That journalist doesn't really know his history
MarkMark said:
Shit, that's sad reading. But a lot of it's true eh?.. I reckon it'll get steadily worse too - but like others have said already glasto still beats all other big events hands down.
The solution is new smaller events that have the same diverse spirit without the sponsorship crap that with the biggies. Clearly Mr Eavis is doing something right.. so I'm sure a few more others could follow his lead.
I agree about smaller festivals, there are still plenty around, including some newer ones, and some trying to show inspiration from the original spirit of Glasto and the almost all long gone Free Festivals . See my list in the Festival Season 2005 thread, stickied on the Music Forum here ...
I don't altogether agree that Glastonbury is doooooomed I tells ye!!!! to get inevitably and inexorably worse and absolutely, irreversably more corporate. It MAY very well do so.
But we have to recognise reality even if we don't like it. Glastonbury over the years has become an ever growing, ever more publicised, ever more popular, ever more talked about monster.
We are at least partly responsible for contributing to its popularity by drivelling on about it so glowingly, as I have been doing for the last decade and more! And I'm not alone in that. The Net is here and that's one of the major reasons why word has spread so much more. The Glasto monster is therefore bound to include bad as well a LOT of surviving good, it's one of the few (probably only) events of its size, anywhere, that has retained some at least of its ideals alongside all the compromises, many of which have been forced on the Eavises anyway by ever stricter licensing conditions. The model I advocated a few years ago (back in 1999 I think), the 'Greensizing' of Glasto further back to its roots, isn't going to happen, and never was.
But given that the sponsors are not going to get expelled, and big name main stage acts will continue to perform, commercial/business common sense will tell the Eavises and their advisors/colleagues that the Glastonbury 'brand' (vomits immediately at the 'brand' word) is unique and at risk of being completely spoilt if over blatant 'Readingness' is introduced entirely at the expense of what continues to make that Glasto thing unique.
Possible straw in the wind : after G2005, the deal with Mean Fiddler, originally a four year one, will
expire. MF are about to be taken over by those Yank corporate cunts Clear Channel Entertainment anyway. I suspect, in the year off, Michael and the others will look VERY CAREFULY before Glastonbury 2007 at the different options for business partnership, and with any luck, and perhaps with a bit of gentle pressure
they will conclude that CCE are not the right type of partner for them anyway ...
I'm hoping that Melvin Benn (once a Mean Fiddler employee, now a Glastonbury Festivals Ltd. employee) will continue with GFL, it was him much more than MF as a company that 'saved' the festival after it nearly
died after 2000, his expertise that secured a licence again in 2002 against all odds. This was even at the dislikeable but unavoidable cost of the superfence, and expelling the Travellers. The expulsion of the Travellers was forced on Gladtonbury partly by their own OTT pisstaking with excellent but insane 24 hour hour 17K sound systems for five days, after which Mr Eavis was prosecuted for licence/noise violations, but also their expulsion was forced on Glastonbury by the Avon and Somerset Police. Most of all, the festival could not have continued without clamping down on the freeloading fencejumpers, whose numbers in 2000 were so high that the safety of the pathways was in places severely compromised, I have seen copies of internal Mendip Council memos which questions what might have happened had 2000 been muddy with over 200,000 people there!!
So Benn helped to save the event whether we like the measures he ended up taking or not. I hope there's at least some possibility that Benn and the Eavises will be able to run the thing in partnership and semi independently, with any other 'partner' companies kept under restraint. They surely have enough credibility with the authorities by now as licencees on their own, not to need full on Mean Fiddler style intervention any more.
The above is all speculation at this stage though ...
Another thing I'm not at all sure about is whether the Ansheuser-Busch deal, the Bud Shiter "Official 'beer'
of the Glastonbury Festival" crap, is tied up with Mean Fiddler, or just with the Workers Beer Company independently of MF, it's possible (he prays!) that Bud Shiter may end up getting sacked, if their contract has expired ... need to know more.
Straight after Glasto 2005, depending on what I find out, I intend hopefully with the help of other knowledgeable Festographers, to get in touch with the WBC and with Budvar UK (the original Czech Budweiser people) and urge them to push to get involved themselves with Glasto, maybe in partnership with a reputable medium sized UK based regional real ale brewery (eg Brains of Cardiff, nearby??) to make whatever beer sponsorship there has to be at Glastonbury, more acceptable to the discerning drinker and less in your face McDonalds style as with Bud Shiter and as with 'Carling' at
fully corporate, monopolist monstrosities such as 'Reading'
I think Mr Martin in that Mirror article is overegging the pudding frankly. He's not all wrong at all, and I've been banging on myself against big name lineup obsessivenes , inane Radio One overpublicity, and corporate Bud Shite sponsorship for ages. But he's underplaying the (strongly surviving) positives. I don't even think he even
knows about a lot of the positives -- he's a fucking mainstream tabloid journalist, with backstage access, he's bound to notice the 'big names' and posh liggers more, and mingle less with the likes of us who
really know the score.
A few pages ago on this thread (pre ticket scramble, so probably no later than page 35**) I put up a long post that I'd originally posted on efestivals, in which I answered the question 'What has Glastonbury lost' over the years.
That post fully acknowledges the losses but also talks about all that's still good. It's my riposte to Mr Martin.
<goes off to find link to it>
**EDIT : it's actually
actually at the top of page 15!! of this thread!. Blimey!!
When I click the link I get the post in ready to edit form ; I guess anyone else clicking it will get the plain text of the post in 'how it originally appeared on the thread' form ... WORTH A READ in conjunction with this one ... responses appreciated ....
