Glastonsaturday, Worthy Farm

First Aid Kit

Saturday 27 June

We head off to the very top of the festival site to take some early morning shots of the temporary city of Glastonbury below us, except we left camera in tent. A 30-minute walk to fetch it and then rescale the hill serves to use up the time before First Aid Kit’s set up at The Park. We watch transfixed by the harmonies that these two Swedish teenagers wearily (in a good way) sing. We also notice that Elbow’s Guy Garvey just behind us is as impressed by their definitive version of Fleet Foxes‘ ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’ as we are. We are expecting big things from them.

We’re not sure if it’s the potential for seeing a Michael Jackson tribute from Rolf Harris that has seen us arrive at the Jazz World stage; we arrived just in time for Mike Skinner leading The Streets through a version of ‘Billie Jean’ yesterday so who knows. The Aussie does indeed mention him but sticks to his own well-worn song collection, and as we slowly start to fry under the lunchtime sun and some strong cider, we’re all having a good time singing along to ‘Two Little Boys’ and ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down’. The fact that the compere introduces him by starting a chant of “When I say ‘ROLF’ you say ‘HARRIS’. ROLF” will still amuse me over a week later.

After deciding that I wasn’t going to get to Spinal Tap at the Pyramid for the start of their set, I opt for authentic Glastonbury wander. I take in more of the sights around the market place, sampling curries and other food not from the main caterers, see Tony Benn talk about the Labour party, watch some jugglers, see some tribal African dancing, don’t look at the naked children of naked hippies and sit down with a beer to watch Jeremy Hardy deliver half an hour of laughs out of the sun.

My wandering continues up to the Chess Club stage in the Greenpeace field,, for half an hour from Blue Roses. Laura Groves is fast becoming a favourite of mine and it’s a real treat to see her in such intimate surroundings so soon after Brighton’s Great Escape, when it was so packed that our feet were practically on the stage at. Her voice soars and sails through ‘I Am Leaving’, ‘Does Anyone Love Me’ and ‘Rebecca’. We humbly recommend her to anyone that’s a fan of Kate Bush, Joanna Newsom or Joni Mitchell.

The sun is getting lower but the burning sensation on the back of my neck isn’t going anywhere. I have friends to meet after they’ve been to Kasabian and Pendulum (no thanks!), and end up walking right across to The John Peel Stage. Florence and The Machine are due on; it’s under a tent top so although I’ve seen her before and been so-so on her, I go with it anyway. She looks great when she comes out in a swishy black number and proceeds to make me follow my steak pie up with a humble flavoured one. She’s on stage doing everything right, leaping and climbing the rigging for ‘Kiss With A Fist’, putting her all into ‘Girl With One Eye’ and remarkably getting a large sing-a-long to ‘The Dog Days Are Over’. She seems quite emotional at the response to it all, some of the loudest cheering I’ve heard all weekend. Depending on how well Jackson’s sales hold up this week, she may have bagged a number one album with this performance.

All day I’ve been told to go to Bruce Springsteen even though the thought of standing with a bunch of middle-aged men and their small children, Bobby and Mary, while ‘The Boss’ plays an hour of tracks from his last two albums is enough to make me glug motor oil. No thanks. So I’m back at the John Peel Stage for someone we at least know Peel liked, (Fucked Up being the only new band on that I could imagine learning about from the late DJ first) Jarvis of Cocker. The morons start to dissipate when they realise he’s not going to do ‘Common People’ and leave what ends up being a rather sparse crowd for a headliner on a stage this size. Not to worry though, Jarvis rattles through ‘Angela’, ‘Big Julie’ and best of all ‘Leftovers’ throwing shapes like he was still in his early thirties and displaying a confused nonchalance when an interloper presents him with some champagne; he declares, without a hint of irony, that Cocker brought “a touch of fucking class” to Britpop. We bounce along to ‘Fat Children’ and sway to ‘Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time’, and he leaves us with ‘You’re In My Eyes’. There are calls for an encore that go unanswered no doubt to curfew issues. Jarvis comes back on stage to apologise and confirm this. A true gent. No Jacko mentions, mind.

We wander, again, up to The Park for tea and cakes (we quip that after today, the delicious blue frosting on ours is the icing on the cake) and are treated to The Blockheads playing to about fifty people in the Rabbit Hole tent at 1am. One of those little moments that doesn’t seem like it actually happened now. Along past the Stone Circle and then it’s the long queue to get into the top left of the site.  It wasn’t a good idea to do all that walking and then attempt to have a big night out at Trash City and Shangri-La. For one it’s completely full to the point you can only shuffle about, secondly my feet ache so much I can barely think about anything else for more than twenty seconds. It’s a wonderful experience though, to see so much strange stuff in this Mad Max/Blade Runner dystopia. I decide enough is enough around half three when as walking through the alleyways a drug-addled reveller freaks out that the “carpet is moving under my feet”. It’s the mud under red-strip lightning. Next time I won’t have the big night out on the day I walk around most of the site.

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