One of the few unfortunate things about our American sojourn this year is that Glastonbury Festival is happening whilst we’re away. I love Glastonbury, and love the festival - have done since time immemorial, both before and after actually going to the festival a few times in the 90s. The unfortunate thing about being outside of the UK when the festival is happening is that I don’t have access to all the wonderful footage of the festival captured by the BBC via the Beeb’s iPlayer, as without a VPN iPlayer refuses to co-operate, and I don’t have ready access to a machine (and connection) that are truly VPN-friendly. So I will have to leap onto iPlayer the moment I get home and watch as much of it as I can before the footage is removed (typically 28 days after it goes up - I will have four or five days in which to do this by the time we get home).
I confess, I am bewildered at some of the commentary about the festival. A lot of it is, of course, born purely of snobbery (“It’s not real music” being a particular favourite - I’m always very wary of individuals who attach the word ‘real’ to pretty much anything, especially music). Glastonbury has always showcased the popular music of the day; some, looking back at the more rock-oriented bills of yesteryear, may think the festival ‘sold out’ and went mainstream, but that’s ignoring the fact that the majority of acts that have appeared at the festival were part of the mainstream at the time. It’s a shame, but if your preferred listening lies outside the mainstream, then overall you’ll probably think that the festival doesn’t represent your tastes particularly well, but - as with most festivals - there’s plenty of non-mainstream stuff happening, it’s just not the stuff that tends to get the most media attention, which is exactly what you’d expect. Short of expecting Auntie Beeb to stream everything that happens on every stage over the course of the long weekend, I don’t know what could reasonably be done to cover the myriad non-mainstream acts that appear at the festival every year, and of course that’s not going to happen, because if it did the ticket holders would - quite rightly - be up in arms about it. So the choice is to enjoy what the Beeb shows of the festival, or not. If you choose not to, great - I just wish those who fall into this category wouldn’t clutter up my socials moaning about how the festival (of which they’re seeing perhaps 5-10% at best) is terrible and how if you’re enjoying it you must be mentally ill, 10 years old, middle class, on drugs, have appalling taste, or be “the worst kind of woke leftie moron”. Yes, depressingly, every last one of those descriptors has been culled from comments to friend’s posts I’ve seen posted on Facebook in the last 24 hours.
But that’s not all. I find it especially depressing when other musicians get involved in the mud-slinging too. One particularly charming self-righteous prick spent a good chunk of his afternoon moaning about “backing tapes” and made that a particular misgiving he had about the festival. Sure, some bands - by no means all - do use backing tapes or triggered/programmed music in their set. Many, many bands do this as a matter of course, everyone from Porcupine Tree to Roger Waters, Metallica to Nightwish, from Kylie Minogue to the Pet Shop Boys… musicians use backing tapes. It’s a fact of life. I would love to be so self-righteous that I would find any act using them to be ‘ersatz’ (hollow and emotionless, essentially, for anyone who hasn’t swallowed a thesaurus), but I bet if you asked any fan of the musicians mentioned above and the thousands of others who’ve using backing tapes if they felt the resulting performances were in any way lacking truth or emotional power, they would tell you to get in the sea. (I was proud of myself there - I wrote two or three responses to that thread and deleted them all before posting. I mean, life’s too short, and I do like the aforementioned self-righteous prick’s band as a matter of fact, so I shall just put this one down to philosophical differences, but… wow. It never fails to amaze me the limits that people place on their own enjoyment of music, or indeed any entertainment media (see previous rant about the reactions to Star Wars: The Acolyte, come to think of it).
The rest of us can get on with enjoying Glasto for what it is, not for what it is not. I’ve managed to watch a few single-song clips on YouTube as a taster of sorts, and as a result am already keen to see sets from PJ Harvey, Heilung, Dua Lipa, Paloma Faith, Coldplay, Bloc Party, Justice, NewDad, London Grammar, Orbital, Avril Lavigne, Jessie Ware, Sleaford Mods, The Streets and many others (I’ve mostly kept this list to acts I can confidently expect to be featured in the Beeb’s coverage; there are of course many others I would have loved to see who are very unlikely to be covered by the Beeb - like the wonderful Violetta Vicci, for instance). Yes, I’m quite omnivorous when it comes to music; I’ve never really tied myself to a scene or bought into the myth that if you like metal you have to hate pop music, or vice versa. What I listen to doesn’t define me. There are no borders here, as Jane Siberry might say.
I remain confused as to why people insist in responding to posts written by people who are really enjoying the coverage of Glasto, only to tell everyone who might be listening how awful they think it all is. We should all be less tolerant of indulging that kind of twaddle. I mean, really - if you hate it all that much then by all means let the hate flow through you, to borrow from Sheev Palpatine. Just do the rest of us a favour and keep it to yourself. Let the rest of us enjoy it in peace, yeah?
1 Comment
No posts
When you get back check out the ’Confidence Man’ Glastonbury set on iPlayer - I think it’ll be right up your street Dave, if a little ersatz! ;o)