Glastonbury 2009 – Unreviewable » The Music Mag

Glastonbury 2009 – Unreviewable

For the past four days I’ve been trying to work out how best to write a review for my Glastonbury experience; by day, separate music/everything else sections, ‘hot or not’. but without writing pages of text full of “this was flippin’ ‘awesome” repeating at the end of each sentence, it’s impossible.

So I think it’s generally just going to have to be a quick roundup with a series of ‘moments’, along with a quick breakdown of who stood out musically as well. If you don’t mind sticking around for that, read on.

Here we go…

Everyone may say that Glastonbury is like no other festival out there, and although ‘they’ always seem to say that, they’d be 100% correct; the only way to really know how it goes down is to go there yourself. No amount of irritating BBC presenters (Peel will always be irreplaceable) bringing you highlights will get you nearer to the truth either, although to be fair I have made full use of the highlights since returning.

The first thing is the sheer size of the place. I’m quite amazed that we managed to get around it in whistlestop motion and see most of what was on offer, although next time I’ll be a little more relaxed about where I end up. To give you an idea of the scale of the place, it took us about 1hr30mins to walk from our car park (north-east of the area) to our camp (set in the south). Also there’s about 30+ tents/stages/teepees all showcasing a ridiculous amount of musical genres and performances so that you’ll never be more than 5 mins walk from some action.

In a nutshell, the festival consisted of:

The Healing fields full of sandpits, hammocks, lotus lounges, 24hr organic cafes, palm reading and Buddhist readings. Craft areas where you can make your own lantern, bongo drum, clay pot, pipe, hanging baskets paint murals and glass beads. Arcadia which had motorbikes buried vertically halfway in the ground as makeshift seats, a Mad Max-style distopian circus with a fire-blowing central tower plucked from some future Mega-City One, a tequila bar consisting of just a bar, barman one shot glass and the bottle of plonk, and crumpets served by strumpets. Trash City had a stage laid out as a pinball machine with tables styled as flippers. The Stone Circle providing (perhaps not surprisingly) a miniature Stonehenge, 30ft high wooden dragon sculptures and a hill providing some of the best views of the festival. An area seemingly based on Blade Runner, Shangri-La, had a stage in the middle with alien-like women in white twirling around electrical lit whips while creepy blokes dressed in full black PVC walking on stilts but on all-fours scared the shit out of me.

N.B. An abbreviated paragraph does no justice though.

Moments:

* Not wanting to go to sleep simply because of the fear of missing out on something – it truly is a 24/7 (or 24/5.5 for the cynics) affair

* Saying to my lass how Pendulum have never played Tarantula live when having seen them before, for them to then go ahead and bang it out there and then

* 7am Monday morning and sitting on a swing chair at a cafe blasting out ‘Born To Run’ by Bruce Springsteen. A seriously wide-eyed guy then asking us how much for the chair? Having said it wasn’t ours to sell, we then proceeded to watch him ask another 30 people in the cafe before giving up and leaving

* Lily Allen’s ‘Smile’ with it’s d’n'b and slowed-down ragga portions

* 8am Monday morning and watching a naked bloke ‘high on life’ shout joyously about peace and love while rolling around in the mud while a about 20-25 people videod/took pictures as his embarrassed other half tried to calm him down. So funny, but I felt so sorry for her…

* Deadmau5 playing ‘No Sudden Moves’ by Glenn Morrison and sending me into pure bliss

* Rolf Harris, 79 (I can’t believe that!), battling with his beatboxing mate

* Walking back to the tent from The Park at about 5:30am Saturday and surveying the ‘damage’ from the first full Glasto night

* Howard Marks‘ story about when he pulled a whitey

* Wandering through a narrow Blade Runner-esq Shangri-La backstreet, turning a corner and walking through a small doorway to a small 15×15 foot room playing some of the dirtiest funky electro house I’ve ever heard

* Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. He and Deadmau5 made my summer

* Tom Middleton’s set in The Snug, a miniscule two-teepee venue, listening to Underworld, Groove Armada, Janis Joplin remixes and afro-beats

* Falling asleep for a nice 30min nap in the baking sun up above the teepee fields with views of the sunset across the entire site

* After Prodigy on the Sunday night, encouraging an up-for-it guy to space-hop his way back to the tent. We kept him company for fifteen minutes, and I hope he made it. He deserved to triumph for the enthusiasm alone

The music:

Nick Cave (enthralling), Glasvegas (path to the top), Deadmau5 (blew my head), Lily Allen (set up the main stage), Tom Middleton (danced my booty away) and Rolf Harris (79 and still the man) all impressed.

Lady Gaga (lip-synch extraordinaire), Spinal Tap (something missing) and Prodigy (very short set) didn’t.

In summary:

Enchanting, manic, soothing, ballistic, euphoric. The one thing I had to constantly remind myself about is to not get used to the surprises. Fucking incredible.

Joy and Love x