FESTIVAL!
by Ian R. Thorpe
First posted at Boggart Blog: 2005-06-23
Festival come and festivals go but Glasonbury seems to exist outside time and space.
Hair band, check. Joss - sticks, check, purple kaftan with gold moon and stars motif, check. Che T-shirt, check, Joke Prince Charles ears, check. Bog roll, check. Another bog roll, check.
I'll just get the brownies out of the oven, I love the smell of hash brownies in the morning…
Its Glastonbury time again. Even though Glasto has gone corporate it is still a great gig. Three days of sex and drugs and rock and roll. YeaaaaaaaH!
Wonder who will be the surprise last minute addition to the line up this year? Van Morrison, Jimmy Page, Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen or Chas and Dave. I'm joking right. No, people are nodding their heads around here. Alongside Basement Jaxx, George Galloway (yes the George Galloway), The Seriously Depressing Fuckers (aka Coldplay) those monsters of Cockneyrock Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock will be taking their place on the main stage.
OKOK, I already admitted Glasto ain't what it used to be. Entry to the site is controlled, the toilets are - well toilets rather than holes in the ground, the food is hygienically prepared and the line-up is anodyne.
Maybe I should give Chas and Dave a chance, they have been redefined you see as groundbreaking rockers who nearly invented gangsta rap. And there was I thinking they were a harmless comedy act. (I did get a bit pissed off when one journo compared them to the great Ian Dury but by and large they're harmless.)
In a way the modern Glastonbury is very very British. Sure those glow in the dark neck rings have replaced kiss me quick hats, veggie burgers are more popular than fish and chps, the various tents have replaced the end of the pier show and couples dance naked in the stone circle rather than strict tempo in the Palais de Danse. But in a very old fashioned and very British way pleasures are tempered with misery. The orgiastic all night party is tempered with the morning queue for the foul smelling communal bog. The memory of seeing your favourite act ever is made less vivid by the fact that for two hours you stood in a torrential downpour among thousands of other unwashed folk, inhaling their body odour, rancid breath and beer farts for the privilege of seeing a few tiny figures cavort of a stage in the far distance.
We must not enjoy ourselves too much lest we lose touch with reality.
Glastonbury is no longer the life changing experience it was. Maybe it never truly has been, except for that poor sod about seven years ago in the days of when the toilets were still a hole in the ground with some tarps draped round for privacy. Apparently this guy went for a dump while totally off his face and due to drug impaired balance fell off the communal squatting pole. They say he is still getting counselling for post traumatic stress.
What the uptight middle class corporate types who now run Glastonbury do not understand is the same things as made it squalid and tawdry made it good. OK, the toilet facilities were rudimentary. Communal crapping may have been abhorrent to the prissy but a couple of sessions of synchronised straining developed a sense of camaraderie that has stayed with us all. "People who shite together unite together", the sentimental might say. At any rate, having shared the most levelling experience known to humanity we are all less likely to be judgmental about our fellows.
But I wonder, with all of this year's corporate changes, the efforts of managers to impose order on chaos and the dodgy line up, is it really worth the effort. Well…
"I've got my beer in the sideboard here,"
Extract from The Sideboard Song,
copyright (c) 1979 Hodges, Peacock
"But I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.
If he comes round here, I've got my beer,
Let Mother sort it out in the sideboard here,
Got my beer, let Mother sort it out,
I don't care if he comes round here..."
Kate Wellham in the Daily Telegraph gives us a timely heads up in If its not festive season it must be festival season Yes, Festival season will soon be upon us again. Glastonbury Festival More festivals Chas and Dave The key to the songs Mean Fiddler Boggart Blog Daily Keep up with our daily posts of crazy humour and topica satire
