04:32am, Tuesday 29 Jun 2004 (Updated Wed 30 Jun 2004)
Song of the Day: Keane - Somewhere only we know
Got back from Glastonbury today, and before I go on, I have to warn you: I'm completely emotional..
Glastonbury was completely unlike anything I ever thought it would be.
A link to the panoramic is available here .. you can see just how bad and how good it was :)
A first look at the line up, and it weren't too impressive. Nothing I *really* wanted to see, but just a few bands where I knew just a few of their songs. Because the tickets were so hard to get, it was never an issue as to whether I was going to go or not - and I'm so glad I didn't change my mind!
Sharon & I counted down the few days.. and finally, Thursday arrived and we left.. here's a day by day breakdown: (maybe I'll write something more in depth later.. with photos!)
Up early, bus to Angel together with ridiculous backpack to meet Sharon at Paddington for 8.45. Met up, queued for train, marvelled at how easy it all was. Sharon had been the year before and it was complete chaos.
Into Castle Cary train station, cops everywhere, being herded like cattle for the first of many times in a few days. We had to go to Shepton Mallet to pick up tickets cos I bought them on my aussie credit card, so that involved persuading the shuttle bus driver to take a detour. Got to Shepton, met another girl on her own and took a cab to the festival site.
Holy fuck! The festival.. what can I say. Its absolutely MASSIVE. Some quick stats for the whole weekend (courtest of Q magazine, available as you left the gates):
- 112,500 people visited the site, and in addition 34,000 performers and crew were there
- The site covers 900 acres showing in excess of 1000 individual performances
- 750,000 pints of lager and bitter were consumed
- There were 7000 rubbish bins
- There were over 750 shops on site (I think I visited them all! :)
- 189 people were arrested, but there was a 43 percent drop in crime. One person died from (suspected) bad drugs
- There were 2500 toilets producing 800,000 gallons of human waste (and boy, were those toilets fucking rank!
- The event raised 200,000 pounds each for Oxfam and Greenpeace, and 100,000 pounds for WaterAid
- 50,000 condoms were distributed (none to me, unfortunately)
Impressed? You would be... it was unreal.
After putting up the tent in about 15 mins we headed down to the melee to see what the fuss was about. As there was no official entertainment on the Thursday night (the festival doesn't actually start until the Friday and goes until the Monday) we wandered around the shops and I marvelled at everything you can buy there.
Here's a tip: if you have the cash, go to Glastonbury with nothing but the clothes on your back. Cos guaranteed, you can buy anything you want there. Tents, sleeping bags, pillows, clothes, cigarettes, chocolate, tampax, neurofen, everything. Its slightly more than it would be in a shop, of course.. but think of how little you'd have to carry!
And the food.. oh god. OK, it was only takeaway stuff, but it was every type of takeaway you could think of. Chinese, East African, Carribean, fish n chips, kebabs, burgers, vegetarian food, and so much more I can't even think of. We grabbed some food, on Thursday I chose to eat at the Square Pie (picture on site of the actual tent!!) and it was the most delicious steak and cheese pie with mashed potato and gravy I've ever had.
We trekked around for several hours, I still had my wellies on and it was getting a bit muddy out there.. so after a while we decided to go back to our tent and get an early night (all this exercise was doing my head in!). Got back to the tent to find a few more people had camped beside us.. the place was really starting to look like a shanty town!
Fuck. This post was just gunna be a quick review.
Anyway, around 1am our new neighbours let themselves be known to us - Oz and Shed had arrived, and fuck were they smashed. I grabbed my earplugs and rammed them in, drifted off to blissful sleep. Cept I was fucking freezing. Oz & Shed started up the next morning, and someone from another tent went over and gave them a talking to.. suitably chastised, they shut up. When we got up, they apologised and we laughed it off and made some new friends.
It was full on today. Got up early, grabbed some breakfast at Square Pie (fucking smashing bacon baps!) and headed off to see Wilco, followed by Nelly Furtado on the Pyramid stage. Wilco were great, they didn't play the only song I know ("How to Fight Loneliness") but they did do some great other stuff. Nelly was as upbeat as expected.. singing along to "I'm Like a Bird" and dancing in the sunshine was lovely. But it got fucking hot. I made an executive decision to buy a dress, a sundress no less.
Oh yeah, and the England vs Portugal match was on the big screen. The largest audience of that game in the world.. the cheers and cries could be hear from several miles away. Go England!
After this we grabbed some lunch.. I couldn't decide what the hell to eat! Ended up eating this vegetarian haloumi cheese thing which was delish.
Later that night we headed out to see Kings of Leon on the Pyramid stage. Damn they rock..the whole place was going off and everyone was sitting around on the grass, drinking and socialising, and the whole thing was laid back and chilled.. lovely.
Heading over the dance tent, we grooved the next few hours to Kosheen, who were excellent especially from my front row position :)
Rushing back to the Pyramid stage, Oasis were starting up and there was no way we were going to get anywhere near it, it was jammed. We went into the crowd (I reckon about 80,000 were there) and were able to see a tiny little white Liam on the stage, helped along by the massive tv screens on either side. Ahh it was a good set. They clearly did not want to be there though.. but the crowd didn't seem to mind. A huge throng of people (by now almost everybody at Glastonbury attended this gig!) singing along to Champagne Supernova.. oh god it was a fucking moment. And there were so many Glastonbury moments it was like.. fucking surreal.
Ok I'm gunna hurry this along cos this post is already the bloody size of war n peace..
Saturday saw us split up for a bit. I crammed my way in about a row back to catch Scissor Sisters on the Pyramid stage yet again, but left half way through to catch Keane on the other stage. Oh god they were fucking wonderful! It started to rain and everybody sang along to "Somewhere only we know" which I think should have been the official Glastonbury anthem. That lead singer is not fucking bad either.
Caught up with Sharon and poked my way to the front at the Jazz World stage to catch Joss Stone do a fucking marvellous set, and truly doing the White Stripes "Fell in love with a girl" her own way, which made the song equally as special to me. (Regular readers of this blog..poor bastards.. will know how much I adore that particular song). She was high on the audience participation thing and she was just so.. fresh. Open, unjaded, no diva like stuff.. just great tunes and oh my god does she have a set of pipes on her! And cos I was already there and right up front, I thought I'd stay for Jamie Cullum as well. Fucking glad I did. Apart from being completely hot, he is a terrific performer and my big moment was that he touched me (and about 10 other chicks) when he jumped down. Yeah yeah shut up :)
After that, I headed over to the New tent to catch Zero 7, and saw some of Basement Jaxx on the way (not too bad at all). Zero 7 played the one song I know ("In the waiting line") and it just went off. With the small exception of Oasis (and only bits of their set) there was nothing on at Glastonbury that flat out sucked.
Went back to the tent and stayed up with Oz & Shed for a while.. chilled out underneath the stars and didn't think about work once. Bliss.
Sunday was a little low on the list of things we wanted to see, although we did catch Joss Stone again on the Pyramid stage this time.. and again, her "Fell in love with a boy" was fantastic. Walked around and did some last minute buying of absolute crap I don't need, and bemoaned my suntan. The mud at this stage was ridiculous.. it rained Saturday and Sunday and it was real fucking hard getting through it.
Caught some of Muse's act on the way back to the tent, and got plastered with Shed & Oz yet again, went on a mission for firewood and chocolate that took far longer than it should have, probably due to us not getting off our lazy asses. Went back to the campsite feeling like all was right with the world.. and ahhh what a world.
Theres so much more so maybe I'll write about it sometime.. but for now, you gotta take my word for it.. Glastonbury is like one long party.. the music can be as close or as far away as you want it to be. I will definately try my hardest to get there again next year.. and in spite of the mud, the rain and the foul, awful toilets, I wish I was there right now. Now if only I could get to Reading in August...
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