Glastonbury Festival 2008
July 1, 2008 12:44 pmI lost my Glastonbury virginity in 2008, and what a pleasant surprise it was…almost.
Unfortunately, I only had the Saturday there, but armed with one bank card, a bit of cash and some wellies, I walked the 17 miles from the car park to the site.
To be honest - I can’t remember what bands we saw before 2pm, I was just agog at the size of the place - and the price of food. £5 for a styrofoam plate of chips?! I thought a super-deluxe “the works” buffalo burger looked better, but although the meat was tasty, it was about the size of a £2 coin, lost in a cold soft bun and cold relish. About the only decent food we found was an italian place doing pasta and garlic bread for £3.50 (VERY good!) and a couple of stalls down, a Cornish Goan Fish Curry place. That was nice too.
The toilets? EVERYONE mentions the toilets from the public to the bands, the comedians, the reviewers..I have to ask -you’d think that for £160, you could at least have a toilet that you didn’t have to queue 10 minutes for to look down on a stinking sea of warm piss and crap. The stench is retch-inducing. I’ll admit, Glasto is a huge technical achievement, but I can’t believe no-one has thought about making a half-decent toilet.
But the toilets are part of something which I think Glastonbury has a problem with. Glasto is THE big commercial entity - stallholders pay £10,000 for a pitch, they are forced to buy products from Glasto’s own incredibly expensive and poor quality wholesaler (lots of gripes about this), and punters pay £160 to get into a site to pay £5 for a plate of burnt chips (and I believe there might be some music or something). Which is fine - the punter takes makes that knowing choice. It’s a huge ripoff, but no-one’s forcing him to go.
HOWEVER…it seems to me that there’s a lot of business sense lacking there. There were some “private” toilets called “comfy crappers” which were £2.50 for a single piss, to £15 for an armband. The queues were huge - probably 45 minutes. And the queues at food stalls, bars and cashpoints especially were very long too.
Does no-one have a drop of business nouse these days?! Why are there queues? Surely, 4 staff can serve twice as quick as 2 staff, your pitch will pay itself off quicker, more people will be attracted to less queues. Same goes for cashpoints, commercial “comfy crapper” bogs etc.
BUT, eating and pissing wasn’t the only reason I was there. Oh no! I was there for The Wurzels!
They really rocked the packed crowd and did a brilliant set of most of their stuff, including favourites like Don’t look back in anger, I’ve got a brand new combine harvester and I am a cider drinker.
After milling around the dance and alternative fields a bit, and we headed to the comedy tent to watch Jeremy Hardy. Now, this guy is great on The News Quiz and ISIHAC, but I’m afraid his set was a bit lame. STILL doing Thatcher jokes, Jeremy?! Didn’t she go, like, 20 years ago?
He came across as being staunch but very bitter Old Labour/Socialist, but just couldn’t bring himself to do ANYTHING topical with an anti-left-wing sentiment. So we were just left with the kind of jokes which would (and did) appeal to those in the audience who looked like they hadn’t been employed for about 15 years and would be nodding when started on yet another anti-Thatcher diatribe. He kind of left us with the impression that he’d love the whole of the UK to be concreted over, painted grey, and have all the excitement that comes with a Peckham crime-rate and lifestyle. He also drooled away on the notion that the underground bombings were by completely integrated and assimilated Brits and that every single ill in the world was whity’s fault.
However, the tent redeemed itself an hour or so later when a BRILLIANT Mitch Benn set had everyone in hysterics. Although I’d heard quite a few of his songs before, I never realised what a great visual comedian he was too, and he managed to combine a stonking comedy routine with a genuinely superb musical talent.
We had something good to see in the evening, we decided to go and see if Amy Winehouse could drag her sorry pathetic arse to the stage BEFORE collapsing in a pool of vomit. After all, despite making it to the site, Pete Doherty couldn’t stay unwasted long enough to actually perform, and was replaced by Franz Ferdinand.
Anyway, we found ourselves in a corner of the pyramid stage field about 15 minutes after Whorehouse started. It was pathetic. She was slurring her words, and in between, no-one could hear a word of what she was saying it she was so off her tree. Quite a few people were drifting away to go and see something good instead, as did we, leaving Winehouse to punch a fan, fall off stage, and not finish her set after being led away.
The Guardian (sponsors of the festival) described it as a “gutsy performance”.
Night fell, as we wussed out and went home to Watch Jay-Z live on the telly. To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected at all, so I stand corrected on the Jay-Z issue!
Anyway, all in all it was a great day, thoroughly enjoyed it.
