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"The song machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.."
- David Bowie [+] WEDNESDAY For your reporter, his pet Viking and the other early risers on the 0933 to Castle Cary, Paddington Station has cordoned off our very own platform. Over the thin orange ropes, commuters look balefully on and it's difficult to tell who has the most hunched gait - GlastoScum with their backpacks, or the grey faced workers pushing their shoulders into another dreary day. As we take to the train - cleverly placed 6 platforms away to ensure good crowd control - the Viking and your reporter find themselves nestled amongst a carriage of GlastoVirgins. We settle into our chairs, the Viking dozes off, and your reporter listens to the legendary GlastoRumours flying across the train aisle. - My mum was like "Why d'yoo wanna go sumwhere you can' ge' a shower fer five deyyz?" an' I was like "Muuum, it's GLASTonberry! y'knoworramean? - Oi Keely! Wha' were that Glas'onberry fact again? - Oh yeah, summa' like, the Pyramid Stage is bigga' than the 'ole of Readin'. Festival, tha' is. Yeah, the mayn stayj is bigger than the 'ole of the Readin' Festival. And so the rumours fly, the giddy young virgins start frothing at their maws, their eyes twinkle with expectation, and the normal commuters on their way to Truro for the meeting of the South West Tourism Board shift uncomfortably and try to lose themselves into their free copy of The Metro. It's one hour and forty five minutes until we shall alight at Castle Cary, and we still haven't pulled into Reading train station, which will bring sliding windows of multi-coloured backpacks, carefully balancing young people under them. I hold onto the smell of Jane Asher's finest cookie mix, oozing from my bag in thick green waves, and the Viking drools onto her shoulder, twitching as she travels through the land of millenia old conquests. Several hours later , one bus and a 30 minute hike the Viking and I have pitched tent near the Stone Circle, chez Glastonbury, eager to capitalise on the ley lines that flow through the sacred space of the site, in case the ancient druid midsummer ingredients fail to make their mark. This is the Viking's first Glastonbury, and as a Roskilde afficionado, every aspect of the festival will come under scrutiny. After two days on site, basking in the cloud filtered heat, sampling the exceedingly fine cookies and cooking vodka a la J. Sainsbury's, a bunch of crackhead dopefiends turn-up and start making a racket - the music has started. [+] FRIDAY Vibed on ley-line energy, and sparking paisley stars from our pupils, we start the festival proper with a trip to see the early morning guru-sounds of The Jeevas. After copious quantities of monkey adrenochrome mainlined down your optic nerve into the pleasure centres of your brain, The Jeevas' recycled Kula Shakerness sounds pretty good. Unfortunately we're all out of monkey extract, and so Crispian Mills' new band just sounds like re-hashed (fnarr!) 70s' rock, with a touch of Southern Boogie. Let's hope the boy Mills wakes from his 30 year slumber soon and gets shocked by the passage of time, to shock some real soul into his music. He just doesn't feeeeel it, maaaaaan. Feeling the need to educate the Viking on what proper popstars should look like, we maraud the Pyramid Stage to feast on the swirling organ of the Inspiral Carpets. If ugly fat northerners can make pop music that gets you dancing in the rain on a Friday morning in a cow field, then all popstars should look like them. Mine's a pie and peas and chips and gravy, ya fat t**t. The Viking is suitably amused, although shows no signs of pining for a lost Madchester generation. Perhaps some Liverpool post-punk will do it. Mac's famous lips pale into insignficance next to the size of the man's glorious Dome-sized ego. Once large enough to encompass this hemishpere (his old Uni-pal Droolian taking the Japanese half), Mac's ego has calmed down a bit now. A bit. He still finds time mid-song to deride Newcastle, invite the whole audience to Liverpool for tea and wibble on about Donnie Darko during a glorious The Killing Moon. Much to the Viking's goth sensibilities, Echo & The Bunnymen are the first real rock stars we've seen. De La Soul need to learn the difference between a House and a Tent. Abode mistakes aside, De La Soul rock da' tent pretty fine, considering they're entering Ph*l C*ll*ns territory in terms of age, credibility and influence. I find some bounce in my legs, the brief rain shower that tried to wash the Inspirals clean dribbles away, blue skies break through, and the people learn to boogie. The Viking is surprised that there are only three people on stage at a hip-hop gig. I'm surprised that three people can still roll a fat one when numerous generations of hip-hop have overtaken them. Must be the cookies. Following a break for a delicious black-eyed bean burger from the Green Fields, we wander over to the Other Stage and catch the tail end of Yo La Tengo's east coast psychedelic weirdness. I don't know if they played any shorter songs (such as the divine Little Eyes) earlier in the set, as we heard 15 minutes of scrawling guitar, feedback and trampled organ. Quite quite wonderful, even without the monkey juice. Whilst the Viking decides to pillage the Pyramid Stage again, to dig The Music ("fantastic energy") I see a hip-hop group with the requisite large membership list. Ozomatli barely make it to the stage on time, having just flown in from Amsterdam (uuh, what made you late, guys?  ), cram 10 people on stage, and fire small bugs into our asses. We jump and holler and whoop and jiggle, and after 45 minutes of latin breaks and hip-hop songsmithery the sun shines down on a crowd refreshed with rain, and growing in the heat.A pity, then, to spoil it with a trip to see Black Box Recorder. Easily the poorest gig of the weekend, I discover after 4 songs that they are a diluted Bongwater, without the flair, flares or surreal dreamscape stream-of-consciousness lyrics that marked out the legendary band. Their guitarists also look like survivors of the early 90s indie wars, still hanging onto their bad student suits from back in the day. The Viking meanwhile watches Suede and has a great time. One of the few holes in the impressive schedule, I think I'd rather have seen James Lavelle DJ, and that's saying something. Droolian, droolian, mad mad droolian, come out of Gaia and don't be a fool again. Julian Cope is now a self-taught Professor of History, bearded and mad as a hatter. He is a pre-Christian God, an embodiment of the divine earth spirit, a manifestation of Avalon, dreaming in pop colours. He's also half an hour late onto his headlining slot on the Acoustic Tent, and rambles on and on, berating the Rocksteady Glaswegian security people for being catholic. It's just him, some far-out guitars and a small Casio on stage, and we get to hear four songs - including Pristine and Double Vegetation - before the Viking drags us off to our first Major Headline Act of the Festival. REM. Loved Document, Green. Dug Automatic For The People and that other acousticy one. Lost interest with Monster. Curious to see them, but thoughts of the other headliners of the night - PRML SCRM and Death In Vegas - make me wary. The Viking summons up ancestral memories and gets us, with flashing arms, into the throng in the front of the stage. Taking the stage with the hammer of the gods behind them, the three remaining members take a letter of their stage decoration each L, U, V, and actually prove to be exceptionally entertaining. They play, gosh!, some old stuff, like Little America. They play - without too much whinging - Losing My Religion ("This one's yours, we just cover it"), they air 3 new songs which are - surprise! - rather good actually in a Green sort of way. Michael strips off progressive layers of clothing. There is banter with the audience. There is some... oh dear, Michael jumps down into the heavily protected, heavily mindered, walk-out section into the audience, bathed in a white christian glow, and allows the fans to paw him. They then leave the stage for a well planned, oops, I mean at the end of their set and return with a surprise encore (not planned at all, or worked into the set-list time). The band look happy to have been cheered and clapped back on stage. They entertain some more, more than pop stars, vaudeville in extremis, greatly entertaining, but no longer heroes for me. The Viking, however, is in love with Stipe again, and so it turns into a night of vodka to dampen the spirit of Glastonbury Tor in the tent, as she waxes lyrical about how beautiful he is. Feet bloated with blood from standing all day, eyes heavy with sleep from too much cookie and cooking vodka, we retire to our sleeping bags, cocooned in fabric and the swirling, naturally mixed beats drifting from the various all-night dance musics. Next: Saturday brings illness, UFOs, Hash for Cash and the sun shining out of Nicole Kidman's arse: A1098461 Next: Sunday brings some rubbish, cheesy pop, the prelude to Montezuma's Revenge and a dead head: A1104995 See Festival sights: A1106542
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