Day 52: "Q Glastonbury Jukebox" - Various Artists (2005?)
I find economies of scale interesting. There was a time, as has been evidenced by the stickers on front of some of my CDs, that people including myself happily paid £15 for a new release on CD. The most recent CD purchase I made, which was Arcade Fire's new album, also cost me £14. Some time between those points, the beginning of the domination of CDs as the format of choice, to their destruction at the hands of Spotify, mp3s and iTunes, the cost of producing CDs was so small that people were giving them away like candy. For example, on the front of music magazines.
I have approximated the track list as best I could here
On a side note, remember music magazines? The rise of the internet has changed the landscape of being a music fan a great deal since my teenage years. I never bought lots of music magazines, but long before you could find out anything you wanted with a quick trip to Google, I had been known to buy the odd copy of Kerrang! or NME or Q, especially during the lead up to Festival season.
Often this was the best and sometimes only way to get a sense of what the lineup was going to look like before you bought your ticket. I look at the process now, with people buying Glastonbury tickets 10 months in advance with only one or two barely-confirmed acts on the lineup and I wonder how people do it. I'm fairly certain that I bought my Glastonbury camping ticket in 2000 only 3-4 months before the event, at which point I knew for certain the majority of the headliners for both the Pyramid and Other Stages. Not that Glastonbury itself doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. The festival at Worthy Farm is without a doubt the best festival experience I've ever had, and to this day I entertain visions of going back there each year - what I really want to do is take my partner along too, as she's never been to a festival before, but the fact she is a teacher makes the timings very awkward. Not to mention the impossibility of getting tickets these days.
I don't know what it is about music festivals that makes me giddy and excited. The appeal isn't immediately apparent for a lot of people, especially considering the British weather can often lead to festival conditions like the ones shown on the cover of the CD. When I came back from T In The Park in 1998, I threw away every item of clothing I had taken, including two pairs of Doc Martin boots, as they were all ruined. At Leeds in 1999, we bought painters overalls from a hardware store, took them with us, and when the deluge turned the festival site into a swamp, walked around in those overalls with plastic bags tied around our shoes. The campsites are incessantly loud all hours of the day and night to the point where sleep is often impossible unless you are some significant level of inebriated, which is convenient, because everyone always is. The festival attendee experience is climbing out of a tent into a damp, muddy field, and wondering whether the water on the side of your tent is rainwater or some drunk's pee from the night before, then opening a beer at 9am.
It's hard to imagine why people spend close to £200 for a weekend of being put in that position, but honestly, the only reason I don't still do it is because going on your own when you're 41 isn't as fun as it is when you're 22, and my partner's expensive holiday tastes keep my frivolous overspending on three day opportunities to get trench-foot to a minimum. If you're reading this and you've never been to a music festival, I honestly can't recommend it highly enough.
Since this is a Glastonbury themed CD, I thought I'd share a couple more Glastonbury stories from my one visit to that fine English institution. Myself and Alex went to our Glastonbury in 2000 with my friend Libby, and her flat-mate Rob; it's a fair old drive from Chesterfield to Somerset, especially with 4 people and all their camping gear. We elected to do it in Libby's car, which was one of these.
Roomy and comfortable and definitely not a terrible idea!
Into this tiny box on wheels we crammed 3 tents, all our camping gear, food, and our body weight in alcohol each. We were so tightly packed in that me and Alex in the back seats were decorated head to foot with bags and boxes. Spirits were generally high, so we didn't mind very much, and as we approached the festival site and the traffic slowed to a crawl as people queued to park, the car behind us stopped paying attention and rammed - not particularly forcefully, but noticably - into the back of Lib's car. Somehow, we were all so tightly packed together that after inspecting the damage, the only thing that was broken was a single handle off a ceramic coffee mug.
I've already told the story of what happened just after we arrived. We'd also met up with Rob's friend Mark, who had (as was the custom at the time) jumped the fence to avoid paying, and was staying at our campsite. Mark was the stereotypical image of the kind of yuppie bro who went travelling during his gap year before university, the British version of some kind of California beach hippie, and came out with the most ludicrous statements while drunk and high, which is also the only version of him we experienced all weekend.
Mark was particularly amazing to observe when he was obviously trying to impress Libby with how deep and meaningful and amazing he was. There was an evening where we were all be sat around the small fire in our campsite (not the kind of thing that happens any more, I understand) and he'd talk about all his amazing ideas for things and how the world should work while Alex and I shared looks and tried not to laugh out loud out of politeness. As the evening wore on, Mark's statements, and obvious need to impress grew harder and harder to avoid laughing at. When the strains of a guitar being played drifted over from another campsite, someone said it was a shame we hadn't brought any instruments with us. Mark perked up immediately.
"No, it's cool. I brought my didgeridoo".
I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep a straight face if I actually saw it happen, so I retreated back into the tent Alex and I were sharing to get some more beer. I saw Alex look back at me from the mouth of the tent as I heard the clattering from Mark's tent when he exited. Alex, barely holding himself together, also ducked back into tent just in time for me to hear a sound best compared to a flatulent duck farting endlessly into a megaphone.
I knew if I laughed, we'd be heard. Alex knew too. We both desperately tried to hold ourselves together, but as the intermittent death throes of a congested elephant echoed around our campsite, I collapsed into a fetal position and laughed, silently, until tears streamed down my face and my stomach and face hurt. It it, to this day, still the single funniest thing I've ever been witness to.
The following night, I went to see Nine Inch Nails, and other people went off to go and see other bands - Chemical Brothers, I think? I don't remember. As a result, I was left after the gig finished to wander back to the camp site on my own and wait for the others to get back. It wasn't until around 1am that Alex stumbled back into the camp. I said hi, he said "I'm just getting something", went into his tent, came out with a 4 pack of Cider, and walked back off again. I went to sleep/fell unconscious, and I remember vaguely Alex getting back to the tent in the early hours of the morning.
Sunday we were all a mess, but started the day with the surefire hangover cure of drinking immediately so as never to actually stop being drunk. As I had my breakfast beer, I could hear Alex rooting around in the tent, getting more and more agitated. Eventually he emerged and said "did you drink my Cider? I can't find it". I told him the story of him arriving in the middle of the night and taking it somewhere, and Alex in turn told the story of how the previous night, on his way back to the camp site, he had got lost, fallen into a ditch, been assisted by some bikers who had taken him to their camp and given him moonshine. He'd drunk this to the point to the point of complete inebriation, then deciding he needed more to drink, had walked back to the campsite, taken his cider, and walked back to the bikers campsite to keep drinking with them, a journey which in the light of day he had absolutely no memory of.
Finally, as the festival wound to a close, we started to consider our options for travel. Rather than stay until the Monday afternoon and get caught in the traffic leaving, what we decided was a far more sensible idea would be to stay up all Sunday night, pack up our tents at 6am, drive the hour to Libby's parents house, have breakfast there, and then finish the trip back to Chesterfield. The combination of exhaustion, inebriation and hangover and comedowns between the four of us made this just the worst possible decision we could have collectively made. Somehow, miraculously, we made it to Lib's parent's house, where they very patiently made us all breakfast. I remember sitting down at her parent's dining table with a full English in front of me. I remember waking up, still sat in the same chair, with the same breakfast, now stone cold in front of me, 90 minutes later, as all four of us had managed to pass out with exhaustion as soon as we'd got there. After a parently mandated further nap for our driver, Lib eventually managed to get us safely (for a given value of the word) back to Chesterfield that evening.
It was an incredible weekend, a highlight of a long season of festival attending. I saw David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails and Burt Bacharach and 20 other amazing bands. Looking back, I can't believe how stupid I was back then, yet I don't regret a single decision I made that weekend.
Oh, right, I should talk about the album a little.
The list of bands on this album is an interesting one, for sure, featuring only 3 bands I haven't seen live (Josh Rouse, Damien Rice and The Stands) and most of them at festivals. I remember seeing Stereophonics on a Friday afternoon at V97, propping up the bill for such big name acts as Hurricane #1, Geneva, and The Longpigs (you get a Record Reconstructor bonus point if you can name a song title from all 3 of those bands without Googling), and seeing Echo & The Bunnymen later than afternoon. I saw The Charlatans at Leeds '98 where they gave an sensationally bad performance, only to then be upstaged by Embrace who came out completely drunk off their faces and gave one of the worst live performances I've ever witnessed.
Every one of these songs feels like it's best enjoyed in a sunny field with a gentle, two-day drunk going on (except perhaps The Blowers Daughter, which is best enjoyed in a pitch black room filled with sadness). It made for some fun listening, but it exists in my collection, not to be played, but to remind me of how amazing some of the festival experiences I have had have been.
So go, seek out a festival. Despite everything I've said, it will be (probably) one of the best experiences you can have in a damp field.
