My intention was to write all about my impressions of our excursion to Glastonbury Fayre as soon as I’d cleaned the mud off my wandering boot heels. But then – lo and behold, and thanks to the wondrous Helga – the first video of The Last Men Standing playing our song “Taste The Blue”. So I’m going to share that with you all for now and the commentary will have to wait until later.
Click here for all the fun of The Fayre
The secret word is Blue
In truth, it was far easier to get into East Berlin out of my mind on heroin and amphetamine than it was to enter the hell-pits of Glastonbury. With the most honourable exceptions of the site drivers, the stage crew, a woman named Becky and one or two individual acts of kindness and common-sense, I have never, ever, encountered so
ReplyDeletemuch intransigent incompetence and inept stupidity masquerading as 'organisation and administration'. The Spirit of 71 was the laudable idea of generous and good-hearted people, but it had no relevance to, and certainly no place in, what Glastonbury has become.
Sadly I totally agree with you. I was also shocked by the incredible overcrowding.
ReplyDeleteAhh well - you survived the corporate hell-hole that was Glastonbury 2011..!
ReplyDeleteI watched some of it on the box ;))
It was a good set, glad you liked my pic enough to use it on your blog;)
ReplyDelete"Slim" Tim's songs needed harmonica, obviously:)
If I walked into a party and "Taste the Blue" was being played on the record player I'd take a belt from my flask knowing we were all going to have a real good time together. I like it.
ReplyDeletePass the flask Mr. Beer. I agree.
ReplyDeleteI think All of Dr. Crow kicks serious ass. Mick your band could back anyone on the this planet and a few others and make them sound great. Andy for supreme ruler.
ReplyDeleteI agree too and when you put Mick Farren in front of this musical force, magic ensues
ReplyDeleteWith the perspective endowed by 72 hours, it’s impossible to read my condemnation of Glastonbury without being reminded of the outraged rantings of “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, an apocryphal apoplectic figure personified by Private Eye along the lines of ‘Sir Bufton Tufton Gussett (ret’d), KFC, G&T and bar (propped)’. While of undoubted therapeutic value for me, it tells nobody anything about the event it excoriates.
ReplyDeletePerhaps one day science will succeed in isolating the gene responsible for compelling every generation that’s approaching its exit from every successive Modern World to fulminate against the perceived disintegration of the social, moral and idealist principles that underpinned the balmy glow of its own formative years. Our own input largely escaped the threshing machine responsible for the slaughter of millions of our immediate forefathers (and still continues to exact too high a toll on our own descendants worldwide), so the accidental timeslot of our births means that we’re more numerous and more vociferous: whether we have anything more useful to say is very doubtful.
There is of course no reason, and certainly no obligation, for the good folk of Glastonbury to have any interest in ‘The Spirit of 71’, and even if any purport to do so, I suspect it’s with the same dutiful feigned politeness and fidgety irritation that we displayed as own elderly relatives wittered on about the 1920s, flappers and the Charleston, while we longed to get back to our Elvis records and the tricky task of locating the sibilant joys of 208m MW on our transistor radios (possibly a British frame of reference, lost on others). The only trait they share with us is the absolute certainty that even if by some unimaginable mysterious trick of fate they actually do grow old, they will never, ever bleat on about the past the way their parents do.
Anyway, I’ve had a few ideas of my own for Glastonbury 2021 that I must remember to put down for posterity. The gold-plated pyramid stage will hover 50 feet (sorry, metres) above the hallowed ground, tethered to a Virgin Star-ship that’s projecting coloured lasers along the paths of the converging ley-lines. As the sun rises on the Summer Solstice, giant holograms of John Lennon and Michael Jackson will materialize, performing a duet of “We Are the World”, backed by the massed choirs of Half-a-Century- of-Golden-Greats led by Baroness Winehouse, conducted by Sir Liam Gallagher. Hired Chinese Air Force jets will carpet-bomb the site with genetically modified red, white and blue Neva-Die roses, and two hundred thousand of the faithful, holding aloft burning £500 notes, will fall to their knees in obeisance to the First Lord of Glasto, EA-VIS . . . . . . . . . . . . (apparently, it’s time for my medication).