This was my second Glasto and possibly one of the greatest weekends of my life! Whether your embracing your newfound interest for Buddest meditation in the Healing Fields, dancing with the acid-fried hippies around the stone circle or simply watching a band you’d NEVER thought you’d see, Glasto is simply jammm packed. If I had a Glasto criticism it’s that there‘s simply too much to see and do in to little time! I dedicated this Glasto to more of the big-name acts I won’t necessarily be able to see again, as I’ll fulfill my need to see more of the electronic and underground acts at this years ‘Bestival’.NOTE: Please excuse discrepancies as, if I'm honest, much of Glastonbury remains a Blur in my head (especially as to what happened on what day).
I had somewhat of a lazy start to the festival only managing to see Joy Orbison on the Thursday, missing Beardyman, Egyptian Hip Hop, Local Natives and a few others, but Joy Orb was certainly worth seeing. His set triumphantly welded 2-step, downtempo, dubstep and everything in between into an unyielding and firm structure. The 45 minute set contained fresh dubs an neo-classic’s from Untold, DBridge&Instra:mental, Roska, Joker… alongside his own BRKLN CLLN, So Derobe, Wet look and the almost anthemic ‘Hyph Mngo’.
After the madness and general excitement which enthralled much of Wednesday and Thursday, I did finally manage to productively potter from one little tent to another, starting with Miike Snow. I was very aware of Miike Snow’s (who like Blondie, are always trying to reaffirm their status as a band and NOT a solo artist) music prior to Glasto, but not a self proclaimed “fan” and the band’s performance this fine Glasto morning certainly nudged me another step towards fandom. I am not a fan of electro-pop, especially that which wasn’t bred in the 1980’s (ahem, La Roux!) but Miike Snow’s own breed of pop songs and friendly electronics had a tent of hung-over hipsters bouncing by midday to Animals (known to many by it’s Crookers RMX) before closing with banger ‘Black and Blue’.
After this I headed over to the West Holts stage (previously the Jazzworld Stage) to see Bonobo and his 12 piece ensemble. After having spent the latter half of this year obsessing over (and trying to emulate in my own productions) this warm breed of cinematic orchestration and downtempo beats and bass, this was an ore-inspiring moment and a truly fantastic performance - a definite Glasto highlight! Black Sands, the most recent Bonobo record was phenomenal and this performance, in places, managed to transcend the ethereal quality of the record beautifully onto live instruments with Simon Bonobo, as he was referred to on-stage, playing bass on some songs, and electronics on others, while the brass, woodwind and string sections gently meld the Bonobo-soundscape, while perpetually delving in and out of Free Jazz, in songs such as ‘We Could Forever’, whose flute solo puts Ian Anderson to shame. I watched this performance with a drummer friend of mine, who wasn’t familiar with Bonobo, but was thoroughly impressed with the backbeat drumming style. The performance was complete with the addition of vocalist, fellow Ninja Tun(er) and collaborator Andreya Triana, who delivers ‘Stay The Same’ faultlessly causing numerous Portishead parallels to conjure in my head. They then closed with ‘Kiera’ followed by an encore where they finally closed with a beautiful bass heavy version of ‘Kong’. Every single person in the, admittedly small crowd, walked away having felt they’d just witnessed a truly magical display of downtempo music in it’s most intelligent form.
Having not seen as much live Hip Hop as I would have liked to, the idea of watching Snoop Doogy Dizzle-fo-Shizzle performing live had me genuinely excited for months and beneath the haze of spliff smoke there stood an audience shaken at the helms by the presence of this performer. There is no doubt that alongside Lou Reed and Miles Davis, Snoop is one of the coolest men to have ever made a record or even to have walked the earth. He played all his tunes including the not-so-subtle ‘I wanna Fuck You’, and the classic’s ‘Gangsta Love’ and ‘Vato’. Much of what makes Snoop’s performance so mesmerizing is what he does in between the songs, at one point having the entire audience cheering ‘Olay Olay Olay OOOOOOlay’ for a good 5 minutes before breaking into medley of 2Pac songs. Snoop concluded the performance with a guest appearance from Tinie Tempah for a fierce rendition of there latest collaborative effort ‘Pass Out’, with a superb Glasto themed verse- creating an uproar amongst the HUGE crowd.
If I’m honest I’ve never been the biggest Florence + The Machine fan, I’d by no means found much to ‘not like’, but then I’d never really found much ‘to like’ in her music either, kinda ‘wet flannel’ music if you will, but all this was until I saw her Glasto performance (by accident). I’ve actually seen Florence before (possibly at last years Glasto or a previous Reading) and I don’t remember being bowled down by her performance, but this year she was fantastic (even though she couldn’t have milked it more if she’d squeezed the cows udders with her teeth!). On the verge of tears/hysterics for the most part, not only has she a terrifically powerful voice, she’s also genuinely weird and not contrived eccentricities (which I had previously suspected). Her set comprised of most the songs of her record, closing with You Go the Love (which seems to have become some kind of Glasto anthem for many) and a brilliant cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’, which she gave complete justice to, driving the audience into a sing-a-long frenzy!
After seeing ‘Them Crooked Vultures’ at Reading last year, I vowed to go and see ‘Special Guests’ at festivals! The roomers for who was playing the ‘Special Guest’ spot on the park stage had been flying all day, a number of people had mentioned to me The Strokes, Kylie, The Libertines, even Spandau Ballet and to my absolute shock/horror/surprise/delight it was Thom Yorke! He opened with ‘The Eraser’, of his solo album of the same name, on which he played piano at the side of the stage, before breaking into Harrowdown Hill (where he played solo slap bass… yeah I know!) and a few other songs of ‘The Eraser’. Now, it has to be said I’m a big Radiohead fan, so when Thom announced ‘Johnny Greenwood’ and the demi-god guitar player and general electronics genius scuttled onstage before braking into Radiohead’s stunning ‘Arpeggi/Weird Fishes’ of In Rainbows, I (like many others around me) actually had tears welling up in my eyes! I didn’t even cry when I saw Radiohead live, but just imagine a tiny stage with small rolling hills creating a Greek-style amphitheater with the 8.30 sun, gently setting behind the stage upon which two core members of Radiohead are stood playing a beautiful version of Pyramid song (and possibly a few beers too many) – too much! They then broke into a heart-wrenching rendition of Idioteque (one of my favs) with Johnny on electronics and to the shock of everyone there they closed with non other than 1997 classic Karma Police and by the end of KP the audience were singing ‘For a minute I lost myself, I lost myse-e-elf’ with such persistence that Thom joined in again (and Thom Yorke’s not exactly known for his crowd pleasing) before closing with Street Spirit (fade out) from The Bends – another favorite of mine. This was a truly spectacular performance and really felt like a moment in history, it’s undoubtedly my Glastonbury highlight and probably the highlight of my summer, if not my year.
I’m not exactly a U2 fan (although I definantly would have seen them had they played) whereas I am a Gorillaz fan, so you can imagine my delight (sorry Bono) when Gorillaz were announced as Friday headliners. There set got a mixed response from the audience, which was inevitable due to them not having enough ‘Clint Eastwood’ size singles, and catchy choruses are few and far between, ‘Stylo’ the first single of there latest record Plastic Beach, which features the mighty Bobby Womack, doesn’t even have a chorus. And they very rarely play live due to the band not being human but cartoon Gorilla alter ego’s. It was there star studded string of guest performers that really blew me away including the one and only Mark E. Smith! I can imagine many people caring little (knowing little) about this particular Guest, but I’ve spent the last 2 years obsessing over The Fall, so to see the man blurting discordant lyrics in his typical idiosyncratic and miserable style on the fucking Pyramid Stage before thousands upon thousands of people is a moment I shall never forget. The next surprise guest was the legendary Boby Womack for his collaboration of ‘Stylo’, but the appearance which made my spine shudder was the almighty Lou Reed, being a huge Velvets/Reed fan I was, like seeing Mark E, amazed to just see this celebrated singer performing ‘Some Kinda Nature’ (which has more than just a passing resemblance to ‘Some Kinda Love’ of the Velvets 3rd self-titled record. London Grimers MC Bashy & Kano then guested and and rather that there typically raw Anglo elf-loathing Gime style, they rapped in a more upbeat and American style, (and to good effect). Also in the Hip Hop category were 90 legends De La Soul, who featured on ‘Superfast Jellyfish’, again there heroes of mine (and anyone who likes Hip Hop for that matter), that I just hadn’t expected to see. The next contributing artist in this long list of Hip Hop and Rock Legends was none other than The Happy Monday's Sean Ryder, who like Mark E hasn't changed a bit since his Madchester heyday, stood bolt upright unflinching and probably thinking ‘Christ this is a lot of people!’ while waring super-cool shades (NOTE: sarcasm), and on Guitar and drums Albarn only went and hired half of The 'bloody' Clash, Mick Jones & Paul Simonon, who again were simply unbelievable to see in person! The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble provided the orchestral sections and the finale featured none other than S-S-Snoop Dogggggg collaborating with Albarn on sing-a-long versions of 'Feel Good inc' and Clint Eastwood, where the audience finally knew the words (which had become an issue for Albarn during ‘Pirate Jet’, when he urged the audience to sing, with no response - a long way from last years Blur headline, where you could hardly hear Albarn for all the drunken 30 year old's yelling the wrong words to the last verse of 'Tender'). Having seen that wonderful Blur performance myself, this simply didn’t have the same audience response or atmosphere, simply because Gorillaz don’t have the amount of songs (or fans), but the star studded line-up of guests defiantly made up for it (for me, but if one didn't care about Mark E Smith, De La Soul and co then I can see why the beauty of the performance would have been lost) After Gorillaz I was able to catch the last few songs by Fatboy Slim in the dance village and to my delight he played ‘Praise You’, which sent me back to my campsite in a state of euphoria, but with extreme bouts of nostalgia…
Saturday got off to a good start with The (all bearded and dressed in black) National playing The, annoyingly named, Other Stage, and they delivered a typically baritone and emotive set, with Matt Beringer jumping into the audience on more than 3 occasions (I had begun to feel rather ill at this point so my memory is a bit hazy). They tore through High Violet with the addition of a few classics before demi-closing with a tear-jerkingly raw performance of ‘Terrible Love’. They finally closed with ‘Fake Empire’ which, in my opinion, was the highlight of the show – the track is, as the Guardian say ‘an anthem waiting to happen’. I then dashed over to The Cribs, who I have also seen before, but never with the legendary Johnny Marr on Guitar. And they played a raunchier set, which pleased me immensely as I much prefer their punkier material. To my horror I had a small sleep and managed to miss Jerry Dammers (keys/songwriter for the specials & the man responsible for Two Tone, both the style and label) and his Spatial AKA Orchestra, where they did an Orchestral version of Ghost Town with Reggae legend Johnny Clarke (who I saw less than a month ago with Iration Steppas @ SubDub in the infamous West Indian Center, Leeds). I did wake up in time to catch the end of Foals who I have seen a number of times but were fantastic nonetheless. I am a big fan of there latest record and there are some great remixes (including Mount Kimbie’s ‘Spanish Sahara’ Rmx). After the Thom Yorke saga on Friday I made sure I got to the Special Guests, with more of the same roomers flying around but to my disappointment it was Biffy Clyro – so I left!
The days finale was two band’s I had been extremely excited about seeing for quite some time. First on the West Holts Stage 70’s Funk legends, George Clinton and Parlment - Funcadelic, and they were everything I had thought they’d be – sleazy, sexy, urban and f-f-f-funkY!! They had a string of guests including George Clinton’s niece (who as it turns out is one of the best female rappers I ever heard) and some superb vocalists. They of-course had the whole audience singing along to ‘Flashlight’ and the superbly funky ‘Give up the Funk’ (possibly the greatest Funk song ever written) which had every member of that audience drunkenly singing ‘We wan’t the Funk, give us the Funk’ for the remainder of the night, and even the next day. Much to my disappointment Muse clashed with Parliament, but I did leave early enough to catch the last 25 minutes of Muse, who were as I had imagined, a super massive huge spectacle with lazars a-flying, lights a-flashing and guitars a-wailing, there amazing, but rather pretentious, show would have put Pink Floyed to shame. Not being a die-hard Muse fan, I arrived at just the right time as I caught all the hits including ‘Sing for Absolution’ and a cracking rendition of the phenomenal ‘Plug in Baby’, with U2’s The Edge on Guitar (sorry but I can’t take that man seriously, I mean ‘The Edge’, really?)
Sunday got off t a great start with Ray Davis on the pyramid stage (who I chose to watch instead of the football, and seeing the result – I’m pleased I opted for an hour of Kink’s classics!) I saw Ray at last years Glasto and he doesn’t ‘do a Dylan’ opting to play all his hits regardless, and it was fantastic. He looked like he was, honestly, having the time of his life laughing and interspersing sing-a-longs with anecdotes and jokes. He played everything from Waterloo Sunset and Lola to my personal favorites ‘Days’, ‘Autmn Almanac’ and ‘Dead End Street’ and closing with a raucous encour of ‘Sunny Afternoon’ – fantastic!
The next group was a band I honestly thought I’d never see, post-punk legends Gang of Four, in the John Peel tent, and they haven’t tamed the slightest bit. Playing to a quarter full tent, I got the impression they wouldn’t have changed there performance had they played to 10 or even 10 thousand people, they display anger in its grittiest and most intellectual form. They played material from all of there 11 albums. John King’s idiosyncratic performance was mesmerizing and at one point he was banging a mic’d-up microwave with a pole, in typical Gang Of Four Style. Highlights include ‘Outside the Trains don’t run on Time’ from there 1978 debut Entertainment! and ‘At home he’s A Tourist’ (my faverite GOF track) and they then closed with there (closest to a hit than anything they’ve ever record) ‘Neutrals not in It’. A raw gritty show from a raw gritty band who embody the Post-Punk spirit more than any other alive today.
In may I was lucky enough to see the recently reunited Pavement (which I had planned on reviewing, but never got round to it due to exams and general laziness) in Brixton and they were supported by Canadian wizkids Broken Social Scene, but I unfortunately only saw the last 5 minutes of there support slot. Did they live up to expectations? Yeah they most certainly did – managing to combine their luscious and hypnotic guitar driven sound with whimsical melodies and ‘rock star’ scissor kicks. They played a combination of material from their latest record ‘Forgiveness Rock Record’ and popular tracks such as ‘Ibi Dreams of Pavement’ and ‘7/4 (shoreline)’. Highlight of the set was there raunchy rendition of grating ‘Texico Bitches’ with all it’s Nastanovitch style backing (screams) vocals.
As the day was drawing in, a sense of excitement had been brewing inside me for I was about to see the legendary Toots & The Maytals, and what a show it was! A grinning Toots delivered an extremely well rehearsed and well-performed show opening with a vigorous version of the celebrated and oft. covered Pressure Drop and they preceded to play there entire back catalogue and with the best audience I’d seen all Glastonbury – singing every syllable of every song with immense energy and excitement. They also included a cover of John Denver’s famous Americana Classic ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’, but changing the lyrics from ‘West Virginia take me home’ to ‘West Jamaica take me home’, and to great effect with the entire audience (mostly non Jamaican) singing along. They then played Monkey Man, known to most by The Specials cover, and they then closed with a lively version of all-time Reggae Classic ‘5446 That’s my Number’, and what a performance it was, and I’d never been apart of an audience bouncing with such valor and fearlessness.
Having grown up to the raucous yet tender Motown and RnB sounds of Stevie Wonder (but not the wishy washy ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ stuff) seeing him grinning like a schoolboy while falling about on stage with a melodica and diving into thumping renditions of his classics was simply too good to be true (nearly another tear jerker). He played everything from ‘Once in my Life’ and ‘Superstition’ to ‘Sir Duke’ and ‘Signed Sealed Delivered’ followed by a heart-wrenching cover of Michael Jackson’s (who died exactly 1 year earlier) ‘Human Nature’. Not only did Stevie offer us a powerfully emotive and tender performance, he also spoke his mind on certain issues including equality and Racism, and luckily he was in the right place to do so, receiving great cheers from the hippy audience. He also provided great moments of humor, and my personal highlight of the entire performance was his rendition of ‘Fingertips II’, his first ever release (at only 12), and in order to perfect this wonderful song (my personal fav) live at the age of 60 he used a helium balloon to reach the high notes… wow, and not to mention some of the greatest harmonica playing I’ve ever seen. I don’t of then use the word genius, but for Stevie I’ll make the acceptation, a performer like no other and a songwriter above all the rest!
I could not have thought of a more perfect way to end a perfect festival than seeing Four Tet in the dance village. As a DJ, he profoundly changed my ideas on style and what songs work together in a mix (often mixing Jazz, Folk and world music with house, dubstep, ambient and other electronica styles). Due to Stevie playing the pyramid (which is a gazzilion miles from the dance village) I only managed to catch the latter half of his set, where he dropped Joy Orb’s rmx of his own Love Cry, of his fantastic ‘There is Love in You’ (which I’ve just bought on limited edition vinyl.. yay!), a soulful yet unknown 90’s house track and closed off with the extended version of ‘Sing’. A magnificent way to end a magnificent festival!
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