Here Comes The Night Time

Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, 23-27 June 2014

This was my fourth Glasto in total, and the first time I’d done two years in a row, so I totally felt like I had the hang of it by now. But the weather odds did not feel like they’d fall in my favour. With a past ratio of two sunny to one wet, it felt like this was going to swing towards the 2007 swamp fest. But while there was definite moments of misery based around the inescapable fact that I Was Standing In The Pissing Rain, I’d say this was the best one yet, if not for the weather then for everything else.

This year, we went swank. Worthy View lies up two big hills to the south of the site. I knew we were going to arrive to a pre-erected tent, but they even had minions to carry our bags for us. That combined with only being parked 10 mins from our pitch meant most of the standard first day misery did not occur. And the tent was so big I could stretch my ridiculous legs out no problems. That's never happened before, and I found myself scrunching into a sleeping ball out of habit. Miraculously I managed to find my way back to our clone tent every night with relatively little disruption to our neighbours. There’s a brilliant feeling on the first day when you get past the travel fatigue - it always feels like the week stretches out in front of you forever and the end is barely visible.

That said, one of our absent companions said that Thursday is the best day, and I have to agree. No commitments, no schedule, no horrendous journey or anything to deal with other than whatever your legs carry you to. We spent the evening up by the giant Glastonbury sign before pushing our way around Shangri-La with 99% of the rest of the festival. The heaven/hell theme from last year has stayed, with the previous corridors and alleyways being replaced by a dozen or so mini tower blocks. One of them was a nightclub where you could only gain access if you climbed up the wall, and even then they only let you in if they liked the look of you. A lot of people got pushed off the 5 metre drop to the floor. Naturally people just stood around and filmed the falls on their phones. It was all drunken hilarity until someone dressed as a monkey in a suit stuck his head out window and scared the shit out of us.

Friday arrived with the forecast rain which thankfully cleared up by the time we gathered for the “Surprise Act”. Which turned out to be Kaiser Chiefs. Who were already playing that evening. Great. Moving on, Blondie played enough hits to make it a big singalong, Debbie Harry pulling all manner of shapes in her symmetrical wig. I wish I saw more of Deltron 3030, with their full band, choir & orchestra, especially as it didn’t look like it was filmed. But what I did see was catchy as hell.

Haim were back after two triumphant shows at last year’s festival, and although their setlist hasn't changed all that much in a year, they had lost none of their foul mouthed banter. Then came the rain again. Lots of it. And lightning, lots of that too, so much so that the Pyramid & Other stages had to be shut down. So an eerie silence hung around the fields as people either ran for cover or just sat out in it and accepted their fates. I was somewhere in the middle, too lazy to go back and change but too angry to just stand there like a soaking twat.

We were rewarded for our troubles with a Double Rainbow stretching the length of the site and a beautiful set from Elbow. Their guitar-based start-of-album-campaign singles really don’t do justice to the brooding epics that make up the majority of their catalogue. I got the shivers, and it wasn’t just down to being soaked through to my socks. Grounds For Divorce delivered a mighty riff felt right up to the back of the hill, and One Day Like This was the big singalong you expected it to be.

I basically owe Arcade Fire the job I’ve had for the last six and a half years. It was enthusing about their 2007 Glasto set that showed my employers the passion for music I had, which clearly there in larger amounts than any kind of work experience. So they took a risk, and it obviously paid off otherwise I would have left/been given the boot a long time ago. I’d missed Arcade Fire on the Suburbs tour and had initial misgiving about some of the excesses of Reflektor, but I had an inkling their headline set was going to be special.

I’m going to go out on a limb - their Friday night Pyramid set is probably the best thing I’ve seen at any festival, ever. It flew by, the combination of fireworks, theatrics and multi-multi instrumentalists coming to together to provide an overdose for all the senses. Bits of it are still echoing through my head now. It’s hard to pick just one song as a highlight, it was a series of highlights. Perhaps it could be Keep The Car Running as I thought they’d ditched it from their performances. The New Order sample in Afterlife was a great touch too. But mainly it was all down to being in this huge crowd of people, all united in adoration for this band of lunatics. To describe some of what went on could easily sound like art school excess, but it worked. It all worked. I’m still in awe. And I’ve no idea who or what will top that.

Buoyed by a fantastic previous night and a more forgiving forecast for the last two days, Saturday began with a lesson spiky pop from Charli XCX. Only 21 and already a co-writer of two number one singles, she feels like she’s already conquered a large section of the universe. I Love It was always going to get the biggest reaction, and why not? It’s one of the best pop songs in years. An added treat was her first attempt at an Iggy Azalea-less Fancy which made me dance like you only can when pissed at 1pm. Away from the collaborations, her songs are laced with hooks and catchy as hell. She looked like she was having the time of her life, and so did we.

Kelis is responsible for one of my other favourite festival moments - her set at 2010 Big Chill was an unforgettable combo of electro and trouser wine. But she’s never one to do the same thing twice, so the beats are out in favour of a soul revival. And she totally carries it off - a vision in a flowing pink dress with a tight unit of musicians around her. Beginning and ending with Feeling Good, it was great to hear the old tracks re-worked, especially Get Along With You. Acapella sounded amazing, but then it always does.

I ended up stumbling across the BBC Radiophonic Workshop performing music from the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, among other things. It was a charming meeting of polite old men and reel-to-reel tape machines. Later on, John Grant brought the beard and the dry wit, and Bryan Ferry took fucking ages to get to the hits. The Brothers helped. Then the Brothers hindered. 7% cider can give and it can take away.

Sunday is always going to be a struggle, so when you’re cage-fighting a comedown from a week of excess, of course sharing a Dolly Parton set with 100,000 others is going to do the trick. She performed the Benny Hill theme on sax and described her family as “a bunch of horny hillbillies”. Beautiful insanity.

I didn’t really pay enough attention to anything else until a festival-closing set from Disclosure, who have been responsible for some of my favourite tunes from the last year. Ed Macfarlane came out and thrusted in all sorts of directions like you knew he would, and he was followed by several other guest vocalists until a triumphant Sam Smith at the end for Latch, which was a massive singalong.

On the walk back up the hill to our site, everyone was turning around at the top of the hill to take one last look across the valley. Lights were still on all over the place to entertain crowds with far more stamina than I possessed. Someone next to me struck up conversation and we swapped stories about what we’d been up to for the last few days. It ended on an agreement - “same time next year?”

This was another week of unforgettable memories. Glastonbury remains the greatest show in the galaxy and the time of our lives.

WTF WUR U BIN AT???

So, two years later and all that. I don’t really know what happened. In the autumn of 2012 I went to six gigs in close succession and tried to review all of them, but I could barely string a sentence together. Even going to Glasto 2013 couldn’t get a review out of me. Perhaps Twitter has fucked my concentration span, but here we are, typing again. Last year I was very fortunate to leave the country five times, and I already have posts coming together for the Norway and France jaunts, so hopefully they’ll appear soon, among others. Or I could just show up in 2017 making more excuses. LET’S FIND OUT TOGETHER.