Hmm. So you seem to be suggesting that the Glastonbury festival is nothing more than a huge corporate brand-name exploitation fest with about as much claim to counter-cultural credibility or political progressivism as Hillary Clinton?
Glastonbury 2008
- Thread starter pagan
- Start date
Hmm. So you seem to be suggesting that the Glastonbury festival is nothing more than a huge corporate brand-name exploitation fest with about as much claim to counter-cultural credibility or political progressivism as Hillary Clinton?
Seeing Jo Wiley grinning inanely at all the 'stars' and hearing the radio 1 DJs discussing which A list people they'd seen in wellies had a terrible effect on my mental health
editor
hiraethified
Who's been making those claims here?
Of course, if you knew anything about Glastonbury, you'd know that it can be all things to all men. That's the beauty of it.
Looby
Well-Known Member
Who's been making those claims here?
Of course, if you knew anything about Glastonbury, you'd know that it can be all things to all men. That's the beauty of it.
Yup. My mate went, spent 5 days in the Greenfields, never saw a single band or us and loved it. She only saw the rest of the site on the way to and from the bus.
bouncer_the_dog
Well-Known Member
The irony is the Radio One stage at 'The Park' was a miserable failure last year. They don't contribute that much to the actual festival, they simply gain from the uber-hype they generate off its back.
Who's been making those claims here?
Of course, if you knew anything about Glastonbury, you'd know that it can be all things to all men. That's the beauty of it.
I've been to Glastonbury many times.
I know loads of people who claim to do that every year.
Looby
Well-Known Member
She really did, she went for a walk on the first day and that was it. We were frantic because it was the days before you could get a phone signal.
She did leave a note on the tent one day telling us she was alive and having lots of sex.
han
love is the answer
My birthday is in June and trust me I have noticed that June weather is shite most of the time.
I won't go back to Glasto untill it's like the old days with hot knife stalls and hash sellers, sound systems a plenty, hells angels flogging cheap beer, all night parties, skanky traveller kids running amok, Eavis letting in poor people for nothing, no police at all on site and Hawkwind playing on the main stage complete with that very big girl dancer.
Only then I tell thee will the sunshine return.
Word.
You need to try Shambala! It was just like that!!! ^^^^^^ Bloody great!
Looby
Well-Known Member
bouncer_the_dog
Well-Known Member
If your friend had trudged through the quagmire to see a headline act she may well have been dissapointed, what with the terrible sound and all.
I was being serious too. I know loads of people who work in the healing fields every year and refuse to go down to 'babylon' as they call it.
They arrive before anyone else, leave after everyones gone and have a pretty chilled time all round.
I did it in 2004 (after giving up drugs and drink) and spent the weekend in saunas and having massages etc. It was very different to any festival experience I'd ever had and pretty
han
love is the answer
If you're going to go to Glasto, then spending 5 days in the Greenfields is probably the most pleasant way of doing it. I've got some mates who do that - arriving early, leaving late, and it's like they're at a different festie to most of the people in babylon.
That's what I used to do as well - stay in the Greenfields, and pop down once or twice to see someone I really wanted to see, like Orbital, or Underworld.
For free. hahaha
That's what I used to do as well - stay in the Greenfields, and pop down once or twice to see someone I really wanted to see, like Orbital, or Underworld.
For free. hahaha
david dissadent
New Member
Leftfield have anounced they are doing a big 30 years of Rock Against Racism thing. Now that is one stage that would really really tempt me out of my meh-ness. There used to be an official Leftfield forum where I have a certain amount of, shall we say 'form' . The moderators were pretty dim.
. The moderators were pretty dim.
editor
hiraethified
Sounds like you missed the Green Fields and the other non-commercial/oddball areas. When did you go last?
editor
hiraethified
That's what I like about it - you can spend the best part of a week there and have an entirely different festival to someone else.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Jesus, it's so funny reading the bitterness about Glasto every year, it really is...
bouncer_the_dog
Well-Known Member
I don't disagree with that.
There hasn't been a Radio 1 Stage at Glastonbury since 2004. The BBC Introducing Stage you are refering to was run by local BBC stations promoting unsigned junior acts. It was also in the most appaulingly difficult position to get to in the mud.
1989. Some things really were better back in the day. Like the East Village too for example.
As criticisms of the festival go, that's one of the most cuttingly accurate, and dd puts his finger on one of the most annoying aspects nowadays -- spot on.
R1 has been involved in this way for years, but it has a got a lot worse more recently.
vast
and , imo, counterproductive. I'd personally prefer the views of the anti's to take hold amongst the populace at large. I'd like it to be thought of as a seething mass of commercialisation, sold out long ago, with the filthiest toilets, the muddiest swamps and the drunkenest middleclass wannabe minority of minorities on the planet. Unfit, in other words, for anyone to aspire to go to, whether they be young and trendy, old and grouchy or of the been there, done that, washed the car with the tshirt variety. I want a mass movement to protest about the wastage of license-payers money in broadcasting hours of bands and vacuous dj's. I want people who understand this stuff to whinge mightily about how appalling the line-up is, and how no-one could possibly imagine being in the same field as any of the headliners. I want a tide of complaint, led by those whose criticisms are informed by personal experience and by those who know only what they read on teletext, about the corruption of the youth of the nation, both from the perspective of the Daily Mail (bring back National Service) and from Class War (tear down the fence). I want Eavis reviled as a self serving capitalist pig, his daughter laughed at in gossip columns and all the corporate organisations involved exposed for the arms dealers and exploiters they so obviously are. I want to see ever greater detail about the mass of Health & Safety Nazi regulations and patronising nannying. I'd like to see every organisational problem exposed as a symbol of absolute failure to live up to the dream. I want every weather forecast to show the end of June to be wet & miserable. Most of all I want everybody to chorus that it ain't like it used to be and there's no point in going.
with not a single voice, anywhere, to support the festival in any way at all.
then maybe they'll all bugger off and leave us to have our festival in peace.
Top Cat said:
Word.
Not 'Word' at all.
(ETA later : In fairness to han and TC, I'm just responding to the weather bit here -- TC's old skool nostalgia ting is good and entertaining in fact ... )
There is NOTHING inevitable about a mudbath at Glastonbury. I've replied to another post about weather by TC, and another one, before, but really, it's not rational to predict this coming June's festival weather on the basis of an pretty bad run of recent ill luck** -- to do that is bonkers.
**2004 (quite muddy), 2005 (very dry and sunny at the beginning and end, but very muddy in the middle), 2007, (appalling mudbath almost throughout)
If we were to predict on the basis of preceding years, then 1997 and 1998 would have been absolute scorchers
Can I stress to all that so far, I predict nothing definite for this year one way or the other for weather -- it's perfectly possible there'll be another muddy one, but also, it's mad to assume there can't ever be a dry one again either. My hunch is though that this recent run of wet late Junes can't continue for ever. The English weather is unpredictable and that might very well work in our favour this June. I've got a two pint gamble with TC on this very matter ...
You also bigged up Shambala han -- great festival, and I loved it the 2 times I went, I would go back if it happened at a time I could make. But it IS perfectly possible to like two completely different festivals of completely different sizes. We'll be going to loads of small alternative fests this year as well as Glastonbury.
Perhaps your almost complete inability to post anything whatsoever positive about Glastonbury** leads you open to that charge?
**with very rare exceptions like post 708
You've come up with a list of criticisms, some of which are at root legit, but then exaggerated them, and ignored any good aspects whatsoever, to such an extent that you come across as both embittered and sneery on the one hand, and through being so caricaturedly hostile and onesided, looks like a windup too.
As for your insistence that I'm an uncritical worshipper of the festival and canlt handle any criticism of it (both fairly trollish-looking charges actually), you have ignored my responses to some pretty critical posts by freespirit and Tort earlier, these I engaged with and in part agreed with .... also see my response to david dissadent's post above.
The inaccuracies and exaggeration and distortions can be quite funny I spose -- but the blinkered and stubborn refusal by one or two to take any notice of more balanced and accurate infiormation (including more reasoned criticisms) is much less so IMO ...
editor
hiraethified
How could you possibly know if you haven't been back for nearly two decades?
Not even the most fanatical defenders of Glastonbury would claim it is as good today as it was in the 80's.
Looby
Well-Known Member
did i read that leonard cohen was playing this year?
tempting.
Seems to be as near to a dead cert as it can be, that he'll be playing at some point on the Sunday. Stage and time as yet uncertain ...
