Glastonbury 2010 - More like Stevie Wonderful

I'm having difficulty remembering everything I did. 5 days seems like months in that place.

Off the top of my head, my highlight is Stevie Wonder covering Human Nature

Got back yesterday from four days at Glasto - never been before and was keen to experience it.

I don't want to give you a Jo Whiley "Glasto is amazing" post but I've probably just had the best four days of my life. It's definitely not for everyone - there are no showers, toilets stink from day one and there is a hell of a lot of walking involved but if you can get over that and just take it in, it is quite an unbelievable event. There is so much to see away from the main stages, each field is like its own mini festival. Every music taste is catered for just about and you can either have a relaxed time or an intense time, loud or quiet.

My music taste is very broad and although I wouldn't buy a muse album, I'd have to admit that as a live show I really enjoyed it. Stevie was great but didn't seem as into it as when I saw him at the O2 a while back - the sound was much better though. I like bands like the national and they were a real highlight for me. I was lucky enough to be at the park stage when Thom York and Johnny Greenwood made a surprise appearance and did a Radiohead greatest hits session and some of Thom York's excellent solo material - again, not to everyone's taste but it was another major highlight. I don't think it was filmed and I'm glad I gave hot chip a miss in order to be lucky enough to see it. Bonobo was amazing on the west holts stage (great sound) and yeah, snoop was also really good when he performed some of the old stuff backed up with a full band.

The only boring bit for me was faithless. I begrudgingly gave Toots and the Maytals the swerve to go and see them as I was with a mate who really wanted to see Faithless and we wanted to stick together for Stevie on straight after. They were boring quite frankly - I honestly think Faithless have totally had their day. Their new material is terrible and the "classics" are really showing their age. I think Maxi Jazz is a great front man, I like his style, but they must be getting ready to hang up the synths surely.

There were loads of little corners, stages and tents - some really interesting/weird stuff too. The "Club Henge" dance area set up as stone henge but with big blocks made out of lights was a brilliant little arena and I would have like to have caught Norman Jay play in there but he clashed directly with Stevie which was a shame. Dog Face Geisha at Block 9 was incredible! A bar with Anime porn in window, a 3d dog face over-looking the dancefloor and Geisha's in dog masks playing electro and DnB till it got light. To give you an idea of the scale, it took us an hour to walk back from there at 5am. My feet are ravaged.

As for crime/trouble I can only go on personal experience. I saw no problems at all, not even at the football. People were leaving stuff outside their tents and it was fine. Depends where you camp I guess and some places will be safer than others but I heard out of 177,000 people, there were only 300 odd cases of crime reported or something, and I'd wager that the majority of them were people losing their wallets rather than having them pinched.

I was a bit disappointed to see a certain lack of cultural diversity in the attendees, especially when the performers represented a wide range of cultures and styles - I was expecting a real mix of people from all backgrounds but 99% of the people there seemed to be white middle class, which was a surprise for me.

The BBC coverage will not even scratch the surface. They will predominantly show what they play on Radio one, but I do think their coverage is as good as you can get it for the BBC audience. They give options to watch different things via the red button or the website and they do broadcast hours and hours of music. It's never going to replicate being there but they do make an effort.

There is loads more I could write here about what I saw and things that happened but they are mostly of the "needed to be there" variety and I wouldn't want to bore you.

I might post a couple of vids/pics I took later.

Where did you camp Jam?

There were showers btw. In the Greenpeace field. I went twice - they were lovely and warm Had to wait for an hour to get in though

Oh and NME mag this week is a review of the whole weekend. I've bought it as a momento. Lots of nice pics.

Jam wrote:I was a bit disappointed to see a certain lack of cultural diversity in the attendees, especially when the performers represented a wide range of cultures and styles - I was expecting a real mix of people from all backgrounds but 99% of the people there seemed to be white middle class, which was a surprise for me.

Not really a surprise, over the past decade or so Glasto has become THE festival of choice for these middle class student types spending Mummy and Daddy's money.

It's much the same at Reading, you can always spot the ones losing their festival virginity from a mile off!

Dual wrote:Where did you camp Jam?

There were showers btw. In the Greenpeace field. I went twice - they were lovely and warm Had to wait for an hour to get in though

Oh and NME mag this week is a review of the whole weekend. I've bought it as a momento. Lots of nice pics.

Q do a great weekend review of the festival (used ot be given it free on on the way out in the good old days ), it comes with a big fold out photo of the site so you can spot your tent and where you were etc (its time stamped)

Absolutely strawberry floating incredible. Also, I pulled, which is always good.

Please post some pics/vids Jam! It'd be cool to see some of Glasto from your perspective.

Dual wrote:Where did you camp Jam?

There were showers btw. In the Greenpeace field. I went twice - they were lovely and warm Had to wait for an hour to get in though

Oh and NME mag this week is a review of the whole weekend. I've bought it as a momento. Lots of nice pics.

Nice - come to think of it I did walk past those showers but didnt think anyone could just use them?! Never mind, wet wipes (sort of did the trick)

We camped at the back bit of the dairy ground, next to the west camper van park where my brother was in his van. Nice and chilled round there

tomvek wrote:Please post some pics/vids Jam! It'd be cool to see some of Glasto from your perspective.

I didn't want to take my proper camera but I took some stuff on my phone and my mate had a point and shoot. A few pics:

Me, averting my eyes from a rather unpleasant fat arse



Rolf



Miike Snow



Thom York and Johnny Greenwood



Karma Police vid off my mate's camera (you can hear us all laughing, singing and being smug about how brilliant it is )



Groove Armada



Club Henge



Block 9 London underground tower



The video I took on my phone from the club under that fake tower block



More block 9 area weird/cool stuff



Muse

Great pics jam, thanks a lot.

That club looks mental It's like something out of a music video, very awesome

Jam , Have you seen any black people there?

Floex wrote:That club looks mental It's like something out of a music video, very awesome

Yeah it was brilliant, walked in there and was like, ok this is amazing.

We just wandered in as well, not really knowing what to expect seeing as it was under this huge fake tower block!

Dblock wrote:Jam , Have you seen any black people there?

Unfortunately this appears to be a festival that only attracts middle class white people on the whole.

Jam wrote:

Dblock wrote:Jam , Have you seen any black people there?

Unfortunately this appears to be a festival that only attracts middle class white people on the whole.

So the rich black people look down on this?

Damn it.

Block 9 was the most impressive thing I've ever seen. I had to keep touching it to make sure it was real

Some of my pics:



We camped in The Park, which had some great views over the whole site. Good position to get everywhere quickly too.



The ribbon tower.



Jamie XX DJ set on Thursday night.



Cubehenge.






My mates Thom and Jonny.



Gorillaz. Great set if you knew the music, but a lot of people were walking out as they don't really have enough crowd pleasers. I left an hour in and watched the end of Bootleg Beatles were incredible.



Don't know who they were. Was trying to find some shade on Saturday and stumbled into a tent. Fell asleep while they were playing



Ms.Nash



The National, who were one of my highlights despite me only really getting onto them over the last 3 months.




Shakira. What a munter



Muse. Broke my bloody Ray Bans jumping around to Knights strawberry float you Muse.



Like a bad trip mixed with Total Recall. This place was an experience.

















LCD Soundsystem were great. Didn't play Get Innocuous though


I want to go back I could live there forever.

Dual wrote:


The National, who were one of my highlights despite me only really getting onto them over the last 3 months.

Ditto, and I was literally about 10 metres to your right as well

Bought tickets to see them in Brixton in November. Can't wait.

Looks like there was loads of mad gooseberry fool I missed like that club and I never got to Shangri-La.

Also my mate was working for Q and so knew about the Thom Yorke the day before hand but I got the day wrong. I get so confused with times and dates..

Saw loads of great stuff though - it's just impossible to see everything.

I did see the hippy village though which was pretty cool.