Glastonbury Festival is imminent. You should know this because every single stinking update on Facebook is counting down to the non-event like some mud-clogged Doomsday Clock.
People from all over the world are bracing themselves for a weekend of squinting into pixelated screens three miles from the stage, dodging hugs from Earth Mothers and ducking lobbed cups full of dog puke.
Oh, and Status Quo are on.
Glasto is a phenomenon, no question. A rampaging, all-consuming one at that. Then again, so was swine flu. Without doubt, the Glastonbury Festival envelopes every single journalist in the country like local farmhands staring at the circus truck full of freaks rolling into town. Except this truck invariably runs on maize oil and smells of a mixture of B.O. and patchouli oil.
Not that anyone lets on.
You see, ask a reveller about the spectacle and they’ll tell you one of two things. The first is to “lighten up”, which is easier said than done when you’ve got 4,000 mongs shouting “BOLLOOOOCKS!” in waves across a field full of human shit and nine guy-ropes wrapped around your leg after a dash to the overflowing cesspools at three in the morning. The second is that Glasto “isn’t a just a festival… it’s an experience, man” So is getting a punch in the mouth. So is sitting in a bus shelter getting spat at. So is taking a leak in a swimming pool.
Having attended around a dozen of Britain’s festivals, I know exactly what ‘the experience’ entails. It revolves around bumping into pissed, pink-faced lads in Stone Roses t-shirts honking their lungs up into metal bins which have been painted by local school children and trying to avoid the onslaught of humus-weaving middle class hipster mung-munchers who favour sarongs and bindhis for the weekend in an attempt to fool themselves that they’re markedly different from the rest of the world, despite the fact that they’re dressed like every other ‘burb-dwelling poindexter, numbering 40,000 at one of the world’s most commercial events.
Even if you’re going ‘for the music’, you’re still an idiot. Glastonbury is one of the most conservative musical get-togethers on the circuit. I mean, you’re telling me that The Ting Tings, Gabrielle Cilmi, Bruce Springsteen, Kasabian, Pendulum, Paulo Nutini, Tom Jones, Lady GaGa and Black Eyed Peas are anything but mainstream shite? Reading the Glasto line-up is, for the most part, like climbing inside Gary Bushell‘s iPod.
There’s even bigger fools who will say things like “You could avoid every single band at Glastonbury and still have an amazing time” which again, is a completely inaccurate myth peddled by vapid, glass-eyed camper van drivers too dreamy to wake up and smell the ?3 cup of instant coffee bought from a van pouring out acrid fumes into the Somerset sky. Glastonbury, away from the stages and tents, has lots going on, sure, but for the most part it’s the faint promise of a shower from a mobile phone company or a bloke showing you how he makes table legs with a wooden machine he’s fashioned over a decade in some futile attempt to be at one with some woolly notion in his head.
Failing that, you can encounter stall after stall of mass-produced jester hats, tacky leather wristbands and Made In An Indian Sweatshop t-shirts that say ‘Don’t Drink And Drive, Get Stoned And Fly’. Or, if you prefer, clothes made out of hemp. Which is so lame that it barely warrants a mention.
The simple matter of the fact is, that Glasto is only different from any other festival because it’s so stupidly big. The stages are so far apart that, should One Band You Like be on a different stage straight after That Other Band You Like, you can easily miss half the set as you fight your way through crowded gates, trudge through an ocean of shit and leg it as fast as you can, only to be met with an impenetrable wall of sweaty dickheads waving flags with witless slogans written on them.
Festivals are greeted with such unbridled joy because, if you face the reality of the situation you find yourself in and don’t swill booze like prohibition just got lifted, and hoover up class A drugs like a depressed prostitute, you’ll sit in a field and weep for three days straight. Glastonbury is a thoroughly miserable experience for anyone with a functioning brain or, at the very least, one working eye and one working nostril.
It’s camping… only incredibly expensive… surrounded by preening, braying dolts… soundtracked by the most average bands you ever did hear on Radio One. If you’re going, you’re probably too thick or misguided to read this article. Go away.
This was a guest blog by mighty Mof Gimmers from the equally mighty Electric Roulette. You be a square if you don’t check it, bwoy.
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Claire says
Well said Sir!
Peacockochicken says
Never a truer word spoken.
Siany says
I don’t get it. Why would I want to share a toilet with quarter of a million people? Why would I then want to stand so far away from a stage that I have to watch the performance on a huge screen?
I’m going to Secret Garden Party again this year :-) Now THAT’S a festival worth going to. And I’ll only have to share a loo with 5000 people. Win.
Julias says
Well, thanks but no thanks. I live too far away to go anyway. I hope those who do go have a good time.
Swine flu has just arrived here where I live, so I guess I have bigger cups of dog puke to dodge right now.
gilbert wham says
You, Sir, are righter than I thought it possible to be.
thoms says
Hi.
nice one and more power to your conciseness. i admit i was slow to see but got there.
GOD love you.
T.
thoms says
Hi.
good for a drug fulled shagfest but there is better for sure.
T.
thoms says
Fuck me i just learned they landfill the left over tents!! they cannot be bothered to resell, recycle or donate to poor schools etc or the homeless, or use the wonderful Greenpeace boat to take to other needy PEOPLE. they will say “it is not economical”. i hope they enjoy the money they make. then nearly all the do good Eco warriors leave the farm like the Somme. of course to me, i think there is something wrong with this picture.
T.