Glastonbury Blues




Span seems to have taken my BBC overstaffed theme and run with it, watching the BBC coverage last night (and before I had read his piece) the overstaffing issue reached new and absurd heights. Jo Whiley and Mark Radcliffe open the evening coverage before handing to Zane Lowe, who is standing in front of the empty pyramid stage where he says he will stay until Coldplay come on, he then hands over to Lauren Laverne who introduces highlights from earlier in the day. So we have the absurd situation where the wages of four people are being paid essentially so that the director can says, "Run VT."

Bizarre.

The whole ethics and 'where did it go wrong' argument that comes up every year in relation to Glastonbury can best be summed up by the set that has been built to create a sort of garden effect for chatting to guests and generally creating what upmarket boutique hotels like to call ambience.

The spirit of John Peel and Joe Strummer has been stamped into the ground, gone are the simple hay bales and rustic touches, last night we were confronted with what can only be described as an explosion at an Art College - and not a very good one at that. The apparent necessity of filling every shot with a wide angle view of tat means that thousands must have been spent on a load of old fanny. Either that on in its rush to escape Television Centre for pastures north the BBC has discovered a hitherto unknown crop of milk bottle tops from those Blue Peter appeals so beloved of a generation of 1960's schoolchildren.

On the stage(s) themselves the music has so far been its normal bizarre eclectic self, ranging from the sublime Chemical Brothers to the corporate Coldplay, the ever wonderful Morrissey to the very pompous head-up arses U2 (sorry Adam and Larry not you but the other two twats).

Tonight it's Rhyming Simon and Mrs Jay Z.

The video above is Undertow by Warpaint. Four young ladies from California who I thought were brilliant and revived the whole Vinni Reilly-Cocteau Twins-4AD vibe from the 1980's. Shannyn Sossamon directed the video, she was in the band for three years before becoming better known as Heath Ledger's object of desire in The Knights Tale.

btw - the music doesn't begin for 13 seconds, so don't think there's something wrong with your soundcard!