Glastonbury
Kathryn Reilly
Queen of the earworm Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson has had quite the summer, capturing imaginations and sparking indignation. The brazen hussy has the audacity to wear what the hell she likes while belting out her stream of catchy country-pop, life-affirming hits. She’s in your face, unapologetic and going absolutely nowhere.Little surprise, then, that in doing so she has incurred the wrath of a multitude keyboard warriors. The BBC has had to turn off live commenting during some of her festival performances. The woman has had the temerity to not follow the narrative, and not to shape herself to Read more ...
caspar.gomez
MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown rings. He looks peaky.“Why?” I enquire. Sweat nodules down my face, my body, everywhere. So saline-intense it leaves powdery white steaks.“My eyes,” he replies, “They’re wobbling about.”We pull over in Cannards Grave, a Somerset hamlet named for a thieving 17th century publican hanged here. Every third car passing contains battered detritus from the annual Worthy Farm pilgrimage.“You don’t look too good yourself,” says Finetime.“I’ll be fine.”But will I? Inside of my head Read more ...
caspar.gomez
SUNDAY 30th June 2024It’s late. But not really. Not by the standards of this place. Photographer Finetime and I are in Block9 in the South-East Corner. The so-called “naughty corner”. We take turns juggernauting quomble off a pinecone. Finetime’s right eyelid is twitching. This tic developed today. Nearby is a gigantic head. About the size of a large Victorian house. It’s at an acute angle to the ground. Instead of eyes it has a kind of welders’ mask blitzing white-noise light. Like the haunted, detuned television in the 1982 film Poltergeist.We all know what happened to the little blonde Read more ...
Bill Bailey: Thoughtifier, Brighton Centre review - offbeat adventures with a whirling, erudite mind
Thomas H. Green
I first saw Bill Bailey at least 30 years ago in the cabaret tent at Glastonbury Festival, the audience lying on hessian matting, a fug of hash smoke in the air. He seemed one of us, a bug-eyed, Tolkien-prog hippy with a stoned sense of humour and charged musical chops. A lot of water under the bridge since then. Animal rights champion. Won Strictly Come Dancing. Mellow middle-of-the road chat-show regular. Cuddly national treasure status approaching. Even recently told The Guardian he’d forgiven Bryan Adams his multiple musical atrocities. No way, dude. No way. And yet, and yet… at 59-years- Read more ...
caspar.gomez
TUESDAY 27TH JUNE 2023I wake up around 11.00, get outta bed around 12.00.My carcass has been ridden over by Immortan Joe’s entire fleet of vehicles from Mad Max: Fury Road. My inner head has been scooped out like a cantaloupe. Where my brain once resided a blistered, reddened, atavist lizard id sits curled in upon itself, pulling levers. I need to write. I can barely recall how to use a spoon. Maybe I have Long Glastonbury? No time for mewling. Back in…THURSDAY 22ND JUNE 2023Shepton Mallet’s behind us. So’s the A361. We’re into the leafy lanes, bustin’ the pastoral with GN’R. Don Carlton and Read more ...
Anya Ryan
And that’s it again for another year. Oh Glastonbury. A fever dream where the time of reality stops as you hop on a ride to a land of magic.Yes, it might be celebrated for its musical marvels (Elton John, surely, the set of 2023 that will make the history books) but the real wonder of the world’s greatest festival is its ability to transport you somewhere else – somewhere glorious, just for a little while. People all across the country and beyond will have watched the footage broadcast live on the BBC. But it is what they don’t see, can't see, that has the festival’s heart.In its very Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.You’ll already have seen a trillion Twittering threepenny-bit reports on Glastonbury, but you haven’t taken this trip, I promise. So stroll in, fall over, pick yourself back up, take it all in, sniff it all up, drink it all down. Let’s do this.THURSDAY 23rd JUNEFinetime, my regular Glastonbury partner and photographer, is very proud of the tent he’s bought me from Lidl. My own tent Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I have a theory about Reef. In the mid-Nineties, when the Somerset outfit appeared, they were reviled by London music journalists. This was mostly because they sounded like a hoary, unreconstructed early-Seventies blues-rock band. Those same journalists, however, were excitedly touting bands who lamely emulated Kinks-ish Sixties-ness, faux new wave, or a mixture of both (ie Britpop). So, Reef, arguably, just choose the wrong decade at the wrong time.As an electronic vanguard zealot I sneered at all retro. So, I too disliked Reef. However, cards-on-the-table, decades later my partner digs them Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is never one Glastonbury Festival. There are as many Glastonbury Festivals as there are people who attend. Thus it ever was, even back in 1992 when the capacity was only 70,000 (plus multitudinous fence-jumpers!). What follows, then, is a cross section of memories, from bands, performers, journalists, rave crews, and those behind the scenes. Some of these are drawn from extant sources (listed at the end, along with further info about participants), but most are fresh interviews, including from artists such as Primal Scream, The Orb, Shakespear’s Sister and Carter USM.The interviewees Read more ...
caspar.gomez
INTERLUDE 1: INVALID CODE-AGEDDON6.45 PM on Saturday 22nd May and all is well. Like tens of thousands of others across the UK (or maybe even more?) my wall flatscreen is tuned to Glastonbury’s livestream. Prior to the event itself promos for Water Aid and the like roll by, the kind usually on the huge screens beside the Pyramid Stage at the festival.One of my usual Glastonbury compadres, Finetime, is round, the fridge is loaded with beers, posh bottles of Bordeaux breathe by the radiator. Finetime has made his patent fiery quesadillas, timed for the 7.00 PM start. We’re going to make a right Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This week would have been peak summer event antics but not in 2020. However, the game is far from up; the punks and the metallers are making a strong show in full virtual festival force this weekend, and there's another chance to time travel to a classic Glastonbury set from 20 years ago, and a brand new show from the revitalised Mike Skinner. Dive in!Rebellion: The Online FestivalBlackpool Rebellion Festival has been celebrating punk rock for almost quarter of a century. It has played host to many of the genre’s biggest names, from The Damned to Public Image Ltd to Toyah Willcox. This year Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Coronavirus blah blah blah. Glastonbury cancelled. What to do? Didn’t go to the 2010 festival for reasons too tedious to go into. Suffered the worst FOMO of my life. This is different. There is no Glastonbury. But sitting around at home… we’ve all been doing that for months…I call Don Carlton, who has been my fellow adventurer for eight of the last 10 Glastonburys: “Hey Don, we’ve got to do something that weekend, but I don’t know what…”“I have a plan,” he says.It is Thursday 25th June 2020.T-minus two days until Don Carlton’s plan kicks in. I’ve just driven for four-and-a-half hours on the Read more ...