding forth in his easy-going, intelligent way. He told us in a roundabout way that we, and I think he referred to the young rather than Manning and I, were the planet’s hope for the future. Perhaps because he’s such a level-headed and piercingly well-informed man, an icon of British socialism from an age when people cared more for their personal beliefs than shopping, the whole tent appeared dumbstruck. No drippy hippy new ager he, but a feisty remnant of a bygone age. When he left to roared approval, Manning and I sneaked into a backstage loading area where gigantic security men chatted as crates and crates of lager were removed from a lorry. Manning was fascinated by the festival’s mundane behind-the-scenes cogs in motion and started snapping away. The mountainous men queried our status and looked quizzically at the grubby-looking Burrow Hill cider but let us stay awhile, observing the comings and goings of those who drably, matter-of-factly make Glastonbury happen.
When we’d had our fill we went to the Pyramid. Neil Diamond was playing. Sometimes these kitschy old dudes on Glastonbury Sunday afternoons can turn out the goods. A few years ago, suavely dressed Tony Bennett had the whole place in the palm of his hand with swing-jazz standards, but Diamond just reminded me of BBC Radio 2 circa 1978, cheesy easy that didn’t grab the lapels. Nonetheless the persistent glow of the sun made up for Neil’s lapses and, as we trotted back to my tent to dig out some late afternoon quivver fizz, ‘Sweet Caroline’ finally swept the crowd up for a sing-along.
Back at the tent Manning suddenly became enamoured of all the rubbish littering the ground. His photographer’s eye had been drawn to it all weekend and we weaved through the tent city as he took shots of detritus that struck him as particularly worthwhile. I could see what he meant. As he readied his camera, crinkled one eye tight shut and concentrated, I too stared at dead campfires surrounded by piles of assorted junk that spoke of pleasures passed, of yesterday’s fun.
Then, suitably bubbling with artificial energy and giddy musical enthusiasm, we made our way back to the main stage. It was time for Leonard Cohen. My fingers were crossed, I had high hopes. I’ve seen heritage turns deliver gold in these fields (Johnny Cash), but I’ve also seen mythic figures crumble to lacklustre dust (The Velvet Underground). Laughin’ Len took things at his own pace – what else would he do at 73? – and his pace is and always has been lugubriously slow. It took a moment to adjust, given the freneticism of the event, but he had the voice, the songs and the legend to drag us all into his twilight world of broken dreams and doomed love. Initially wearing a hat, with a voice of purest gravel, he lifted my soul as the sun so appropriately and beautifully set behind him. He delved particularly into 1988’s ‘I’m Your Man’ album and even played my favourite Cohen song ‘Everybody Knows’. A golden hour or two was spent in his company, never to be repeated for Cohen forbade film cameras.
What could follow that? Maybe some techno and who better to deliver than Derrick May, one of the men who invented it back ‘80s Detroit. Unfortunately, over in the Dance Village, May was haemorrhaging festivallers from his big top. Upon entering it soon became clear why. He was playing a tight set of minimal grooves that would have worked a treat in some German cellar, but there was no elation to it, no sense of occasion, and we were now into the last hours of Glastonbury and wanted more so, after dancing for a while, we too deserted him.
Time then pinched inwards, hours folding into druggy elemental enjoyment. I ran into Don Carlton again and with Manning and his ever present camera we headed one final time into those far-flung fields where The Amigos were playing in the early hours. It was their fifth gig of the weekend, and so tight, so euphorically funky, the small tent became a sweat-pit, jammed to the gills and I danced beyond the burn, a peak moment. Afterwards a very festival thing happened. Don, Manning and I walked from the gig and suddenly they’d disappeared. I stopped and shouted their names and looked and waited but we’d lost each other in the melee, phones now defunct.
I returned to the venue where I’d seen The Amigos and blagged my way backstage. From there it was a short journey through the night sitting in a make-shift meeting place of wooden benches, oil drum litter bins all around, The Amigos ready to party, exhilarated they’d finished their gig stint. Dawn arrived in a blur and everything was revealed for what it was, dirt and pale daylight, a reflection of the impending crash but we ignored it. The Amigos and crew were golden company, determinedly heading for the heights. Unfortunately, as 6.00 AM arrived I knew I must imminently be somewhere back in the real world, that forgotten place. I wrenched myself unwillingly away from my natural instinct to accompany them to their tent enclave and form a bubble, keeping the world out and the laughter in, until every last drop of juice had been squeezed from this annual peach of an occasion. As I made to go Matt, the bass player, tried to call me back but I knew it was time, I really did, I didn’t want it to be but time is relentless, it marches forward and the real world, the rest of life, all that stuff was approaching like a freight train and I needed to be at least half ready to hop back on board. Damn…
MONDAY
My diary for the day says, “Awake a zombie. No pain but a zombie. Journey home. Pretend not to be a zombie.” And I can sum it up no better.
Did you heard what Rob Matts said about that?
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