Here’s the third part of my tenth anniversary repost of the Glastonbury journal that appeared on my old website ten years ago today, with four relevant mp3s to download at the bottom. PART 3 – Friday. Most common sound heard at Glasto after a mobile phone rings: “Hello, Mum.” It rained on and off in the night. I gave up trying to stay asleep at quarter to nine, made myself a cup of tea. I had a Frusli bar for breakfast (boring but nourishing). I put on my wellies and my heavily mud spattered Diesel jeans, then went for a wash and a pee before setting off for the Welfare tent, a long trudge away. I got there early and waited while head of Welfare,…
I planned to get on the road by eleven. The drive should take less than four hours and the worst queues were meant to be from four in the afternoon onwards. But when I got up, it was wet, and getting wetter… getting organised seemed to take longer and longer (“It’s like sending someone off on a school trip” Sue said later). As I got to the point where I was actually ready, Sue suggested that I leave it until Friday as it was so wet. I refused to be tempted, finally setting off at twenty to one. I got a decent route print out from Routemaster on Sue’s laptop which I followed. The first three hours of the journey were a doddle, apart from…
I’m not going to Glastonbury this year, though, of course I know a bunch of people who are, and I’ll be avidly watching as much as I can on the BBC. So there’ll be no new entries in what has always been this site’s most-read feature, my Glastonbury diaries, the 2003 and 2009 versions of which can be found by searching the archives. It was the most-read feature on my old website too, but the links to those Geocities pages have long gone, since Geocities closed down last year, taking 38 million pages with it. Some of those pages have been archived, but when I searched for ones from my old site (which ran from 2000-2003) I couldn’t find them. However, today, just in time…
This blog has been going for ten years next week. It began in June 2000, with my extensive diary of that year’s Glastonbury festival, which also acted as my research notes for the Glastonbury novel Festival, which was published the following year. My Glastonbury diaries (there were subsequent ones last year and in 2003 – you can find them in the archives) have always been the most read pieces on the site. Sadly, for its first three years, the site was on Geocities, rather than my own domain, and their archives are no longer accessible. This week, I’m going to dig around amongst some old back-up discs and see if I can find those original posts and put them back up here. No Glastonbury diary…
I first saw Jackie Leven more than 30 years ago, at the Ad Lib club in Nottingham, fronting his band, Doll By Doll. I’d just bought their debut album, which I thought was staggeringly good, and dragged my new girlfriend and a visiting mate along. That album Remember consists of six tracks of blistering, rock music and a gorgeous ballad, Janice, which I adored (still adore). The Ad Lib DJ obviously adored it too. He played the track no less than five times before the band came on. It is never a good idea to play music by the band who are about to appear and, sure enough, in revenge, Doll By Doll didn’t play the song that night. Never mind, they played a visceral,…