Glasto Blasto! (Edited highlights...)

London, July 7, 2000.

[Or should that be "*high*lights edited?" :*) ]

My name is Robert Atkins. I survived Glastonbury 2000. This is my story.

I have just had one of the best weekends of my life. It was a ball, a
blast, a laugh, an experience and an absolutely huge amount of fun. I
can not begin to describe the amount of fun I had. Well actually that's
wrong, as I'm just about to...

As you read in the last email, on Wednesday we (Kyne and I) had no
tent.  The plan was to go up on Thursday evening after work.
Thankfully, Kyne emailed me on Thursday morning to tell me he'd managed
to pick up a 3.5 person tent at an army/disposal store near his place
on Wednesday afternoon, for 60 quid. Saved! We arranged to meet in
Paddington station (where the train left from) at about 7:15pm.

The scene at Paddington was pretty funny. There were hundreds upon
hundreds of scraggly looking young 'uns carrying backpacks, bedrolls,
tents and lots of booze. Some had began drinking already; most were
watching the destination boards to find out the platform the Castle
Cary (closest station to the festival) trains left from. British Rail
did well by announcing this about eight minutes before the train was
scheduled to leave. Of course the announcement precipitates a mad rush
to the platform and only about half of us managed to get on. Kyne and I
were left "stranded" at the platform with about half the horde, many of
whom had actually booked seats on the previous train.  Fortunately it
wasn't long to wait for the next one...

We did manage to get on the following train and even got seats! People
were just packed in, sitting in the aisles, hanging from the ceiling.
Nobody was game enough to come around and attempt to check tickets
(though they probably could not have gotten up the aisles anyway).
Everybody was happy sitting there in the carriage smoking their joints
and drinking their beers -- the guy in front of us was even doing some
henna tattoos :-). Kyne and I tucked into the bottle of vodka and
lemonade I'd brought and chatted to our companions. The trip seemed to
go very quickly, but that may have just been the vodka.

We arrived at Castle Cary station fairly late, a bit before midnight I
think.  The festival had put on buses to take us from there to the
site, so there was another fairly long wait for those. It was about
half an hour to 45 minutes, so we're pleased we didn't go through with
our threats of walking instead of waiting. When we got there and the
bus disgorged us, I started following the pack which I thought was
heading toward the gate, but this turned out to be a big mistake.

The Glasto tickets cost 89 quid all up. Don't do the conversion into
$AU, it'll scare you. The thing is, nobody pays. There's always a few
helpful louts hanging around charging people a tenner to squeeze
through their gap in the fence. I didn't know this when I bought my
ticket of course, so I dropped the 90 quid. Damn. My problem at this
point was that all the people I was following hadn't paid and therefore
were not heading toward the official gate -- so I managed to get my
(drunken, by that stage) self thoroughly lost. After wandering back and
forth for about half an hour I did eventually find the gate, handed
over my ticket and then attempted to find the bank, where I'd arranged
to meet Kyne (who had gone off to fence-jump).

Picture the scene: it's pitch black dark, about 1:00am, I'm carrying a
heavy bag full of supplies, I'm a little bit pished (!), the ground is
awash with mud and I'm asking for directions to "the bank" from people
who have as little clue as I do. After many misdirections, false starts
and slipping over in the mud once I did manage to find Kyne, who had
been waiting at the bank for fifteen minutes. Grr. He had helpfully
scoped out a good place to pitch the tent, so we headed over there.
Through the mud. The shoes I was wearing have absolutely no tread at
all. Yuck.

It was now two in the morning, still pitch black dark and we had never
set the tent up before. Bear in mind I have *never* set up a tent
before, ever!  Oh, and we were both appreciably drunk. Given all that I
think we did pretty damn well! One thing really pissed us off though;
they forgot to put the tent pegs and guy ropes in the bag! Getting up
to that bit of the instructions and not finding them no matter how hard
we looked was an excuse to generate large amounts of vitriolic
invective directed at the shop who had sold Kyne the tent. Eventually
we gave up and just crashed inside it.

Talk about sleeping rough. Neither of us owned a sleeping bag so we
just slept in our clothes on the floor of the tent. This might have
worked if the ground wasn't wet and *cold*. I ended up having to get up
and go out and buy a blanket from a stand I'd seen on the way in (Joe
Banana's -- apparently a festival fixture). That helped a little bit,
but I really didn't get much in the way of real sleep. That's ok as I
wasn't really expecting much :- ). Friday morning eventually rolled
around...

During the night the landscape had changed significantly; there were
many, many more tents around us than there were when we got to sleep.
Thankfully, some people next to us had put up a flag with a "Death in
Vegas" (it's a big-beat dance/rock group) logo on it, otherwise we
would never have been able to find our tent for the whole weekend. For
those who have been there know the site (ain't I a smarmy git? :-), we
were about 20m away from the path, midway between the Dance Tent and
the Other Stage.

The first band up were the Wailers (sans Bob Marley, of course, but I
was surprised he didn't make a re-appearance due to the wonders of
modern technology).  We went out and had a little bit of a look at them
in between checking out the general lie of the land and some of the
stalls. I wanted to see Eagle Eye Cherry (Neneh's little brother, of
course) but they were cancelled and replaced by G Love and Special
Sauce. They were ok. After that I think we had lunch and went up to the
New Bands tent. This was a double bonus as a) the "North Mississippi
Allstars" were great (rockabilly!) and b) the tent was next to the only
bar that didn't have a huge queue -- and they served their beers cold
enough to boot!

Bear in mind that at this stage all ambulation was very slow going.
Although there hadn't been much rain during the night, it still wasn't
very sunny and there was plenty of mud around. You had to be extremely
careful to not end up A over T with every single step.

From here on Kyne wanted to go catch the end of Live which of course I
had absolutely no interest in (!) so I stayed on at the New Bands for a
while and went to join him for the Bluetones. I can't exactly remember
what happened next, but another round of beer was bought, we missed the
Bluetones and ended up seeing Methods of Mayhem on the Other stage. The
Methods are Tommy Lee's new band and they were pretty damn good.

Following the Methods were the Bloodhound Gang. These guys are always
an absolute riot live. They had some guy from an English soap opera
backstage on a challenge -- he was meant to drink a case of of Dr
Pepper during the set and they'd give him 100 pounds. Eventually they
told him he was soft, kicked him off stage and then looked through the
audience for a "fat bastard".  They duly found one and set him to the
challenge. Meanwhile they got a whole lot of girls up on stage to dance
around for one of their songs, then offered to pay them 20 quid each if
they'd "make out". A few did :-). The last bit was the funniest --
they'd got some girls and some guys on stage later on and decided that
there wasn't enough nudity in their show. I think one guy spontaneously
mooning set it all off.

So of course they offered the people on stage money if they'd get their
gear off. Now they'd come on just after Methods of Mayhem, so Tommy Lee
was still backstage. He came out and guess what... well, suffice to say
that the infamous Tommy and Pam video was not digitally "enhanced" in
any way, shape or form. He could drill for oil with that thing! Hmm,
maybe that's what he was doing in the video... but nevermind. Suffice
to say a great time was had by all.

After this we went and caught a few minutes of the Counting Crows which
was good, as we got to hear Mr Jones and managed to leave before the
utterly depressing "Round Here". Next up was the Utah Saints in the
dance tent.  These guys weren't on for a while though, so we went
around to soak up the colour and life for a while.

We got to the dance tent in time for the start of Utah Saints' set.
Yes, this is *the* "U-U-U-U-U-Utah Saints! ...I just know that
something good is going to happen" Utah Saints. They were fantastic. I
was dancing like a wild man and loving it to bits. In the middle of the
set Kyne had to go and collect his mate Willy who had just arrived, so
after the set finished I met them both back at the tent. They were
regretting they didn't come back to see the end of Utah Saints when I
told them about the girl behind me wearing a black mesh top and not a
hell of a lot else (I don't count the nipple ring as "much else" :-).
Love that festival atmosphere.

Next up was one of my must-sees, Moby. The other guys weren't so keen,
so they left to see something else and we arranged to meet back at the
tent after he'd finished. Boy, did they miss out. I had been looking
forward to the diminutive vegan's show most of all, and he did not
disappoint in the least. The sound was great, the lights were fantastic
and I danced my little feet off. I was talking to a couple of girls in
the crowd who were complaining that it didn't sound so good; maybe I
shouldn't have told them that getting above the level of the crowd
helped as that meant I had to let one of them get up on my shoulders.
Ah well... we all had fun.

The Chemical Brothers, up next on the Pyramid stage. It was absolute
mayhem.  We just could not get through the bottlenecked crowd into the
Pyramid arena.  It was soo annoying -- we could just hear the start of
Block Rocking Beats,
 we could see the lights, but there was just no chance we could get in
there.  I was bitterly disappointed -- they'd been great at the Sydney
BDO and I couldn't wait to see them again. Sadly, it was not to be. We
went back around and caught Nine Inch Nails who were good, but not
really what I was up for at that point in time.

By this stage it would have been a bit past midnight so all the
"official" acts were winding down. We went for a walk around to see
what else was happening.  A spontaneous dance party had errupted around
one of those "Herbal Highs" stalls, so we stayed there for a little
bit, before jamming our way into the Rizla lounge (Rizla is the local
equivalent of Tally-Ho -- and a very popular product over the weekend,
as you may be able to imagine). By this time I was starting to peter
out so I left the guys there and went back to the tent and crashed.
Willy had the sense to bring a sleeping bag so I stole that and
actually did get a little bit of sleep. Even better, when they got back
he was too hammered to attempt to wrest it from me (the silly buggers
went and drank the bottle of gin Kyne brought :-).

And you know what? After all that... there was still two days to go!

The next morning arrived. Ordinarily this would not be notable, but I
have a feeling that the other two were doubtful that it ever would, or
if it did, that they would see it. I felt great, as *I* hadn't drunk
half a bottle of gin the previous night :-). I got up to have a walk
around and get some breakfast. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and I
had great fun wandering around grinning at the various bits of human
wastage littered about the place. Evidently it had all been much too
much for some and they'd just crashed where they'd stood.

I wandered over to "Mad Donal's", a stand we'd noticed the previous
day, which had quite a familiar looking yellow-on-red logo. Hmm. I
asked the girl behind the counter if the BLT was worth the three quid
asking price and she said "Of course not! Are you crazy? Three
pounds!?". But I bought one anyway and it was good. That and an orange
juice kickstarted me and I had another wander around uncharted bits and
pieces of the festival. I found some of the more hippie bits at this
point I think, including a great big (like, five or six metres tall)
dragon made out of pine needles).

After wandering around some more I collected the Kyne and Willy at
about 11:00 or so and we did some more exploring. There wasn't really a
whole lot interesting on in the morning so we just wandered around the
place.  The festival site is HUGE. The program said that it takes a
good hour to walk from one end to the other and I fully believe it. We
ended up crashing out in the Pyramid arena and catching some Zs, to the
sound of the Asian Dub Foundation. I think this is the point where I
got a little (!) sunburnt -- my nose is peeling a bit. You don't tend
to think of sunscreen when you wake up and it's 11 degrees.

More of an explore came after this, then we went and checked out a bit
of Kojak in the dance tent. There wasn't really much on until at least
Feeder at about 6:00pm -- but then we had Elastica, Death in Vegas and
Fatboy Slim to top it all off. I think we actually went back to the
tent and slept some more. There may have been beer involved. Whatever.
This paragraph is in answer to the people who I can tell are thinking
that if I can remember this much detail I mustn't have had that much of
a good time. I've totally lost Saturday afternoon. There. Are you
happy? :-) Umm, I remember seeing the start of Elastica at about 7:30
though.

Death in Vegas were on the Other stage after Elastica. They were great
and a fantastic booty-shaking band, which was what I was right in the
mood for.  I ended up having a really good time for them, chatting to
more people in the crowd again. The vibe of the crowd was just so
friendly, everyone was happy and outgoing. Willy had left again so I
collected them both from the tent and we caught the last of Bentley
Rhythm Ace who were on before Fatboy.  We wanted to get there early and
avoid the disappointment of missing them like we missed the Chemical
Brothers.

After all that though, I'm sad to say Fatboy was a bit of a letdown. He
didn't play anything off You've come a Long Way, Baby (though I guess
it is an old album) and the show wasn't visually spectacular at all.
What was annoying about that was he was on against Leftfield, who I
would have liked to see also. If I'd thought there was a chance of
switching I would have, but the crowd would have been just
impenaterable.

When Norman (Norman, snicker) finished that was about it for the
official stuff, so we went and attempted to cram into the Rizla lounge
again. It was just too packed and I had started to get a little tired
(!), so I went back to the tent and stole Willy's sleeping bag again.
It was about 1 or 2:00am by this time though. Unfortunately Willy had
his wits about him when they came back around 4:00am and tipped me out
of the sleeping bag.  Bugger...

Again I awoke early(ish), relatively undamaged by the previous night's
activities.  I had wanted to go and see the standing stones I'd read
about which were somewhere on the site, so I headed off in search of
the "Green Fields".  By this time most of the fields were actually
brown, but the Greenfields were the nominal hippy hangout -- full of
teepees, organic tofu and chai teas. And poetry tents. I walked all
through all this trying not to be too obviously amused. I'm just too
carnivorous to get into that whole scene.

I did get to the standing stones eventually. They were on one of the
higher bits of ground overlooking the whole festival site. It was
breathtaking.  Absolutely huge. I think the official figures were that
they sold 100 000 tickets and another 25 000 or so snuck in. This is
the biggest load of bollocks since the last time a Pom called the
period betwen June and August "summer".  If there weren't 300 000
people there I'll be amazed. They can't admit to that of course, as
they'd never get the license due to fire restrictions.  It was
awe-inspiring to see in any case.

The stones themselves were pretty inanimate, as you'd expect. Though
one girl was trying to fix that -- she was wandering around asking
people if they had any mushrooms. There were people everywhere around
the stones, one drum circle, people into their breakfast joints, others
who were still recovering from the previous day's. Everyone was just
perfectly happy to be there. Which goes for the rest of the festival
too, for that matter.

I went back to the tent and collected Kyne and Willy and we went on a
mission to the bank so Willy could get some cash. When we finally got
there there was a two hour queue, so Willy just decided to starve. I
think that was a good call. None of us were in the mood for eating by
that stage though, as on the way to the bank we'd passed the cess pit.
All weekend there had been a procession of "shit trucks" doing the
rounds of the portaloos.  They were basically tankers with great big
huge vacuum hoses. They'd just go around and shove the hose into the
bowl of the loo, suck the crap out and move on. You'd know when you
passed one, the smell was unbearable. The cess pit was much, much
worse, as this was where the shit trucks emptied their load. Not
pretty. Even worse, there were people camped 20 meters away!  Eww...

I didn't actually find the toilets to be that bad. I think I went three
or four times over the three days, with only one refusal due to...
well, you get the idea. It's the only time I've ever been grateful for
"typical English weather", I definitely wouldn't want to be there for a
hot and humid weekend. Glasto tip 145: don't camp near any of the
hedges. By the end of the three days they turn into stinking rivers of
piss. Much more practical than queueing though :-). Oh, and do take
your own loo rolls. I got by with one, but take two just in case.

Jools Holland was up on the Pyramid stage next so we went down there to
crash out in the sun and listen. For some reason I thought he was a
dance act, but he's a honky-tonk pianist! It was absolutely great. I
was lying there half asleep tapping my toes. He got Sam Brown (yes,
"Stop") up there to sing a couple of songs too, she's still got a
really good voice.  After this the guys had to go home (both had to
work on Monday), so I saw them off and went up to chill out at the New
Bands tent for a while. The weekend was getting to me :-). I'd also run
out of money at this stage, which was a real problem as I would have
killed for a beer. I can't remember who I saw there, but it might have
been "It's Jo & Danny". Not too bad.  The reason I'd decided to stay
the extra night was Gil Scott Herron who was playing late on the Jazz
stage. The two programs conflicted on the time so next I headed over
there to check that and to catch a bit of Ronny Jordan.

On the way to the Jazz stage I fortunately got myself a bit lost and
found myself in the circus area! There was a whole tent full of people
learning how to juggle clubs :-). This was also the area of the
festival where the hard core wierdos hung out. There was one guy who
started out by turning himself, with the aid of a car stereo amplifier,
some guitar pedals and a couple of spoons into a human theramin. He
then did his "death metal jaws harp" routine. Absolute nutter. Plus the
bloke who was skipping a burning chain while riding a unicycle. There
were also the obligatory performance artists pretending to be flower
faeries or something.

I eventually made it to see some of a groovy set by Ronny Jordan and
confirmed that Gil Scott Herron was on at about 10:00, which was good
as it meant I'd get to see some of Bowie. After this was the Dandy
Warhols on the main stage who I decided were playing pretty badly (they
did both their big singles back to back near the start of the set) so I
checked out whatever was going on in the dance tent and then went and
got some food. I think I listened to a bit of Muse while eating, but I
don't remember much so I guess they didn't set my world on fire.

Man Gil Scott Herron was a cool dude. He's got to be about 60 by now.
Some of his microphone patter led me to believe he's losing it a
little, but his performance was superb. He didn't do "The revolution
will not be televised" unfortunately, but the one about the
"Military-industrial complex" was suitably left wing to impress the
audience. When he did finally go off (after a 1 hour, 4 song set :-)
the crowd wouldn't let him leave so he did an encore (another half an
hour, approximately 2 songs) and they still wouldn't go.  There was
another act to finish though, so he couldn't come back on. Off for
Bowie then!

The Pyramid arena was absolutely chockers. There were people as far as
the eye could see (it was dark, but it was still impressive when they
turned up the house lights). If it was many fewer than a hundred
thousand I'd be surprised. I've never seen as many people in one place
at once. I'm not a big Bowie fan myself, he's a little before my time.
Everyone else was singing along though and I was actually surprised how
many songs I knew (he even played "Ice Ice baby"! How's that!? ;-). He
was playing the rock superstar role perfectly (and for all it was
worth). The production was as slick as I'd ever seen  -- especially the
sound, it was the best I've heard in an outdoor venue ever. After the
inevitable encore it was all over.  Back to the tent to crash.

I was relieved on getting back to the tent to find that everything was
still there. We were pretty lucky for the whole weekend, none of us got
rolled and we had nothing stolen from our tent. The festival paper
(yes, there was one every day) reported that there had been about 600
tent-theft incidents.  The closest we came was when I came back on
Saturday afternoon to hear voices coming from *inside* our tent!

I opened it up to find two blokes in there, one smoking a cigarette.
"Right!" I thought to myself... but no, they protested, they weren't
there to rip me of, they weren't there to steal anything, they just
wanted a smoke! I could see that, and wasted no time in telling them in
very uncertain terms to f*&k off out of my tent! But no, they
protested, they'd give me 10 quid if I let them have a smoke inside. I
of course told them to bugger off, they could f%$ing smoke outside!
"Nah, it's too windy out there, look we'll give you 10 quid, it's not
smack or anything, just coke...". Eh? By the time I'd gotten rid of
them I worked out what they were on about -- they wanted to freebase
cocaine in our tent! (Oooh, I just heard Mum go green :-). If I was a
bit quicker (and they hadn't been smoking cigarettes inside) I would
have charged them 20 and let 'em go for it! Ah, the colour and life of
the festival.

I woke up fairly early the next day and started packing up the tent by
myself, after a breakfast of Pringles (I *seriously* had no money -- I
had enough for my tube ticket from Paddington back home, but that was
all!). It wasn't as difficult as I'd expected to get the spars out and
fold them up, so then I went to fold the floor up. Can you guess what I
found? That's right, one little canvas bag that went "clink" when I
picked it up. ARGH! I'd wondered what that lump in the floor was...

The trip home was much more amusing than the trip there. Bear in mind
that by this stage I had basically been wearing the same clothes for
four whole days. Oh sure, I changed my grundies a couple of times, but
so what? The poor buggers already on the train didn't know what hit
them. Even worse, the girl I sat down next to was attempting to move
house -- when we stopped at her station we had to get everybody off,
out of the aisle, in order to get her stuff off the train. I did get
some disapproving looks from an old couple on the tube too, but I just
grinned happily and dirtily back.

Eventually I did make it, scarfed down some toast and after one hundred
and sixteen hours... I had a shower :-). No matter what I'd done, who
I'd seen and where I'd been the previous weekend, getting clean and
getting to bed after four days worth of Glastonbury 2000 was the best
feeling of the lot. I only slept for sixteen hours (!).

So, there you have it. No casualties -- the clothes I took I have now
washed (including my shoes!) and they've all come up better than they
deserved.  We didn't get anything nicked from our tent. Nobody got
rolled. I've still got bugger all money, but in theory I get paid this
week. There was a bit of mud, but not too much (if there was none, we
would have missed out on the quintessential Glasto experience).

We all had a fantastic time. The "vibe" was just great. I don't think a
harsh word was exchanged between any of the three hundred thousand
people there for the whole four days. It was just like that. I know
they probably say this every year, but the festival paper was carrying
"Best Glasto ever!" headlines on Monday. A lot of people who had been
to a few were saying that it was as good as any one they'd seen, so
maybe there's something in it.  I'm just stoked that I was there.

It's been said of the Big Day Out and Homebake and the like that "You
don't go to festivals to see music, you go for the festival
atmosphere"; this alludes to the fact that a hot, sweaty outdoor stage
with 20 000 other people is not a great environment to appreciate your
favourite band. I had previously agreed with this sentiment, and now I
agree with it more, but for different reasons. The festival atmosphere
is an end in itself! The bands and the music are an essential part (and
now I think about it the sound quality for everyone was pretty damn
good, much better than most Aussie festivals I've been to) but the fact
that you're there, camping in the wet and mud, you've had no sleep,
you're suffering dodgy portaloos and pissing in the hedges just like
the hundreds of thousands of people around you creates an unbelievable
feeling of community. It's a vibe thing, man.

Phew then. That was Glasto. If you're ever in town at this time of
year, you've got to go, you will not regret it. Just don't take
anything you couldn't bear to get stolen, or at least muddy. I think
Reading is up next.  I'd love to go to T in the Park in Scotland but I
think it's next weekend.  Maybe next year. If I'm not in Berlin for the
Love Parade. I really really have to fit Ibiza in there somewhere too.
I think I did manage to pick a good year *not* to go to Rothskilde
though...

So, until the next exciting (and probably not as long winded) episode,
this'll be me signing off...

Cheers, Robert.