Glastonbanter

Hello, my first blog posting in about 18 months, I’m afraid it’ll probably be a one off but just wanted to write a wee summary of the lovely weekend I spent with friends in a field in Somerset.

Lineup

Dave, Jenny, Macca, Sam, Greg, Gav, Edd, Jamie Smith & Indie Martin, with a special guest apearance from Indie Willie

Best Entrance

Not much competition here, with 99.9% of bands shambling on stage, however the exception (and hence the existence of this award category) was The Flaming Lips. The sight of the band emerging from a giant flashing vagina, followed by Wayne Coyne in a large plastic bubble (which appeared to have been an egg laid by the aforementioned vagina) zorbing on top of the crowd, takes some beating.

Best Band

A few choices here, Flaming Lips in contention again (Great fun), The National (Solid, high quality Rock n Roll), Phoenix (Got the weekend started), but the winner has to be… Thom Yorke. Pretty special moment to see him play a bit of slap bass up on the Park stage. And Jonny hit those first few beats of Idioteque you knew something special was happening. All this was after we’d wound Greg up that Thom Yorke was going to be playing a secret gig, it turned out true in the end. Brilliant.

Worst band

Not often best and worst band is won by the same person, but Thom Yorke’s hair band? Absolutely shocking. I appreciate Wimbledon is on at the moment, but surely there’s no excuse for it…

Photos here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/2010/photos/thomyorke/

Worst Moment

Being told after 4 hours of driving that “You still have a long wait ahead of yous. A really long wait.” By a man in a Rangers strip is never a good moment. But the drive was quickly forgotten once we arrived and got that first cider in. The worst moment of the week was every day at about 8.30 waking up in a sauna, no matter how late you went to sleep the night before. Then getting out of the tent only to find it’s just about as hot out there and it wont cool down for another 10 hours.

Best Food

Lot’s of vegan, fairtrade and exciting food on offer. The Thali cafe curry was delicious but nothing comes as close to what happened about 5 and half hours into our drive. An enterprising Mcdonald’s managerhad sent staff out to the roadside with a trayful of Mcflurry’s. Never has a tub of frozen fat tasted so good. Now that’s capitalism.

Best Newcomer

Edd Read was a late addition to the lineup, meeting the London boys on the bus over. Added an extra dimension to the banter.

Worst Tip-off

Crystal Castles at 2am at the Glade. Told to Sam by the head of Unversal music.

Best Nap

Given the heat of the weekend, the John Peel tent became a stanard nappig location, and the heat on Saturday afternoon was unbearable. Myself, Jenny, Sam and Jamie had a fantastic nap to some very loud rock n roll from cymbals eat guitars. After the 2 hours of sleep we’d had the night before, nothing was going to wake us!

Best Video

Edd Read captured a great moment, when he noticed a cameraman getting quite agitated watching the England game on his monitor. See it here!

Worst chat

A woman in the circus field was compere for a very small stage and as we passed she was talking to precisely no-one. She managed to collar a passer-by and asked him if he was grubby, then proceeded to ask who thought they had the biggest stains on their clothes. When no-one responded and the initial person had wandered off she then asked if another passer-by if they wanted a lick of her ice cream. He obliged and then she decided she didn’t want it anymore because someone had licked it. Bizarre, awful chat.

Best chat

The most hotly contested category of the weekend, so I’m going to have to do a top 3, and I’m sure I’ve missed some out. I should warn, if anyone outside of the group that attended Glasto happens to be reading this, this is extremely niche banter.

3rd Place – Beak>to headline Pyramid Stage. Standard set of banter revolving around Beak> whipping up the crowd into a frenzy, get there early or you’ll be right at the back, do a bit of crowd surfing/moshing to Beak> and them playing a crowd pleasing set of their pop classics.

2nd Place – The “special guest” on the bill will be a Dougie Payne solo vuvuzela set. Also expanded to be a possible supergroup consisting of Dougie Payne (Bass player - Travis), Fran Healy (Lead singer - Travis), Andy Dunlop (Guitar – Travis) and Neil Primrose (Drums – Travis)

Winner – Some absolutely superb banter from Sam where he asked Greg to take a photo of him, then asked a passer-by to take a photo of the two of them, then asked the photographer if they could get a shot with him in it, so asked another passer-by to take a photo of the three of them, then asked that photographer if they could get a shot with him in it so got another person to take a photo of the four of them. This carried on for a good dozen iterations until they gathered a massve crowd, with people wanting to take the next photo. Absoutely hilarious, good, clean, harmless fun. Well done Sam – you won the weekend!