Don't need a weatherman...

When you visit a new festival for the first time it's hard to have some kind of pre-conceived idea as to what it's going to be like. The small amount of research that I had done for Cornbury revealed to me that it would probably be some kind of cross between a farmers market, and a music festival. The reality was something else, something much stranger, and I can honestly that I have never been to a festival quite like this, and I don't expect to be going to another one soon. For those of you familiar with the Isles of Scilly, a good summary would be to imagine if Tresco Estate organised a music festival and you wouldn't be far off what Cornbury Music Festival is like.

I had only ever heard vaguely of Cornbury Festival until this summer, and this was to be the first festival that we would be working as stewards for Oxfam. I seem to remember back when we were deciding which festivals to do we ended up choosing this one because there wasn't much else going on during this particular weekend, and so it was because of this that we found ourselves at Cornbury Park, near Charlbury Oxfordshire. Cornbury Park originally hosted a country fayre way back in 1796, growing so rapidly in popularity that by 1830 it had to be temporarily suspended, a bit like a Glastonbury of the 19th century. It re-opened between 1845 and 1856, attracting crowds of around 50,000 and eventually these large numbers caused the festival to shut down despite no recorded accidents or crimes reported. In its current incarnation the festival re-opened in 2003 on the same site marketed as a family friendly festival 'with a twist'. It turns out that 'twist' is white picket fences and Pimms.

The drive up to Cornbury took us through some very picturesque villages with a variety of names around the basis of "on-Thames" or "on-Water", and passed a particularly attractive looking pub that was located next to a canal with many narrow boats tied up alongside. However, despite these archetypal village images there were a few interesting sights to be seen; kebab shops and tatooists slowly working their way into middle England, along with highly fashionable tapas restaurants. Tattoos in particular now are no longer the preserve of the working class, and they have been well and truly accepted by all classes across the land, with sporting heroes being common exponents of getting inked. As for kebab shops, well wherever there's a pub, there's a need for a kebaby!

Getting to the park was simple enough, but finding the entrance proved a little more difficult, the sign posts directing traffic the long way around the park in order to get to the entrance. The reason behind this was to divert traffic from Charlbury, but it got us quite confused, and we even turned around at one point unsure if we were heading in the right direction. Eventually, however, we arrived on site into a surrounding of beautiful old trees in the late evening sunshine. When you work for Oxfam you get the advantage of staff camping, along with showers and a great catering van called Nuts Cafe. For each shift that you work you get a free meal ticket, and the quantity was ideal, I didn't want to go hungry! The staff campsite was pretty small, I think I heard that there were around 125 stewards for this festival, and there was wide age range of stewards camping. Although preconceptions might be that stewards is for the younger crowd only, there were plenty of older stewards at Cornbury, many of whom had been doing it for years. One woman we spoke to got into stewarding after her daughter convinced her to do it, though she said that if Glastonbury had been wet again this year she would have happily left the festival, lost her deposit and never worked for Oxfam again! We got to Cornbury on the Wednesday, the day before the gates opened, and all the stewards made themselves comfortable - one group had 'Swan Lake' playing quite loudly!

The first day of gates opening saw us assigned to working in the Campsite Welfare tent for the weekend, and we spent the first three hours sat in the sun while we waited for the tent to be erected. There's some funny guys working for Oxfam, one guy we called the 'Cool Man' who was about 20 and just wouldn't keep going on about "At Glastonbury it was done like this, and, at Glade we all did this" etc etc - Jog On! We also had the Mullet Man who was a supervising steward. We had seen him the previous day helping a young woman put up her tent trying to chat her up with his black, luxurious mullet swinging in the breeze. Fortunately neither of these guys was involved with our shifts, we were working 10am - 1800 on the Thursday, 1800 - 0200 on Saturday, and 0200 - 1000 on the Monday. I think they give everyone one shift for each part of the day, and our work in welfare would mostly be looking after lost property and lost children. We were based right next to the enclosed family camping site, and we spent most of the afternoon watching families make multiple trips to their 4x4s to get the kitchen sink out of the boot. How on earth they even manage to get all the equipment into their cars in the first place was beyond me, but I can honestly say that I've never seen such a large collection of massive tents in one place in my life. The forecast wasn't looking particularly good, and I was beginning to wonder how they would cope if got at all muddy.

The weather on the Friday started off pretty reasonable, but it was one of those days when the weather couldn't make up its mind, one minute it was too warm, so you'd take some clothes off, and then it would get cooler and start spitting with rain. However, one thing I was certain of and that was that it would definitely rain later on in the evening. The campsite and the arena are separate at Cornbury, so entrance to the site was delayed slightly on the Friday but eventually we were let in around 1130 as we queued along with giant child's buggies, chairs, tables and everything else your average family needs for an afternoon at a festival. The walk over to the arena was very serene, taking you down between two large lakes complete with ducks and locals fly fishing, and you pop up the other side of the hill into what can best be described as the front garden of Cornbury Park Estate. First impressions of the main site were just how small it is, probably no bigger than the Garrison on the Isles of Scilly, and you can find that you've covered all there is to see in around fifteen minutes. There's three stages on site, the main stage, the second stage - which on the Saturday is sponsored by Word magazine, and on the Sunday is the Oxford Folk Festival - and the final stage is called the Riverside stage whose dance area is littered with hay bales.



We watched the opening set of the main stage from a performer called Maria Illet who won a competition to appear on the main stage at Cornbury. At the time I wasn't aware of this, and I think I might have been a bit harsh in my judgement, thinking at the time that she had less stage presence than sea bass, but perhaps the occasion just got on top of her a bit. Her singing was pretty weak, and she had a real problem filling the stage with sound, all in all a below par performance that was most likely down to nerves. After a couple of songs we left to go to the Word Stage and watch a reggae band called The Beat, who were pretty decent. They got most of tweed dancing away in what sunshine there was, and they played a bit of an extended set due to the eagerness of the crowd. We chilled out listening to some reggae while I read the Guardian (ooo how middle class!) before heading back over to the main stage for a while where we caught part of set by Imelda May who had a bit of a Celtic twang to her sound, and was accompanied onstage by a guy playing a double bass, always good in my opinion. She a class above Maria Illet in terms of confidence and performance and just about held her own on the main stage. The area in front of the main stage is quite large, and I was confused as to why they had acts on who couldn't fill the space. That's not to say that a solo performer couldn't do it, but these bookings just didn't have the quality to stand up well on the main stage.

I think we were both a bit bored so we went for a another wander and had a look around the fairground which was where all the 'cool kids' were hanging out drinking Strongbow. Cornbury may not have the illicit drug use that many festivals have, but there was a large amount of under age drinking on, and pretty much every kid over 13 had a few cans stuffed away in their back pockets. After the fairground ADHD got to us we checked out the 'hippy' corner of the festival where there was a stall selling chai and also doing free drumming workshops. I had to laugh watching the workshops going on, there were the two teachers teaching a group of chicks in posh frocks all 'slumming' it with the hippies tapping gently away on their djembes carefully in case they broke a nail. Mind you if they had broken a nail they could have always visited the Powder Room. Yep, there was a Powder Room which was a giant trailer where festival goers could visit and get their nails done, have a hair cut, a wash, make up, the works. Unreal.

As this was going on we noticed a few morris dancers walk past, so we followed them over towards the Riverside Stage where we were greeted by two gaggles of dancers. One dressed in the traditional morris attire, the other looking like a home counties version of the American band Kiss. The dances were pretty good, there was even a bloke dancing with a giant cheese hat on, it was surreal to say the least!

Quite confused by the whole thing, we left to go back to the campsite and get some food. Now one of Amy's pet peeves for a while has been Kanye West style sunglasses, for those of you who don't know what I mean, here's picture:



I think the afternoon's bizarreness had got to Amy and she confronted one bloke as he walked past in what can be described as her posh voice:
"Excuse me, but can you see much with those glasses on young man?"
"Umm, not really,"replied the young man,
"Then what's the point?" argued Amy. To this he had no answer, and he shuffled off, possibly slightly embarrassed at being harassed by a girl with dreadlocks about fashion tips.

So it was eventually time to go to work at six, and we were lucky to have a pretty quiet evening. Because our welfare tent was pretty quiet, Amy and I had no supervisor so we spent most of the shift doing crosswords and colouring in books (Aged 3+). It did start raining during our shift, and we both felt pretty lucky that we were working inside unlike the rest of the stewards who might just be sitting in the rain for eight hours. Because of our position in terms of dryness and being in the middle of the campsite, we had plenty of other stewards popping in to say hi and have a cup of tea. One supervisor told us a funny story about Glastonbury the week before when during the early hours of the morning one of the stewards called over the radio that a pregnant cat had turned up near their post and was going into labour and he wanted to know what to do! I did overhear two young girls obviously having a problem with the weather in their drunkenness when one turned to the other and said "Can you work out which way the wind is blowing?". I never did find out if they solved their meteorological conundrum. The rest of the shift was reasonably uneventful until around 1am when a call came over the radio:
"This is the Oxbox(Oxfam HQ), could we get some first aid up here please. Um, I don't know how to put this, but one of our Supervisor has severe chafing in a personal area." Brilliant!

The rest of that shift went easily enough and my only regret of the Saturday was not getting the chance to see Paul Simon, who headlined on the main stage that night. However, after chatting to a few people who saw hi they said it was a bit of a sad performance, that he was clearly past his peak. Though I expect that most of the crowd enjoed him anyway it's always a bit depressing when you see someone who is a legend in decline. I remember seeing Brian Wilson at Glastonbury on his Smile tour, and I think the tour by that time had got to him a little, and although he was really good, I think his excellent band carried him a fair bit that day.

The final day of music, and the weather started ok, and Amy and I had the day off until the early hours when we had to complete our final shift, so we wanted to attempt to enjoy the second day of music. We got down to the arena to watch a guy called Tom Baxter and his band perform on the main stage. My instant impressions were that he seemed like a diet version of Dave Matthews. His band were actually really good with an excellent drummer and a good violinist, but Tom Baxter was totally upstaged by them. He seemed to love his voice a little too much, even for a front man, and I really felt that although the audience was impressed, if he re-worked his vocals the performance could have been much better. On the Sunday the 2nd stage became the the venue for the Oxford Folk Festival, and after starting a little late we went over to watch a latin/ska band called Jaume Toujours who were half decent. They had an accordian playing front mand who had an annoying habit of shouting "SKASKASKASKA!" every twenty seconds. I think he was trying to remind himself what ska music should actually sound like. After they finished an American singer called Tift Merrit came on who had a really good voice but the band's sound was really bassy so it sounded like the badn was too big for her. She came across as trying to sound a bit too much like Sheryl Crow, at least that's what her band were trying to sound like, but she didn't have the voice to match its sound.

And then came the rain.

and the rain.

more rain.

From five o'clock on Sunday it began to absolutely pour down with rain, heavy unrelenting rain. Just in time for 10cc's set which didn't really manage to raise the crowd much. At Glastonbury there's flags everywhere, but at Cornbury it was giant golf umbrellas. The umbrellas certainly kept the rain off those who had them, but for rest of us we had to put up with getting poked in the eye by the corners by them, and having any view of the stage blocked by someone holding one straight in your face. Still I just about managed to catch a few of 10cc's classic tunes, which sounded pretty good, but in the rain they didn't keep me very warm. We were going to hang around for KT Tunstall, but instead sheltered under the Ecover tent and payed there game inside on their computer where you had to hang washing on a line before seagulls crapped on it. I think I got to level 4. The Folk Stage was next to the Ecover tent and there was a really good Irish Folk/Salsa band called Salsa Cetica who were exceptionally good musicians, and probably the best band we saw all weekend. It was just a shame that the weather was so bad, but Amy braved the rain for a bit to go and do a few jigs before showing me some basic salsa moves.

By now we were both pretty wet, it was getting cold and with the 2am shift on our minds we decided to skip on Crowded House and get a few hours sleep before work. I can't say I was paticularly gutted that I was missing the last of the music, in fact I was quite glad to escape the vacuous atmosphere of the arena and get back to some sembalance of reality at the Oxfam camp. Work that night was pretty easy, and boring, and wet for those not inside. It rained non-stop through the night, and I glad that we were lucky enough to be inside, in fact at one point we had nine of the fifteen stewards on duty that night in the welfare tent drinking tea. There was plenty of more crossword attempts and Amy and Hena (who was working in the tent with us) dedicated themselves to colouring in as many pictures as possible in the eight hour shift.



The rain finally subsided around ten in the morning, just as our shift was finishing and we did a quick pack away before driving off site as quick as the polo would take us. I can without a doubt say this was one of the strangest festivals that I've ever experience, and although I went to it knowing a little of what it was like, I never expected it to be quite so upper class. There were missing girls called Tiara, a double decker Pimms bus, and a VIP area (not for artist or anything, just people who wanted to spend more on their ticket and feel important) with a white picket fence and bouncers. I would never go to this festival again, personally it's just not my idea of fun at all. It was exactly like taking the August visitors to Tresco and placing them at a music festival, with middle of the road music and giant umbrellas. Jolly rah rah!

This weekend takes us to 2000trees, a small festival of 2000 people, in the top ten small music festivals of 2007 and despite the current forecast not being great, I can't wait. Until then, stay classy.

That's so funny I don't even know how to laugh!

Usually in the run up to Glastonbury I spend an inordinate amount of time studying weather forecasts, line ups and wondering what flavour of Super Noodles we should be taking. However, the small fact of having to work at this year's Glastonbury made my preparations seem slightly low key. I had none of the usual anticipation that I usually have, and this year I remained remarkably blase about the weather, it always seems to rain at some point, I reasoned, so why worry about it?

Arriving on site this year early was certainly different compared to rocking up on a Wednesday lunchtime with thousands of other people in the heat and queuing for hours at the train station, and then again at Pedestrian Gate A. Tuesday afternoon felt much more civilised, it was still warm but cruising in the Polo listening to the Raconteurs felt like a much more relaxed experience. When you normally turn up on a Wednesday, or whenever, it can be hard to get a grasp of just how much behind the scenes work has gone on. There's around 37,000 workers at Glastonbury, and most have these people have been turning up from the previous Saturday helping build stalls, stages and just preparing for one of the best festivals on the planet.

Amy and I spent much of Tuesday evening wandering around the site, checking out some of the new additions such as the extended area above the tipi village, and the replacement for Lost Vagueness - Shangri-La. On first inspection the Shangri La doesn't appear much different to its previous incarnation, with the themes seemingly quite similar. There's a 50s style diner and dance floor, a tilted disco designed to make you feel a little more unbalanced than is natural plus a SlumberRave - dressing gown optional. It's very unusual walking around the huge site with so few people around, each of the camping grounds seem outrageously big with no tents in them and it's hard to comprehend that within 24 hours all these fields will be full of people all ready for 5 days of hedonism. In the mean time though Amy and I planned an early night, with a romantic dinner consisting of chicken Super Noodles (an old favourite), and a couple of glasses of Sainsbury's Strong Dry Cider. Classy.

Wednesday morning began for both us with some short meetings regarding our work. Amy was going to be working for the Green Police which basically involves educating the Glastonbury public about the effects that pissing in hedges and littering has not just on the environment, but how it can also have an effect on Glastonbury's future. Amy's training brief in the morning consists of learning facts and figures that they can use on patrol to help get their message across. Apparently Glastonbury Festival is closely monitored by the Environment Agency and they check the water supply in the rivers that flow through the site for contamination. Apparently around 5-6 years ago approximately 6000 fish were found dead in one stream and this was a contributing factor to problems with renewing the license for the following year.



My job on the other hand wasn't going to be quite as important, stewarding the Kings Meadow field, otherwise known as the Stone Circle, would certainly be a different kettle of fish. My shifts for the weekend appeared not to be too bad, 2am-8am Thursday morning, 2pm-8pm Saturday afternoon, and 2am to 8am Monday morning. Not too bad, though I wasn't too impressed by that Monday morning shift and if my memory of any previous Glastonbury served me well I would be serverely jaded come the early hours of Monday. But there was plenty of time before then, and once my basic training was over and done with I concenrated on hooking up with one of my Glastonbury friends from last year who works up at the Festival Medical Services, James Gibbons, who even came over to Scilly last year in September.

With thoughts of having to work in the early hours of the next morning I wasn't too sure how to approach to following hours, should I try and stay awake, or should I get some rest for a couple of hours. I left Amy with her Green Police friends, met up with James and his friends before setting up my second tent down at Pennard Hill. Amy's camping ground was up near the farm, which would basically place me at the opposite end of the site to where I would be working. To save on walking time I intended to set up a second tent in the field next to the Stone Circle and leave some warm clothes there for the evening shifts so I didn't have to travel too far. So once all set up and ready for the next few days an obligatory trip to the cider bus was required. The cider bus is literally that, a coverted double decker bus that houses many cider casks, and will dispense some of Burrow Hill's finest cider for a small fee. If you're feeling a bit cold they will even add some brandy to your glass, though the demand for this doesn't seem too great. The cider bus is a great place to watch the world go by, with al sorts gathering for some appley goodness. Myself, James and Layla got accosted by one girl who just wouldn't stop going on about how much she hated the toilets. She was stating the obvious a bit here, and she just would not stop moaning about them, she believed the reason for this was because no toilet paper was being handed out at the gates this year. Quite how this works out I'm not too sure. Eventually, though, she left and was replaced by an absolute great character under the name of Roiston who has been coming to the festival for 20 years and not only was his costume fantastic, his entourage also handed out little bags of haribo to us all!



After a few more swift pints of cider Amy suggested that I might want to get a couple of hours sleep before starting work, probably a good idea really as anyone who knows me would say I can have something of a problem staying awake when I've had a couple to drink. So I decided to make the one sensible decision of the weekend and get a couple of hours sleep before my early morning shift at 2am. Fortunately so far the weather had been pretty good and the only thing I was worrying about was how cold it might be due to the clear skies. I even managed to make myself up a flask of organic espresso coffee that Amy had brought back from Costa Rica. I've got to say, this coffee is rocket fuel and is so tasty it can be easy to drink a lot of it, but it will keep you up for days!

Stewarding up at the Kings Meadow basically involves just making sure everyone up there is safe, and most specifically, not climbing up the 20foot wooden Dragon that dominates the left hand side of the field. You might think something like this would prove a nightmare to look after, but most people seem pretty relaxed about it, and during the whole 6 hours not one person even attempts to scale it. I must say I was quite disappointed! We work in teams of four, and take it in two person teams to look after the Dragon, while the other two keep the fire stoked at the bottom of the field near the entrance. The vast majority of the shift goes pretty easily, with only a few eventful conversations. At one point I was accosted by two eastern european girls who mistook me for a policeman and kept stroking my face and telling me how cute I was. Once I explained to them that I wasn't a policeman they seemed to lose interest and just ran off giggling to one another. Once the sun started to come up, quite early around 5am, we strolled around the field a bit more looking for lost property and chatting to people. We found a few wallets, one guy I met handed in a wallet with £210 pounds in it, a very honest man. I picked up a mobile phone, plus someone else found a wallet which we took back to HQ before stoking up the fire once more because even though it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day we were having a very cold morning. During one of my regular walks out to the Dragon I came across a couple of very interesting Mancunians, one of which was very passionate about his views on the litter on the festival site. Now that it was daylight you could see just how much rubbish people had left behind up at the Stone Circle. There were crushed paper cups everywhere, cans on the floor and dotted around the field were burnt circle where people had made fires to keep warm during the night. My Manc friend took it upon himself to launch himself into an impassioned speech:

"Why do they need all these fires? The firefighters must be pissed off. All these fucking hippies, they're talking shit. Fighting nature, that's what everyone's doing, you can't win. Fucking fires, it's not on. Look at this rubbish too, if I was Michael Eavis I wouldn't stand for it. You see this bottle here, Jakobs Creek in here, seven quid a bottle, proper class. I've had this in my hand all night, and you knwo what? When I done I'll put it in a bin," at this point he turned around and addressed the entire field and shouted " All you cunts! Clean up this fucking rubbish!" and with this he turned around and stormed off out the field.

It's always the case with any job that you do that the last hour or so is always he longest, but with this job I didn't mind because I probably laughed more in the final hour than I did all night. The fire that we had kept going was a gathering point for everyone who was leaving the field, and we had a good collection of characters for the end of our shift. We had a few musicians, one playing guitar and another on a Melodica who were really good at playing some quality tunes. Apart from their gathering of friends we were also joined by a silent chap called Jake, and a young lad with multicoloured microphone hair called Barnabald, or Barnaby for short. After meeting Barnaby he told me how he would like to be an actor, but he couldn't remember lines very well, a bit of a problem I suggested, but he didn't seem to think so. Another favoured topic of his was clothes, and how he felt we should all feel comfortable enough to run around naked, and how he felt we shouldn't feel embarassed as a society to see naked bodies. I also learned that his favourite colour was blue, and his attempts to take people on at a game of mercy only brought more laughter. I can honestly say that I've never met anyone quite like Barnabald, and he only confirmed this by announcing that he was a hopping race champion. He went on to prove this as we arranged a hopping race at the bottom of the field, which, to our amazement, he duly won. Finally though, my shift came to an end, Barnabald and co departed, though I did leave the enigmatic Jake standing by the fire gathering his 'chi' before breaking his silence with the occasional giggle. By this point it was early morning, and I needed some sleep before some of music began later that Thursday.

There's normally something of a Scillonian contingent at Glastonbury - last year we had Eldred Bandfield, Mike and Lou Knappman, Ant and Ade Robson, Dr Vic plus myself and others. This year sees a few less, and some who appeared out of nowhere. Mike and Lou were still going, and I met up them briefly on Thursday, and then when I bumped into them later on in the weekend they said that they'd bumped into Dr Ranulph Hessing(pissed up at 10am) and Erica Hicks (working), Amy saw Natalie Graham, but unusally for me I met nobody from Scilly that I didn't knwo was there. Unimpressed. Still, maybe they saw me at some point running around grinning!

Thursday was an esygoing day, with not much happening, though I did hear a rather crap cover version of Prodigy's Outta Space being played down in the Leftfield. last year we saw Seasick Steve play at the Leftfield on a Thursday afternoon, I even got to shake his hand which was nice (and dirty). This year the Levellers were playing a set at 2300, but from previous experience I felt this would probably be too busy so I knew I was going to miss it. I spent most of the day hanging around with James down at the Park Stage drinking my cider, and watching the cast of Alice in Wonderland play croquet with members of the public. Once Amy finished her Green Policing for the day, she only had to do a couple of hours, we had some music for the evening down on paper. We were going to watch DJ Yoda do an AV set in the Silent World at the Dance Village. The spread of the Silent Disco has now reached other parts of Glastonbury, giving punters the chance to listen to sets on wireless headphones whilst not disturbing any sleeping residents. By early evening though the rain had started, and it was not relenting whatsoever. Before I left I decided to check the forecast at metcheck.com who had informed me that we could expect some rain in the early hours of Friday, and using my Radio Scilly Weatherman knowledge, I suspected that this was the weather arriving early. Of course, once the rain begins to fall it gets muddy very quickly, and then every avaialbe covered arena fills up faster than you can say "portaloo". Our plans to watch DJ Yoda were scuppered by queues, partially due to the rain, and also because all the Silent venues are space limited due to the headsets. However, we did get to see one of my highlights of the festival, Smerins Anti-Social Club. These guys are from Bristol, and we only dropped by because our Bristol friends were going to see them, and they were excellent. Check out their website here. Their blend of live dance music was good enough to get the pacjed crowd going in the Dance Lounge, and although we weren't able to see the band due to the crowd, the music did appear to be emanating from a giant pink ball suspended in the ceiling. The band were excellent, and were even joined onstage by MC Xander, a guy we had seen at Glade last year who is also excellent. It being a Thursday night, we actually made another sensible choice and called it an evening due to the rain. After all, the actual music hadn't even begun yet.

Early Friday morning gave us a few more brief showers, though nothing too serious, and the rest of the day wasn't too bad for weather. Cloudy, with a chilly breeze, though there was only the occasional light shower - nothing as bad as previous years, and the ground wasn't even that muddy really, there were still green patches! Amy got up early to start her Green Police duties, but I had no work to do until the following day, so I decided to catch up on my sleep to try and get my body clock back to normal. I managed to wake up hear a little of Kate Nash singing about lemons, but it nothing special enough to make me want to get up, so I ended up sleeping in for a couple more hours before making any real start to my day. I went for a bit of a wander around, grabbed myself a cider and thought about maybe having a pie for lunch, but instead I thought I'd wait until later and get something from the Green Fields with my free meal ticket. One advantage that I had over Amy was that my meal tickets got me good food, not the school dinners that they were handing out in the Oxfam tent!

I ended up catching up with Amy later on at Alabama 3 who were performing on the Jazz World Stage. I've seen them a few times before and their set was as tight and predictable as ever. They certainly have a distinctive sound, and are always good to see even if you've caught them a few times before. Amy and her mate went off to get changed from their GP gear and I sauntered around until meeting them at the Pyramid Stage to catch some of the Gossip's set. Not a band I particularly like, but Beth Ditto is certainly a brilliant entertainer. She works the crowd really well, and this set is one of the surprise highlights for me, I would recommened them to anyone going to a festival who has a gap in their personal line up for the day. She wasn't enough, however, to make me miss Gideon Conn who was playing at the Bandstand, a small stage about 10 foot across that is located in th middle of the Market area. It's a good place to catch random acts, but after hearing of Gideon Conn through Ben Morton-Clark I really wanted to check these guys out. After a few problems getting the sound sorted (dodgy cable), they started and were brilliant from start to finish. Gideon wore a great Father Ted t shirt which won me over befor he started, and he proceeded to play a great set with his band. Amy turned up after the Gossip and really got into it, and she confessed to me after the festival was all over that she thought that this was her highlight of the weekend! Gideon Conn finished up in the crowd stretched out as far as his microphone would let him, before signing copies of their EP at the front of the stage. Brilliant.



The Fun Lovin' Criminals were up next over at the Jazz World, and they performed a really good set, full of all their hits and generally they were pretty good, though I have to say that by the end I was getting itchy feet to head elsewhere, though where I wanted to go I wasn't sure. It was probably the hunger because after their set we walked to the Buddhafield Cafe where I could get my free dinner and replenish my system before heading down towards the Dance Village. we hadn't made many plans really as to what we wanted to see at the end of the day, with nothing really catching my eye. The choice was between Fatboy Slim, who manages to play every year but I've never seen him, or goto Kings of Leon, who I knew Amy really wanted to see. After spending a bit of time down at the Dance Village, mainly at the G Stage, which is called the Origin Stage at Glade, dancing to some great tunes and then trudging round to the Pyramid Stage for the Kings of Leon, and after squeezing our through the crowds we found ourselves a nice spot half way the hill. I found their set a little unbalanced, the first half an hour was pretty mediocre, never really picking up any pace and I felt like they were a band a little out of their depth. However, they raised their game for the second half of their set and produced a worthwhile performance - 3 out of 5 stars.

The best parts about Glastonbury Festival for me usually happen after all the main stages have shut down and people head for other areas. We opted for Shangri La, and the Disco Diner, where we finally met up with James and our Bristol friends where we danced for a good few hours until aroudn 4am when Amy and I went to watch the sunrise before returning to our tents, with Amy moaning about having to get up for work, and me content with a lie in until 2pm.

In the past I've always found that Saurday's are my favourite days/nights at Glastonbury, you can usually find a good selection of bands that you want to catch right from the start. Howeer, having to work this year made things a little different. I was gutted that I was going to miss Shlomo and Music Through Unconventional Means on the Park Stage, but it wasn't the end of the world, and my shift good all the same. With the sunshine beating down I spent a great afternoon up at the Kings Meadow drinking cider whilst chatting to little kids that the Dragon has to chained down or he'll fly away! It was a great shift, and nice to sit down and relax for an afternoon before enjoying the night ahead. As soon as I finished my shift at 8pm I grabbed some food before heading down towards the Park Stage to catch MGMT. I really like the Park Stage, it's like an ampitheatre and it can create a really intimate setting. Last year's performance from Lou Rhodes was one of my highlights of the festival and I was really looking forward to wathcing psycadelic rockers MGMT. They seemed to have a slight sound level problem to begin with, as the vocal levels were completely screwed, but after the first couple of songs they found a compromise and the rest of the set completely rocked. Har Mar Superstar joined them on stage at once point, and by the time they played Time To Pretend everyone was loving them. It was a cracking set and I expect next year will see them performing on the Other Stage late friday evening. After MGMT I was getting considerably more excited as the one band I had come here to see were up - Massive Attack headlining the Other Stage.

I had even asked for time off especially to see these guys from Bristol, it was the one thing that I didn't want to miss, and I was not disappointed in one bit. THey played some storming tracks, some delicate ones, and just generally played a delectable selection of beats and visuals. There was a great performance of 'Teardrop', and they put in Unfinished Sympathy during the encore as well as geting in a fair political messages along the way. For me this was a brilliant set, definitely one of the best I've seen at Glastonbury ever and even watching it back on the BBC site online I get chills thinking about what it felt like to be in that crowd. Unbelievable.

By the time Massive Attack had finished sometime after midnight I was in a good mood to say the least, and we bimbled down to the Bimble Inn at the Park Stage for some dancing and laughter until the early hours, enjoy ourselves in a classic Glastonbury Saturday night way.



So the final day of the festival crept up inexorably upon us. It always comes around too soon, but it's not always bad as there's always some great music to make the tiring minds and bodies feel a little better. Sunday afternoon on the Pyramid is usually reserved for some 'classic' acts, but this year I headed down to the Jazz World for a Pieminister (the best pies ever) while relaxing in the sun. Probably the main highlight for me of the festival is being able to sit/lie down whenever you feel like it, keeping the pain of 'festival back' somewhat subdued. We spent most of Sunday relaxing, watching a very talented diabolo guy dancing away in the sun and listening to some Eddy Grant. Amy wasn't feeling too great after work and went for a snooze and a lie down whilst I went and watched Goldfrapp on the Pyramid stage. She put on a great set, perfect for early on a Sunday evening with her amazing vocals and fantastic music. She even had some pole dancers on stage at one point, ideal. Once recovered, Amy and I jollyed on down to the John Peel Stage to watch Spiritualized, a band I had last seen with Jeremy around six years ago. It seemed odd to me that I was watching them perform in what is essentially the New Bands Tent, but I guess they have their reasons. Their set was pretty good, Jason Pierce's vocal were excellent, and they are excellent at creating a wall of sound that is so forceful, yet you can still pick out each instrument. Again, it was odd watching them on this stage after seeing them last play on the Other Stage, they may have even headlined it, but I'm sure they'll be back higher up the bill once more.

So to the final big act of the weekend, and Groove Armada was the choice of the evening. They didn't dissappoint, playing a good selection of their greatest hits, all to a intricate laser show. They were great, but the best news came to me just before they started when I found out that Spain had won the Euro 2008 Championships, netting me 60 quid in the Galley sweepstake. This led me to try chant "Fernado! Fernado Torres!" to whoever would listen! Of course this made the Groove Armada set all the more better!

I only had a couple of hours until starting work for the 2am to 8am shift, so we went to the Bimble Inn where we met with some friends again, and I left them to it and went to work - which proved to be something of a blur! Amy and the guys all went to the Silent Disco for a bit, something that I was extremely jealous of, but Amy was good enough to come down to the Stone Circle for a couple of hours until the sun came up. After Amy left I spent the rest of my shift walking around chatting to people until 8am finally came and I could officially goto bed. By now the sun was pounding down and I went back to tent number two and slept among the pile of bodies that belonged to my friends.

Monday, inevitably, brings the hangover. It's been postponed for five days, but ultimately it catches up with you in the end. Amy had caught a cold, everyone looked pretty frazzled, and after saying our goodbyes our friends left for Bristol while Amy and myself relaxed for a bit before making our departure later in the evening. The worse part of my weekend? Getting sunburned eyelids. The best bit? Everything else.

Once again, regardless of weather, line ups, naysayers etc, it turned out to be a fantastic festival. It may be getting more and more corporate, but there is still something special about Glastonbury Festival. This isn't to say that other festivals don't have this, I'm sure they do, but Glastonbury still sets the bar.

I still believe that probably the best way to describe how you feel throughout the festival was summed up by one of my best mates years ago. He said

"The thing with Glastonbury is that you're always on the edge of something, you may never find it, and that makes the search all the more interesting, but every now and then you stumble around the right corner and everything becomes clear."

Until Cornbury, stay Classy

Cello? Is there anybody in there?

Well I've finally left the Isles of Scilly to spend my summer on the mainland travelling around 9 different festivals. It could be a long summer! The first few days away have been reasonably eventful, involving moving house via public transport, and attending a Cello and Piano Recital, not quite up there with Glastonbury, but more on that in a bit!







Having been a part of Radio Scilly since August last year I'm quite sad to say goodbye, I've had some great times, some stressful times, and plenty of early mornings! The experience itself has been great, and the response that I've had from people around the Islands about my work for the station has certainly helped plump my ego to a degree. Although most people who know would probably say that I'm quite outgoing, in reality I'm actually quite quiet when I'm around groups of people. However, I'm always listening and absorbing interesting stories! I think I've been able to develop my journalistic skills quite a bit over the last 9 months, and I look back to when I started and I think how clueless I was back then about interviewing people. Now I feel quite confident about it, especially that I can get all the right information out of people. Sometimes without them realising!

Being given the responsibilities of looking after the station and presenting the morning show ahs been something that was a good challenge, and probably gave me some of the best memories from the job. It was always great when people came up to me in the street and said how much they enjoyed the show - it made the early mornings worth it!

So now to Bristol, and a summer of festivals that includes the following, possibly in order: Glastonbury, Cornbury, 2000trees, Glade, WOMAD, Big Chill, Bloom, Beautiful Days, Shambala. Something like that anyway! Of course I'll be updating my blog after each festival letting you all know what the mud/bands/work was like. IF you want to skp ahead to my thoughts on this then go right ahead and ignore my review of the Cello and Piano Recital that I went to!

The first stop before Glastonbury though was to attend a Cello and Piano Recital with Amy and her family. Amy's Dad owns a cello made by the John Betts school c.1820 and has loaned it to the Guildhall School of Music. So with five of us in the car we zoomed down to Shepton Mallet for the performance.

We went to a pub when we arrived called the Bell, it reminded me of the pub from Withnail and I - "We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now" Lovely old barmaid who looked like you squeeze cider out from her face, she didn't appreciate us ordering coffees! There was a beauty old boy sat by the bar who said hello to everyone who went to the bar, I asked him how he was doing, but got no reply, I think he was already saying hello to the next person. So tearing ourselves away from the pub we headed to church to listen to Alice Dixon on the cello, and Bojana Dimkovic on the piano.

The cello is certainly an attractive instrument, and having never seen one played first hand I was looking forward to the performance and I can honestly say that I was not disappointed one bit. .

The first piece by Ernest Bloch entitled 'Prayer' from 'Jewish Life', was dark, brooding and emotional. The interchange between piano and cello was very good, and I felt that this piece was instantly arresting, even though perhaps a little too melancholic for an opening piece.

This was followed by 12 variations on a theme from Handel's 'Judas Maccabeus' composed by Beethoven. A lengthy piece, again with masterful exchange between piano and cello, and the melody of this piece really came through in the performance from the cello giving it vibrancy and an energetic quality.

The final selction before the interval was solo piano piece composed by John Ireland called 'Moon Glade' and 'Scarlet Ceremonies'. This was a great individual performance from the pianist Bojana Dimkovic whose showmanship behind the keys stood out as much as her playing, which was exceptional. She finished with a flourish that typified her performance, then stood and smiled to the audience before retiring behind a large oak door at the back of the church.

After the break we were treated to the final two pieces of the evening, the first being a technically difficult piece by Henri Dutilleux which on performance looked incredibly hard to play. This piece seemed chosen to demonstrate the technical ability required to play such a composition. There were times the cello was being played with back of the bow, strings were being plucked, and at times the strings were being played in way that many rock guitarist would have admired. Melodically it was at polar opposites to the Beethoven piece, but nonetheless it was enjoyable and was a spectacle of intricacy.

The final piece of the night brought piano and cello together again for Bohuslav Martinu's variations on a theme of Rossini. Taken from Rossini's opera 'Moses in Europe' this compostion involved some interesting interjections between the cellist and pianist. The pace and rhythm of this piece was interesting to follow and I enjoyed the interplay between the two instruments as the pace varied before finishing empahtically.

And just like that it was all over and we drove home, with the car smelling of sweat peas that were given to us by Amy's Gran and Grandad.

As I write this now it's just after half four on Monday afternoon, and in 24 hours I'll be at Pilton Farm enjoyed the start of Glastonbury 2008. It'll be interesting to experience it from the perspective of working, which is something that I've never had to do before, however it should be good fun working up at the sacred space chatting to random mash heads making sure they're all ok. Mind you it could be me that needs reassuring! I'm most looking forward to (hopefully) seeing Massive Attack and also Shlomo's Music Through Unconventional Means. Apart from these two I guess I'll just wait and see what happens, always the best way I think!

So drop by again this time next week to find out how it all went!

It's been a while

Watched the new series of Jools Holland last, mainly because Radiohead were due to appear on it, and after hearing their new album, and watching their freee new years eve footage of live performances, I was interested to see how they'd come across. Also on the show was Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, an artist who has a great voice and is a great talent.




The show itself was reasonably good, I was actually struck at how easy and undemanding the questions are that Jools Holland asks the guest that he interviews. He never really got much from his guests last night, and I thought the questions were pretty basic really. Maybe it's the news journalist in me that's started to come out recently!

Radiohead opened the show with Bodysnatchers, a great tune, though a friend of mine who isn't much of Radiohead fan wasn't impressed with Thom Yorke's 'singing', as he put it. What I like about watching Radiohead live is how they translate from the album onto the stage in terms of their music.

The other performances on the show were pretty good. I thought Feist was surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting much, and after hearing her album stuff I wasn't overally bothered by her, but live she was excellent. Cat Power, however, was the the complete opposite. I think I read a live review of one of her recent shows in the Guardian that didn't give an overly gracious review of her show, despite the jounro being a big fan. I have to say that from watching last night's show I would agree that journalist. Chan Marshall has always been something of a reclusive performer, sometimes walking off stage half way through songs unable to carry on. Not any more though, as she was completely over the top with her performance. It was an extremely extroverted performance that belied what I know about her past. The band behind her didn't help either, they drowned her voice and the songs sounded weak and unsure of where they were going. I listened to her new album, Jukebox, on the way to work this morning and I have to concede that the album versions are far better than the live versions. Everything is toned down slightly, and Chan's voice, which is fantastic becomes the really star. This all opposed to her Jools Holland performace which just seemed to be trying too hard. I'd give Cat Power a D.

Radiohead played a couple more songs, Wierd Fishes, and 15 Steps, which were both excellent, and it just made hope more that they'll be playing at Glastonbury this year. It seems a Glasto cliche to have Radiohead in the mixer, but it would be incredible for me at least!

I've given my voice a rest now, time to get back on the Radio!