Some pre-Glastonbury thoughts..

Some pre-Glastonbury thoughts..

It's been a little bit of a while since I posted much at all about this years Glastonbury. I could have possibly written something about the line-up or about getting hold of our tickets or wondering about the weather: really any manner of things. But I don't actually know how this year is going to turn out and maybe in any event all that can wait for another time.

What I have been thinking about is all the the things that going to and being at Glastonbury means to me. I can't profess to be an expert in any way, shape or form about it. After all, I've only been three times. There are countless people who have been many, many more times than I have. They've probably seen it change drastically over the years and are well-versed regarding all the nooks and crannies that I've never been to or seen. Having said all that, the three times that I have been have been completely different for me each time.The first time I went with my 17 year-old daughter and her best friend, the second time I couldn't get a ticket yet ended up working a bar there and the third time (in 2013), I went solo. Possibly it's different each time anyway, but each time for me was completely unique in its own way. This time, in just a few weeks from now, I'll be going with my 24 year-old son for his very first Glastonbury and I'm sure it will be different once again.

Tied in with all of this are the reactions from friends, family and work mates when I tell them I'm going to Glasto. Sometimes I feel I should explain, or need to explain,what's so special about it, but I don't think that they really get it. It might be that it's just impossible to put it into words, but I'm going to try anyway.Here are just a few of the things (small things admittedly, but sometimes it is the small things that matter) that make it special. 

Before I go any further and to avoid any accusations of looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, I am sure that there are things about Glasto that are far from perfect and I understand that it wouldn't be everyones' cup of Earl Grey. Yet for me, here we go, in no particular order...  

The little things...

1. Being able to actually get a ticket. The excitement and the build-up and the sheer nervousness of the day(s) before they go on sale. The "will I be lucky?" feeling mixed with the "of course I won't be" pessimism. The sleepless night before and the mad refreshing of browser windows on the morning of the sale. And the sense of relief if and when you see that notification pop-up on your screen that "you have been successful in purchasing tickets" etc. (I don't really know what the exact words say as I've always been too excited.)   

2. The handpainted bins done with love and care. All unique. It would be too easy for Glasto just to stick plain, unpainted, undecorated bins across the site, but they don't. As I say, its the small things that matter. Alongside this are all the signs, hand painted in the same font. Small things matter.

3. The sheer and vast variety of music on offer. If you are a music fan in any way at all, then it's akin to a small child being let loose in a sweet shop. To stretch the analogy too far, then you can listen to enough music to make yourself sick and then still go back the next day and do it all over again.

4. The people (1). Not the punters (yet) but all the people working there; running stalls, stewarding, serving food and all matter of other things. Possibly I've just been very lucky over my three years but I've yet to really meet any of them who has been less than friendly and who has seemed unhappy to be there. Everyone (and I'm scratching my head at this point) but it's true, everyone who I have ever talked to, or asked for help or assistance or simply just dealt with has been invariably cheerful. Must be something about the place.

5. The tranquility. Now this sounds a bit odd when you are lumped together with well over 100,000 other people but every year I have been in one place or another, either walking back to the car park, or tramping along some route or another between stages when I've looked around and there is not another soul to be seen. This hasn't happened very often, but it has happened every year at least once, and when it does, then it's the quietest and most relaxing place in the world. 

6. Waking up there on your first morning and realising that you are at Glastonbury and not at home!  

7. The food. The first time I went I was fully expecting to have to survive on half-warm hot dogs and dodgy burgers. This is something that everyone who's never been asks me about (after asking about the toilets and the mud, of course). I may not have the most sophisicated palate and I am far from being any sort of foodie, but it does for me. I've never gone hungry at Glasto or been unable to find anything to eat that didn't take my fancy.

8. The people (2). I'm writing about the punters here. Now this is a bit of a tricky one, because clearly with over so many different people being together at one place at one time then there are bound to be a fair share of what could be termed knobheads. (I'm talking about arseholes who are so pissed they barge into you without a word of apology and those who ignore the bins, think that it's perfectly fine to just throw whatever rubbish they feel fit to the floor and that it's someone elses job/problem to pick it up after them. This is before I touch upon the very small number of scallies who rob from tents or pick pockets.) However that would make this list degenerate into things I don't like about Glasto and that's not what its all about. No, the vast majority of people who go to Glasto are friendly, open and always ready for a chat. There's an incredible sense of communality and shared experience that you rarely get elsewhere.

9. Arriving. Just walking through those gates for the first time feels like going home. The weight of whatever has been on your shoulders over the past days, weeks and months seems to lift like magic.

10. Bit of an unexpected one to wrap it up and something that many Glasto-goers may not agree with.  Leaving. Or the end of it all. That Sunday night/Monday morning feeling when you know it's all over and reality kicks back in. (Please bear with me re this). But...it wouldn't feel like that unless it had been so very special. And there's always going to be next year. 

There are probably another 10 or 20 or more things I could have said about Glasto; and after this year I'm sure this list will have changed again. If you've been, then you've probably got your own and they are all wholly different to these. If you haven't been then, I'm sorry, but mere words can't really do it justice!

My two books about Glastonbury, "Turn Left at the Womble" and "Left Again at the Womble", are available here in both Kindle and paperback formats;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Left-Again-Womble-middle-aged-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B00IBK2V6M   

Third (and final book in the trilogy!) all about 2014 in preparation!

            

    

Totally Shuffled-Joy Division

extracted from Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

Joy Division-Passover-Closer

I could write about how stark and industrial and the end of days that Joy Division are/were. How glass-like, ethereal and statuesque their music was. The start of a new end.  Or the end of a new start. The music of stars and galaxies collapsing. Entropy.

But…the truth is, I never really liked Joy Division. I did buy Unknown Pleasures when it first came out, due simply because it got such over the top reviews. That was it though. I listened to it over and over again and it never moved me that way I was told it would. I liked the image and the idea of Joy Division. The artwork was always better than the music-and in fact, looked like the way the music should have sounded. The idea of Joy Division appealed; they were just one of the bands where the there was a disconnect between what we were told about them and what they (in reality) were. Unknown Pleasures was the end of a new start for me. I found (and still do) the lyrics banal, a bit obvious and slightly po-faced. In their attempt to make distant music they come off as merely cold. Whilst I am not set against distant music in itself (i.e. Swans/Sunn O)))/Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the like) in the case of Joy Division what-for me-is missing is any humanity, humour or honesty that the former display.

(I had the chance to go and see Joy Division live a number of times; most notably in Preston on one of their last ever gigs. It would be expected that I may say I’ve always regretted the missed opportunity, but I haven’t. I didn’t see them. Didn’t want to and don’t think even now that I feel I lost out).   

To make matters worse-on a critical level- was the death of Ian Curtis and the raising his to the level of an idol for doomed youth. As Mark E Smith very succinctly summed it up, “There are two factories in Manchester; one makes the death of men, the other lives off the death of a man.” The best thing that happened to Factory Records (commercially) was the death of Ian Curtis and the ability of the label to wallow gleefully in the despair, whilst selling to the world over and over again the morbidity of a poor post-punk band wrapped in sub- ECM artwork and videos.

I read Deborah Curtis’ book about Ian Curtis, “Touching from a Distance” and it led me to think that he was a bit of an arse who flirted too much with right-wing imagery and basically wasn’t a very nice person. This does not deflect from the fact that he was clearly very unwell-but my reading of the book leads me to understand that he was a bit of a dickhead irrespective of his illness.

For me the best thing about the demise of Joy Division was the emergence of New Order. Would Joy Division evolved into the band that New Order became? Would they (with Ian Curtis) produce essential and special music such as Power Corruption & Lies, Brotherhood or Confusion? I wonder.     

Get /see/read "Totally Shuffled" here;

Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

Paperback http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-The/dp/149495687X

 

Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett

I think that this is probably the first time that I’ve ever posted on this blog something or anything about an artist who is totally new to me. Most of the time, as can be seen from earlier posts, I’ve put stuff on here about post-punk bands or blues musicians or obscure rockabilly singers from the 50’s. Whichever it’s been, well, I’ve listened to their music for a very long time, possibly years and years, and although I may love it (The Fall) or hate it (Sisters of Mercy), I know what it’s all about i.e. it’s not new.

But here and now, I’m kind of breaking this habit, this rule that has sort of developed of its own accord over the past few years. And it’s all because I’ve heard something new and something that has totally blown my musical socks off.

Sometimes when you listen to lot of music-and I do listen to a lot of music- you get kind of bored. It all becomes stale and you enter that “there’s nothing new under the sun/it all sounds the same/ this is just like xxxx” mindset. At those times (and I think they are much more prevalent since the advent of the internet and the ability to really to get hold anything who want at the click of a button), I have this dread fear that I’m going to be stuck in the past listening to the same old stuff over and over again. Maybe that point will come some day. But I’m relieved to say it’s not happened yet and it’s because of Courtney Barnett. My faith in music has been restored and there’s something to get genuinely excited about once more.   

I’m writing this on a Sunday evening. I first heard this artist on Thursday evening. Less than a week ago. Four days ago; and kind of purely by chance. I was flicking through the internet on Thursday and saw her name crop up. A faint bell rang. That faint bell was with reference to an interview Emily Eavis did about the initial Glastonbury line-up for 2014 and something along the lines about “it wasn’t all about the headliners…really excited about new artists, such as Courtney Barnett.” Now I have no idea why but somehow I must have got missed up and assumed (totally incorrectly) that “Courtney Barnett” was some sort of nu-jazz/rap/poet/white bloke with dreadlocks/drippy singer-songwriter. Something like that, if you get the picture. But as I flicked through the net last Thursday tea time and saw a photo of “Courtney Barnett”, I had a sort of Homer-doh moment.

Courtney Barnett wasn’t the aforesaid public school idiot but a female singer from Australia. I had literally got it poles apart. For some reason, probably because I was a bit bored and hungry, and because she was playing Glastonbury, I thought I’d better try to listen to what all Emily Eavis’ fuss was about. I’m so, so glad I did.

She’s only released 2 EP’s so far as far as I know, both of which have been collated onto the appropriately titled, “The Double EP”. There are 12 tracks in total and these 12 tracks have been on virtual repeat in our house (and our car) since Thursday evening. Apart from when I’ve been asleep or in work or down the shops, then I’ve not listened to anything else. It’s been with me when I’ve been writing, ironing, washing up or when everyone has been watching some dross on the TV.( I must admit that I’ve listened to a bit of The Fall as well, but take that as a given.)

Do you remember the first, or the most recent, time that you got so excited by a record that you wanted to make copies of it for all your friends, or even buy them copies and give it to them as presents? The time when you hear the first few bars of a song and know that it’s just so inherently right and so special? It may be the first note of Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” or the very beginning of Prince’s “Kiss”. It doesn’t matter really what it is; we all have those special moments. Well, “The Double EP” is 12 of them. Not just the start of the songs, but the whole lot.

I’m not going to go into a massive dissection of the tracks one by one, or try to compare them to other artists. That would just spoil it for you and give you preconceived ideas. All I can say is that this is most exciting and vibrant music I’ve heard for ages and ages. And I’ve only been listening to her for 4 days as well!

I realise that all this sounds super-effusive and over-the-top. It’s not; if anything, I’ve taken a step back and tempered it all down.

I could easily have put a link to a You Tube clip of her on here, but I haven’t, for the reasons above.

Just get hold of “The Double EP”. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Two more things:

 1.If I go to see anyone playing at Glastonbury this year, then it’ll be Courtney Barnett.

2. I can’t wait to see what she will do next.

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“The Double EP” is here on Amazon; 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GCI94J2