New Music: A Belated Review of My Glastonbury Experience

Looking for some new music to listen to? In case anyone out there wondered which bands I actually managed to see at Glastonbury in amongst the hundreds of acts that performed that weekend… here is my minute by minute account.

I hope you find something new to listen to! or even just watch a video to see how enormous the crowds were. Enjoy!

Friday!

Detroit Social Club: Oasis meets the Verve… with more guitar.

De Staat: Netherlandish drum pounding and lotsa cowbell. and a lead singer often sounding like a barking dog.

Miike Snow: A Swedish tutorial in Awesome with synthesizers and Phantom of the Opera masks! Love love love them!

Tegan and Sara: my favourite Canadians enjoyed up close and personal under the shade of the John Peel tent.

Willie Nelson: 3pm at the Pyramid Stage. He played what seemed like a million songs while I stared into the blazing heat of the sun and thought I was going to die. Or at least melt away. Or become very badly burned.

Snoop Dogg: the heat immediately forgotten, from the first da da dada da of ‘the next episode’ to ‘what’s my name’ Snoop Dogg had many many thousand (mostly white) people shakin’ they booties, droppin’ it like its hot. including me. it was a surprise highlight of Glasto for me.

La Roux: Fought the crowds to get over to the Other Stage and caught the end of La Roux’s set. A bit anti-climactic after Snoop.

Florence + The Machine: Fantabulous, despite some sound troubles. I won’t try to describe it, just download Cosmic Love and listen to it so loud the drums pound in your chest. or watch the video.

Thom Yorke: Accidentally overheard his surprise set at the Park Stage while we were chilling at our tent. We couldn’t see him and the loudspeaker never actually announced him by name, but Karma Police pretty much gave it away.

Gorillaz: I just don’t get them. Luckily I suffered through enough of their set to see Lou Reed come out for one song. Wished he could have headlined instead.

Saturday!

Tinchy Stryder: he’s a very short person but fun music.

Sophie Hunger: jaw droppingly beautiful music from a relative unknown. Look her up.

Coheed and Cambria: one of the few metal bands, nice to hear some loud guitar solos. still hot hot hot today, but now I have a hat.

Imogen Heap: such a crazy talented creative lady. she played a keytar which sings her voice, beatboxed with Shlomo, and played a song on wineglasses and wears microphones on her wrists. and still sounds fantastic live.

Shakira: I passed on seeing my new fave Marina and the Diamonds for an old fave. Got to bust out some belly dance and afro dance moves.

Editors: dark creepy synth with pyro at the end. Highlight: Papillion.

Muse: note to Gorrilaz- this is what a headliner should be. over 100,000 people singing along to songs like ‘Uprising’, ‘Resistance’ and ‘Knights of Cydonia’ it felt like a revolutionary rally.

AND the Edge came out and played with them. I recognized him instantly, only from the silhouette of his handle bar mustache. The lacklustre of Gorillaz is now forgotten. I am a happy customer.

Sunday!

Dan Mangan: another Canadian. dressed up like a lumberjack, told horrible puns and wandered through the crowd leading a singalong to the refrain ‘Robots need love too’. a very magical glasto moment.

Norah Jones: a little boring. especially in the melting heat of the afternoon.

Slash: not at all boring. I felt like I was in 1988 in the video for ‘Paradise City’.

Ray Davies: not boring, but played FOR-EV-ER, I thought someone was going to have to use a cane to pull him off the stage. singing all kinds of songs that all the British knew all the words to. It was cool to hear ‘Lola’ and ‘All day and All of the night.’

Toots and the Maytals: In the interest of variety, we checked out these reggae legends at the West Holts Stage. ‘Pressure Drop’ is one of my favourite songs, but I have to say, after awhile, a lot of reggae songs start to sound the same.

Stevie Wonder: what a performer! his music is so uplifting, and the feeling in the crowd was one of such incredible pure joy and festivity, nothing like the anger and aggression of a rock concert. I’ll never forget the four dudes standing beside me, dancing their asses off, hands swaying in the air, and singing along to Stevie songs that I had never even heard before. An inspiring end to a magical weekend.

Glastonbury. Wow.

I should have written this post just after we got back, but alas other things get in the way… like planning for the parental units to make a stop in Scandinavia.

Glastonbury. Wow.

Almost all I can say.

In Edmonton we used to go to a lot of music shows. Be it a large rock show at Rexall, a sweaty punk show at Ed’s, a tiny indie band in the basement of the Starlite Room, or the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, we went to go see live music a lot. A LOT. And we never really appreciated it. We were always a little to quick to complain about the few bands that wouldn’t make it up to Edmonton. Now, having been in Umeå for a year, I can say my live music fix was well into withdrawal. WELL INTO WITHDRAWAL.

Then came Glastonbury. The biggest music festival in the world. We bought our tickets in October for the festival in June. Not knowing anyone on the lineup. We only knew we were in for 4 days of music and camping along with 177,000 other people on Michael Eavis’s farm in Somerset county England.

Part of me was scared when we first saw it from the bus window. The site was like an entire city unto itself, taking up all the space in a beautiful valley in the English countryside.

Having been to more than a few music festivals which suffered from a horrible lack of logistical planning (ie. not enough water, campsites, showers, toilet paper, price gauging for food and water etc), I was aware how nasty this 4 day stay could get.

and All I can say is WOW.

Glastonbury was so amazing. It was so well planned, organized, and executed for such a large festival. I can see why people have gone back to it year after year after year.

There was so much going on other than the music itself. There were art installations in Shangri-La and Arcadia, there were debates and poetry at the Left Field, there was a circus, a travelling band of gypsies, and an entire hippie village at the Green Fields which had the best food I ate the whole weekend along with Vegan cafes and organic soy smoothies. The site was so big it took us 50 minutes to walk from our campsite over to the John Peel tent on the other side of the festival site.

We could have spent 4 days just checking out all the non-music related stuff there, but of course, we didn’t.

We were there for the music.

And since I am writing this blogpost as I should be packing (we leave for Norway in an hour) I have decided to give a play by play of all the music and bands we saw in my next post after holidays.

so, to be continued…