Glastonbury - 22nd–26th June 2022

Based on how many of you were posting stuff from the farm, I'm amazed how much better the cell service seems to be on site. I could barely check my email every morning in 2016 to make sure my flight hadn't been changed.

Watched a bunch of stuff on iPlayer by way of VPN, notably the last hour of McCartney, which was classic. About to take a look at Kendrick and more from Sunday, which wrestling with the idea of trying to make a return visit to Glastonbury next year.

this is so good

theyre beatin his ass in the QRTs

My mom and I would love to go to England for Glastonbury Festival.

If the ticket gods allow, I’m in for next year!

Over the past week or so I've written a massive Glastonbury piece but haven't posted it. I thought I'd edit it, but I won't. I thought I'd share my pictures to accompany it like pablo did, and I will, but not until later when I upload all of them. This is really fucking long and took me 3 hours at least to write. But it was worth it. Here it is:


Ok, so I guess this is going to be half a review, half advice because I feel like a lot of the Glastonbury guides I looked at had really specific advice for novice festival goers, which is not really any of us, and not a lot of good information for international travelers. So, let’s go! We have a lot to talk about so I’m going to divide it into parts. Skip the shit you don’t care about!

1. Getting there

We left early Thursday morning from the Victoria Coach Station with National Express. Honestly, the coach trip was easily one of the best organized, easiest parts about the festival, both getting there and returning. At least with National Express, they didn’t do a whole lot of checking my ticket when I got on, which made it easy to get on, they get everyone’s baggage on quick, there’s no fuss with finding seats, and everyone’s off. This is also likely due in large part to the fact it was early, but there wasn’t a party vibe at all on the bus, most people just slept on the way there. Also, the coaches have WiFi, which is nice.

The coach drop off/pick up is at Pedestrian Gate A and is right next to the international will call booth. Here’s a tip: this booth is unmarked and has no signage for some reason, so if you’re taking a coach just go to the trailers at the corner of the bus area and you’ll be right there. Don’t go through the pedestrian gates first. Ticket collection was also a breeze, they asked for my passport and got the tickets right away. They did not do address or credit card verification which I was very worried they would.

We camped in Worthy View for the weekend. I would highly recommend getting a pre-erected campsite somewhere because it saves the hassle of trying to figure out how to bring a tent and set it up if you’re arriving internationally. (Of course, you have to bring your own equipment - I rented my sleeping bag/mat from outdoorhire.co.uk, had it delivered to my hotel in London, and then returned it for pickup at the same hotel and it went very smoothly.) Worthy View was a very good campsite; they’ve got food options near the base, there’s good toilets and showers (pro tip: the showers were not open 24/7 but they quietly changed that on Saturday, just keep that in mind!), and the tents were very good (my dad and I sprang for a 4 person tent, which was the right call imo since they’re not that big.) However, here’s the one thing: the walk to Worthy View is intense. It’s not a long walk (I did it in about 4-5 minutes every time), but it is a basically vertical series of switchbacks that will leave you winded at the end of it; also, in order to get to the campsite entrance, you have to walk up past the tipi fields to the Strumerville area first, which is also a pretty steep hike. So just prepare yourself for that.

On Thursday, we opted to take the shuttle from the coach area to Worthy View. Your mileage will vary here on whether or not this is worth it: you get to sit for a little bit and they separately carry your luggage to the campsite area, BUT you will have to wait a long time for a shuttle and also you have to climb a steep hill anyway once you get to the shuttle drop off site. The walk from Pedestrian Gate A past the Other Stage/Park isn’t a steep walk at all like it appeared to be, so imo since you’re doing a steep climb either way with all your equipment it’s not worth the time lost to wait for the shuttle. My dad disagreed, saying he just didn’t want to walk any greater distance with his stuff than he had to on Thursday. So, those are your options for getting to Worthy View. With that out of the way: do NOT take the Worthy View shuttle on Monday. There were a lot of advance warnings that the waits would be very long, and because of outgoing car traffic the shuttle driving time was probably long too. On Monday, you’ll only have to climb down from Worthy View and then take a gentle walk up to the coach station. It’s not worth it to take the shuttle.

Once we arrived at Worthy View, we set up our stuff, chilled for a minute, and then went down.

2. Thursday

On the way down, we walked past the Sacred Space and through the Healing Fields. The fields were the first indication of just the scale of possibilities of what you can do here: there’s an endless array of tents with massages (many free??), reiki, bowls stuff, Buddhist prayer circles, literally a whole corner of tarot readers. Oh, also, keep in mind that there’s even more (smaller) spaces for shit like this throughout the festival. I did not participate in any of this but I did later briefly consider getting a tarot reading after I lost my phone.

My first goal on Thursday was to make it to the Eats Everything History of Rave thing. And I did get there in time…but the Park was massively overcrowded, which makes sense since it was literally the only thing of note going on then lol. | did not know this at the time, but Stonebridge Bar is in a tent that’s also fenced off so the crowd couldn’t really move around easily outside the tent. My dad tried his hardest to push close, and we got pretty far up, but all we could really hear was a lot of thumping generic electro house beats with inaudible spoken parts (??) in between songs. It was not very ravey so we left after a little bit.

We then walked around and designated some meeting points at all the main stages, which of course we later re-designated throughout the weekend as we realized where the crowding actually occurred. The map is pretty comprehensive, but in its comprehensiveness you don’t really get a sense of how to actually walk to different area. To wit, here’s a map of how to actually get between stages at Glastonbury:


Anyway, this whole process took a while but we ended up at the merch tent at the other and bought stuff. Tip: they do sell artist shirts at all the major merch tents (West Holts also has CDs. No official vinyl anywhere, but you can get it at two different shops throughout the grounds, but also why would you want to buy vinyl and leave it in your tent for a few days). We then went over to the Theatre and Circus area to head under the Big Top for a minute. We got there right as it opened; the first act was an improvisational jazz tap dance group that was technically excellent but very boring; I stepped outside to grab a drink and when I came back they were assembling a giant safety trampoline across the floor and within 10 minutes they were ready for a full Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatic performance about the history of Glastonbury. Such is Theatre and Circus: this is perhaps the single most unexpected area of the festival. There is always something mildly bonkers and unexpected going on under the Circus Big Top, there’s always a magician or some other performer outside and they’re usually always pretty good, and then beyond *that* there’s always street performers dressed in insane costumes along with various staff members doing various groups activities outside. While I was out grabbing my drink, I came back and they asked me to do a limbo while they had a game going around where they had people lie in a half-circle, rolled a giant inflatable ball over them, and as soon as the ball rolled over them they’d run to the other end of the circle. This is an area I wish I had returned to more often throughout the festival (it’s not that I didn’t! You just can’t be everywhere at the same time) and IMO probably best exemplifies the spirit of unexpected performance that is everywhere at this festival.

But I digress. Shortly afterwards, my dad and I parted. Hey, now I get to talk about actual music for a minute!

I started off at Silver Hayes with Grove, who were a really fun live drum’n’bass duo, and then caught most of Sherelle’s set. Sherelle was phenomenal, I know this isn’t really a remarkable observation but she blends old school jungle and hardcore with contemporary footwork in a way that just feels so fresh and really effectively blends the past and present (and also the transitions between those styles are not easy either!). Went over to the Truth Stage and caught Kae Tempest’s spoken word set, which was basically just them freestyling over minimal programmed beats. Pretty cool but paled a little bit to the full live set imo. Then Pigs x7 came on. They were great! Their frontman somehow managed to look convincingly menacing while wearing short shorts, which I think is no small accomplishment! The sound was very quiet at first but got turned up right when the moshing began to happen, just in time for…

3. The Incident

Most of my important stuff was in my backpack but I left my phone in my pocket just in case. Whoops! It slid out during a mosh session towards the middle of the set. I realized it pretty quickly but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do in the moment. The set ended and panic start to set in after I didn’t see it on the ground. I asked around to various people and to the security team but nobody had seen it and it hadn’t gotten shared with a security guard. I tried looking for about half an hour but nothing was happening. I felt pretty confident I lost it in the mosh but also couldn’t really rule out it getting stolen. At this point, I started to have a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle meltdown. I was nervous and upset and starting to get lost around the southeast corner, which is a pretty bad combination. My dad said he was going to turn in early so I went back up to Worthy View to let him know so that he could also maybe get my phone’s information from Verizon so that I could have an easier time getting a lost property report in. Surprise! He wasn’t there because, as I would find out later, he ran into some Scottish people who invited him to come drinking back at their campsite. I ditched my camelback in the tent and went back down.

I missed I Jordan during The Freakout (hugely disappointing!!) and decided to hang in Block 9 since A) I knew where that was and B) wanted to see Hercules & Love Affair anyway. They were quite good! I hadn’t listened to the new album but the vibe was decidedly low key, with a LOT of arpeggiating synths. They ended with a new version of “Blind” that also had a lot of arpeggiating synths and it was very pretty; I hope there’s a good video of it floating out there somewhere. I thought Pat Mahoney was playing electronic drums during this set but Wikipedia tells me it is someone named “Budgie”, so…that’s interesting. The IICON stage, it is worth noting, is fucking incredible. Because of the angle of the giant head sculpture, I thought the stage wasn’t going to be too visible, but it is and even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter; the contrast between the projections on the giant head and the giant LED screens behind the acts playing is absolutely stunning and one of those “has to be seen to be believed” things. Afterwards, I grabbed a drink from a blackout drunk bartender at the IICON bar and then decided to end the night at NYC Downlow since it was right there. Again, cannot stress enough that this place is really cool on the outside and kind of meh on the inside; however, again, I had just come from IICON so I probably should have lowered my expectations a bit. I got back to camp around 3 AM to find that my father had fortunately not been murdered.

4. Friday

We got a pretty early start on Friday since I wanted to see The Libertines. The Other stage was the most packed it got all weekend, again because it was 11:30 AM and there was nothing else going on. My dad and I got cozy in the crowd towards the back. The Libertines were quite good; it’s funny that even after all these years Pete Doherty and Carl Barat still have a very strong bromantic chemistry with one another and I never realized how often they traded lead on songs. Gary Powell is also quite a good drummer and at the end he tried to lead a Ukranian solidarity chant in Ukranian which did not appear to go successfully but was quite nice either way. We stuck around afterwards for the Kae Tempest band set; I liked this one better as Kae was dipping into more familiar songs and since Kae delivers a LOT of information in their lyrics it’s nice to be prepared going in; in addition, the Moog synths from the new album sounded a lot better live than they did on the album. “Europe Is Lost” into “Ketamine For Breakfast” was a particular highlight. I wanted to stay for the “People’s Faces” closer but my dad I and decided to leave early to try and get a good spot for Wet Leg and well….

So here’s the thing about The Park. The Park itself is a lovely area towards the back of the festival with some cool bars, some cool art, and a pretty cool stage design with political messages hung around it and Christmas lights up at night. Here are the not cool things about the Park: it sits at the bottom of a weirdly uneven hill, it doesn’t have a whole lot of speakers making the sound rough towards the back, and it is the only main stage (except for Acoustic?) that doesn’t have video screens. This was a problem because it was WILDLY packed for Wet Leg. My dad and I got there at least 15 minutes early and weaseled our way into a spot towards the right side of the stage, but we were standing at the bottom of one of the weirdly misshapen parts of the hill. The band came on and we couldn’t see anything. I didn’t like that and the huge crowd was starting to make me a bit nervous so I encouraged us to head to the back. My plan was to get to the top of the hill and then work down the left side, which is closed off by some restaurants. This plan ended up being a good idea in the end, but it was so crowded that it just kept going up and up and up the hill. We got near the top and tried working towards the left, but after a while my dad was (understandably) a bit frustrated because the view wasn’t great and we couldn’t see much anyway. He said he wanted to leave and we decided to meet later. I pushed through a bit more to the left and ended up getting a halfway decent spot, but between the lack of speakers and the people talking around me it was hard to hear. It didn’t really matter much: Wet Leg were easily my least favorite band of the weekend. Their drummer’s good and that’s about it. The two frontwomen have very minimal stage presence, which is necessary for music that has a silly streak like this (another band with a silly streak will demonstrate this perfectly in 3 sentences). I think they’ll get to be a good live band eventually, but as it is they’re not there yet. Given that the schedule came out in May and Wet Leg have been rising in popularity steadily (especially in the UK; I noticed their music was in quite a few commercials there), it was a huge mistake for The Park to schedule them so early in the day. So it was a big disappointment, but maybe my only one, you know, aside from thinking my phone had been sucked into a black hole.

But anyway, let’s talk about Confidence Man! Confidence Man was my first real highlight of the weekend. They absolutely know who they are, what their purpose is, what their limitations are, and execute the final product brilliantly. The two anonymous boys in the band are both great (and get their moments to shine during the instrumental interludes where the two leads change costumes). Janet Planet is a surprisingly adept live singer, and while Sugar Bones had a noticeably heavy backing track, he more than makes up for it with a lot of charisma, a lot of jumping, and a lot of running around on stage. Their choreography is basic, but both funny (the David Byrne oversized suit routine during opener “Toy Boy” is a highlight) and thrilling (during “Relieve the Pressure”, Sugar jumps over Janet several times). Confidence Man is a four-person party machine that goes from 0-100 in about 2 seconds, and what more could you want?

How about getting a phone back?

5. The Comeback

I had an hour to kill before TLC so I made a mission to finally locate lost property. Throughout the day, I had been getting conflicting advice from various stewards, the friendly, high-vis jacketed group that hands out festival information to the lost, the high, and the lonely. Here’s the problem: the stewards are very familiar with their patrol area and if they’re new, they don’t know much beyond that, and if they’re experienced, they feel lost too sometimes because of how much things have changed. Roughly, here’s how my attempts to locate lost property went:

1) A steward at the bottom of Pennard Hill told me there were two Lost Property areas: one near the Worthy FM sign (which I never saw even though it was pointed out to me several times??) and one in Silver Hayes. Silver Hayes is not on a hill, so obvious move is to go there first. 2) I talk to several stewards in Silver Hayes. They have a different map and say there is no lost property in Silver Hayes. A steward of 22 years says to go to the locker area nearest Shangri La and ask them since lost property gets funneled through the lockers. 3) The locker area nearest Shangri La says they do not get lost property funneled through them. 4) I decide to put on my big boy pants and go up the hill to Lost Property. It’s a hike, and for the record, to get there you walk up past the Pyramid Stage to the top of the hill and go right to pretty much the uppermost right corner of the festival. I go in and tell them I sent an email about my lost phone but wanted to check if it was recently returned. This confused them for a minute but luckily everyone in Lost Property is really nice so they asked me to fill out another form describing my phone. I also included my number. One man called my phone and 2 minutes later grabbed it out for me, which was borderline miraculous. It was quick and easy and I wish I had just sucked it up and gone there first. Oh well.

As a side note, it looks like whoever returned my phone didn’t have it for very long but managed to take quite a bit of weird angled crowd pictures at the Pigs x7 set before returning it. Enjoy a selection of these pictures below!


Anyway, back to the music!

6. Friday, Pt. 2: Jason Waterfalls

I met up with my dad at West Holts just before TLC started. I loved this. These days, Chilli is doing most of the heavy lifting for the group’s vocals and there was a probably unnecessary DJ break in the middle of the set, but there’s a lot of rap/R&B acts doing big-band maximalism and this was probably the most fun I’ve with any of them. The crowd was fucking enormous for this (and deservedly so, but the crowd reaction made it clear that TLC was nowhere near as big in the UK as it was in the US lol) and everyone on stage was having a lot of fun. The set list was all killer, no filler, with just the right deep cuts of TLC’s that I like (“Silly Hoe”, “FanMail”) and the hits hitting hard. Also, they did “Unpretty” as a light piano ballad, which serves the song way better than the clunky rock production of the original. All in all, a hugely satisfying set.

Afterwards, my dad and I went over to the Pyramid for the second half of Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. We caught the Zep songs, which we struggled to recognize since they sound a lot different (at least to my non-huge Zeppelin fan ears); this was maybe a bit more low key of a set than I’d like but it was still enjoyable. My dad and I split up again since I wanted to see Mannequin Pussy. If you’ve seen them within the past year you’ve seen them do the exact same set, but goddamn, what a set. Afterwards, we met up at the Meeting Place bar (honestly, my favorite bar at the whole festival - it was never crowded, it’s got a great central location, and the DJ’s always good!), and made the long trek up to John Peel for JAMC. I’d heard a lot about the John Peel tent being too crowded because of people camping, but that wasn’t the case at all - the tent was basically empty when we got over. The band was quite good. The set was very heavily frontloaded, at least for my tastes, and the exceedingly long soundcheck they had was worth it since there was just the right balance between noise and clarity. Phoebe Bridgers coming out for “Just Like Honey” was maybe the single most random guest of the weekend but a very cool one - the song sounds great as a male/female duet.

I headed over to Little Simz at West Holts. I think the set picked up in energy as it went along, but this one was pretty frontloaded too. I got through “101 FM” and heard what I wanted to, and having had a few ciders I decided now would be a great time to explore and to see something that I couldn’t see anywhere else. I first caught a bit of the Four Tet live set and was impressed with the #laserz but wasn’t super in the mood for a straight up house set at the time, especially since I was going to see him tomorrow anyway (oh, the privilege of being able to see multiple Four Tet sets in a weekend!) I went over to the Glade, a stage which shockingly has its own video screen (this also made me wildly mad that the Park doesn’t have one!) and watched Gong, who originated as a 70s prog rock band but now all its original members are dead and everyone currently in the band joined in the past 15 years, effectively making it the British equivalent of a jam band. That sounds like a criticism but it’s not, really - they’re definitely mystic and kooky but a lot of fun. To wit: before playing one song, singer Kavus Torabi said “okay, we were prophesied to play here, and we’ll tell you about it before the next song.” He then introduced the next song: “We were working on our new album, and I wrote this great song, and I said “Wouldn’t it be great if we got to perform this at Glastonbury?” and the next day, we got the call asking us if we wanted to perform. The name of this song is………………’My Guitar Is a Spaceship’”. That dramatic pause was not an exaggeration. The crowd lost their shit. I fucking loved it. After their set, I had a Prosecco and a lovely chat with a woman in the treehouse area above the Glade before heading to the southeast corner.

I’m going to be honest: at this point my energy was fading, but I managed to make it over to Block 9 and caught a bit of the Moxie/Peach/Shanti/Saorise set (it was…very heavy on the four on the floor beats) before heading over to The Temple in the Common. I cannot stress this enough: The Common deserves basically all of the same hype Arcadia and Block 9 gets. When I first arrived, I was worried since The Temple had a line, but there was no reason to be worried; I got in right away. As I was walking over towards the Common from Block 9, I saw pyro hovering in the air and thought “Oh, that’s weird, I wonder where that’s coming from” and as soon as I walked in figured out where: from the giant Aztec head shooting out lasers and light projections that serves as The Temple’s visual centerpiece. The Temple has a main dance floor and an elevated platform going around the back part of the stage that gives you a great vantage point for the main area. The vibe feels like the Zion party from The Matrix or like Mad Max: Fury Rave. The music was great too: Blawan/LCY played the UK hardcore style that I love; Nastia/VTSS matched the energy level but by this point I was starting to get sleepy and I was starting to lose interest in being around straight-up techno so I left.

7. Thaturday

I feel like (slash I hope like) I’m going to run through this quickly. By this point I was pretty used to the lay of the land and was on a mission to stay up as late as I could. I started off the morning trying to relax and failed miserably by getting a poster from the Glastonbury Free Press in T&C (side note: the poster was not free.) before catching Kikagaku Moyo at West Holts. I listened to a lot of them before I left and wasn’t a fan, but I left this set convinced that they’re Good, Actually. I’m always worried that bands like this will get super wanky when left to their own devices but that wasn’t the case here. I left early though because I wanted to catch all of Les Amazones d’Afrique, which was a great decision. A quick detour before we continue: Bonnaroo explicitly models its pit system after the “European system” but the pit at Glastonbury is just an open area barricaded at the back only, and only at the Pyramid and Other? There’s definitely no organized lines and no security pressure to leave between sets. Anyway: Les Amazones d’Afrique were great; live, they’re basically a pan-African girl group with a lot of emphasis on the harmonies (which were amazing). I was hoping that Angelique Kidjo was going to join them but she didn’t; oh well. I went over to the Other for Tems and rested and maybe fell asleep.

I woke up before Skunk Anansie, of course. I knew a little bit about them but first got into them when the Glasto 2020 lineup was announced; to my ears they walk the line between the most generic descriptors of “alternative rock” and “metal” but somehow make both styles sound completely unique. So I think it’s telling that live, they opened with a drum’n’bass track; I think more than anything, they see themselves as part of a lineage of Black British music of all kinds. Regardless of genre concerns: I think Skin is one of the most charismatic bandleaders I’ve seen. How can you not be immediately mesmerized by anyone wearing a plastic liberty spikes wig and a neon green suit that says “Clit Rock” on the back of it? Fashion aside, her voice is absolutely incredible and the band consistently matches her intensity. I had a bit of free time, so I scoped out how to best enter Arcadia (side note: this didn’t matter at all lol) and caught a bit of Metronomy (they’re…okay!) before heading over to the Cabaret to attempt to see Nish Kumar. To make a long story short: I didn’t get in, and if you want to see a popular comedian here, you really need to get in at least an hour early. I walked over to the Stonebridge Bar again for The 2 Bears, who were doing a b2b set with Raw Silk. Janet Planet of Confidence Man was in the audience and I am pleased to report that on an off day, she is still wearing insanely expensive clothes and doing her bow-legged dance moves. The set itself was great, definitely my favorite slower DJ set of the weekend, filled with great electro track and the occasional surprise (including some dancehall from Raw Silk) to really keep you on your toes. However, it is worth noting that this bar also smells like total shit. Just a fair warning! I caught the beginning of Squid at the Park (pretty good!) before making my way back to the Meeting Place bar to meet my dad again for HAIM.

Before HAIM performed, Greta Thunberg gave her 10-minute stump speech which had also been playing on the video monitors throughout the weekend. The reaction was what you’d expect: some drunkards saying dumb shit and a lot of applause. I’m going to make another sidebar and get on my soapbox: in general, I noticed the UK is going through a big environmentalism wave right now, which is pretty depressing since there is no similar cultural wave happening in the US! However, this tends to manifest itself in some good and some bad ways: the good, nearly every food stand had a vegan option, and there were a lot of environmental activists making themselves known throughout the festival. The bad: after the festival ended, I saw a Twitter post saying something to the effect of “Photo of Glastonbury field after Greta Thunberg’s speech is from 2015, fact checkers say” but…the litter was really atrocious. A lot of attendees will post up in one spot and just dump all their trash in one place, which is really not good, considering how clearly and effectively the litter/recycling/compost bins are marked! And that’s one thing, but what I personally found really bizarre was the the constant emphasis on the damage of climate change and the complete unwillingness to discourage driving to the festival. The coach packages are basically only a suggestion; given how effective and easy the coach system is, it would make infinitely more sense (and it would be rather easy!) to make this a bus-only festival and yet…it’s probably not going to happen! I also thought the festival’s dogged anti-nuclear power stance a…little bizarre but I’m going to let you all decide your feelings on that for yourself.

8. no body, no HAIM

Anyway, HAIM was pretty good. They mercifully did not play a lot of songs from their most recent album.

Olivia Rodrigo was really, really good. It’s kind of funny that in the “Future Festival Headliners” thread we’re still talking about indie rappers that could maybe headline with a fluke hit 10 years from now when Olivia Rodrigo is clearly one album away from headlining basically every major festival stateside. Her band is tight, even if you don’t like SOUR the set pacing is great, and by dipping her toes into the pop and rock worlds she can pull out basically any guest you could think of (and regardless of if you think it was remotely cringey, “Fuck You” with Lily Allen directed at SCOTUS was great). What was honestly weird about it was that the crowd was pretty sparse. My dad and I got up in front of the sound booth about 5 minutes before it started. HAIM had a bigger crowd, which is amazing considering I talked to several British people about HAIM before Glastonbury and nobody had any idea who they were. Anyway, this set was great.

I was heading over the in the direction of West Holts for Caribou and had some time to kill so I decided to check out the Cabaret tent again for Reginald D. Hunter. Shockingly, it was pretty empty for him, and perhaps even more shockingly, he was not that good. He told a JFK conspiracy theory joke I’d heard before and ended his set with a gay joke that was only mildly funny and probably made worse by being dressed up as bold truth telling instead of just being a goofy joke about gay sex. Speaking of things that are sort of similar to gay sex, Caribou was pretty great but as usual suffered a bit from being during the day and from having technical difficulties. The sound went out halfway through “Bowls”; to their credit, the band played as if nothing was wrong, then walked off let the stage hands fix the sound, then returned with Dan Snaith saying “I think that was the equivalent of blowing on a USB cord to make it work again” and finishing their set. Also, NOT TO BRAG OR ANYTHING but a random woman heard me singing “Can’t Do Without You” and asked me to sing it for her, which felt really nice.

So after that I saw Paul McCartney for a bit. Did you guys know that one time he played music with Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix? Cool. I then saw Jessie Ware, and god fucking damn. Before the set started, I heard someone say “This is for the girls and the gays!!!!!” really aggressively, but Jessie Ware is too good for a standard 2020 Greatest Pandemic Hits At Your Favorite Club! act; instead, she had a tightly choreographed grown and sexy cabaret act that I can’t imagine anyone else replicating in any way right now. The fan dance during “Read My Lips” felt like something straight out of a Vegas show, while the whip action during “What’s Your Pleasure?” Felt like something…straight out of a Vegas show. Okay, this was Vegas theater of the highest order, done by a woman who understands what makes house and R&B and pop music work better than…well, any of us do. As a side note: this may have been for the girls and the gays, but I cannot understate how much my dad loved this shit, too.

After this set, I went up to the Stonebridge Bar again to get a to go vodka/Red Bull (more on drinks later) and headed with my dad to Arcadia. Here’s the thing about Arcadia: it’s really good and everyone knows it’s really good. You’re not going to get close to this at all…and you probably don’t want to, either. The pyro here is intense and you have to be really far away not to feel it (you can see it from just about any vantage point at the festival). That being said, in spite of the crowds and their annoying constant talking, this place is another one of those “holy shit!” has to be seen-to be believed places. The sider prop is almost irrelevant - the laser effects, aerialists, and pyro put every other major dance stage at every other festival to shame. Four Tet was great, he played a lot of house bangers including “Looking At Your Pager” before ending with some great D&B while Calvin Harris played a lot of Calvin Harris songs, which was great for everyone in the crowd. My dad left and I went over to the Wow Stage for Avalon Emerson. The Wow Stage was nothing special (however, side note: if there’s a big crowd over at Lonely Hearts Club, go over 100 feet to the left to the regular Silver Hayes Bar. There will be no one there! They said I was the first customer they had in an hour!) but! Avalon was my single favorite DJ from the entire weekend. If this weekend proved anything, it’s that the rave revival is in full swing, but few understand how to keep a high-BPM set interesting over a long period of time (the only other one who came close was Sherelle, and even then, she might as well be in a separate universe). Avalon had a wide variety of house and techno tracks at the ready to keep things interesting, but the single best part was her transitioning “O Superman” into Crystal Castles’ “Baptism”. It’s dumb to talk about a DJ set like this…but how many people could think of doing something like that?

I was so enchanted by the possibilities of DJing as an art form that I picked up some fish and chips that were insanely good and sobered me up almost instantly, tried and failed to get into NYC Downlow (I hope those kids doing nothing in the smoking section for hours had a great time!), found a few secret areas in the Greenpeace stage, and then walked back up to Worthy View in time for a Glastonbury sunrise. Here’s an opinion: at Bonnaroo, seeing the sunrise Means Something. At Glastonbury, the sun sets at 10PM and rises well before 4 AM. You do the math.

9. ~SuNdAy~

Sunday morning, my dad and I walked to the Glastonbury sign above Crow’s Nest and took some pictures. Here’s the thing: it’s a long fucking walk to get up there! It will hurt your legs!! It’s probably worth it though. @druid said when you get there on Wednesday to walk from your campsite to the sign and not look back; she’s right, but if you’re in Worthy View it’s more worth it to walk down to the ice cream truck and get a cone ASAP. Anyway, after that we went to Glastonbury-On-Sea, another Thing Which Can Only Exist at This Festival and None Other. This place has everything: free pinball, tarot readings, people dressed as seagulls trying to steal your food, a four-piece robot band playing the shittiest music you’ve ever heard but that still manages to be compelling because where else are you going to see a robot band playing shitty music??

Meanwhile, at the Park, there was good music with the Deep Throat Choir, and later at West Holts with Emma-Jean Thackray, who played a dancier side of jazz; she’s consistently described as a bandleader, which feels misleading since she doesn’t have a whole lot of band to lead; she mostly sings and plays trumpet. And you know what? Given that her band is 75% rhythm section, it fucking slaps. After this set ended, I went to grab lunch, and, fair warning to everyone who like me, likes Indian food but is worried about shitting themselves at the wrong time at a festival: after this set, I had a chicken tikka masala wrap sprayed profusely with hot sauce and yogurt & mint sauce and it effectively was like a gyro with chicken tikka masala instead of lamb and I did not shit my brains out and it tasted quite good. There’s a lot of Indian food at this festival. Don’t be scared of it!

Me and my dad went over to the Pyramid for Herbie Hancock. I watched a lot of Herbie live videos before this set and was worried, but I agree with everyone else who has seen him in the past: Herbie is really fucking good. If you, like me, are worried about the extent to which a guy sitting behind a piano can put on an interesting show, rest assured, Herbie’s keytar has you covered!

We stuck around for Diana Ross. It started off a bit slow with an overly extended video intro and her just going through the motions for “I’m Coming Out”, a song which I imagine she still secretly hates, but after that and after she ditched her massive coat the set really picked up. There’s no dancing or anything (not that there should’ve been lol) and her voice is going a little bit but her band was great and she structures her set in a way that hits all the right beats. The Supremes section of the set was a highlight for me, as was having a weird moment of singing along to “Upside Down” with my dad. Interestingly, she chose to end with a cover of “I Will Survive”. Not sure what that was about but I’m not complaining.

Went over to the Other Stage for Kacey Musgraves. The field was completely empty and my dad and I just walked straight into the pit. This wasn’t one of the better times I’ve seen Kacey, she was late her new show suffers a bit for being in the daytime since there’s no lights but her stage banter was very funny as always and I can’t complain about getting to see her up close this tour after spending $100 to see her from the nosebleeds in January.

Lorde was great. I hadn’t followed any news from the new tour at all other than the “shushing” incidents and the subsequent dropping of “Writer in the Dark” so I had no idea what to expect. So I was very surprised to see her current stage setup as a giant brutalist circle sculpture with a staircase on the back of it that rotated around while her band did very moody and posed choreography. I also appreciated that this set was *very* Melodrama heavy. Wish she had done one or two more Pure Heroine cuts but I’ll take what I can get. Having Clairo and Arlo Parks do “Stoned at the Nail Salon” as a duet was also a nice touch. Overall, I know a lot of bigger name indie musicians are taking a cue from St. Vincent these days and doing these kind of theatrical/artsy versions of their shows, but this was one of the best variations on that I’ve seen.

Finally, Pet Shop Boys. This was a weird one. The set opened up with Neil standing in front of a screen with very minimalist video design and singing with an empty keyboard next to him for the first 7 songs. I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or what was going on. Finally, after seven songs, the screen lifted and the rest of the band was visible. There was a huge amount of dancers, the video projections got bigger with a lot of lasers, and it was visually very sumptuous. Olly Alexander was there too, which, whatever. Finally, for the encore Chris Lowe came back to that empty keyboard to do West End Girls, which was great, and they closed with Being Boring, which was a very weird choice. It was a great show once the screen lifted up and it would’ve easily been in my top 5 without the technical difficulties. Oh well.

I got some sleep in the tent that night, deciding not to try chancing staying out late night. I was really cold at this point anyway. We got a few hours of sleep and walked over to Pedestrian Gate A to take the coach back. The walk was actually really easy heading back, but the only downside was someone tried to pickpocket my dad at some point?? He didn’t tell me until later, which was good, because I very earnestly would’ve gone back and knocked that asshole down lol. Anyway, we got on the coach and everyone on immediately fell asleep.


10. MONDAY: BONUS ROUND

Because my flight had been cancelled, I booked a hotel near Heathrow. I took a train back from Victoria to Heathrow and slept for a bit. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to see Jack White or not but in the end I made a last minute decision and went to Eventim Apollo. I had to pick up my tickets from the box office since I was international and weirdly the lines were super delayed because none of the English people who had box office tickets brought ID with them (which, what?). The venue itself was nice though. It was a Yondr pouch show so I was bored for a lot of the downtime between sets. The opener Island of Love was a piss poor substitute for Chubby and the Gang and I have no idea why Jack White signed them to his label. Jack White however was great. I’m glad I saw him here, the setlist was much better than his Chicago show and he dipped into a lot of White Stripes hits as well as playing a Dead Weather song, which is always nice since the Dead Weather is easily the best Jack White solo project. Him also having a smaller band (just Daru Jones on drums and a bassist/keyboardist I didn’t recognize) allowed him to improv a little bit more (including a weird version of “I Think I Smell a Rat” on piano??) that was pretty cool. I went back to Heathrow (a final tip: if you’re staying at a hotel near Heathrow, don’t take the Heathrow Hoppa bus which is insanely expensive. Get an Oyster card and take a local bus. They run very frequently throughout the whole day).

11. Overview

Glastonbury was fucking incredible. If you value the music festival as an experience in any way, you need to go to this. The constant stimulation and amount of activities you can do there is essentially impossible to describe. Primavera and Coachella may have slightly better music curation, but you can see an endless parade of big name acts here, which is worth it in and of itself and the side stages (including Theatre & Circus, the DJ areas, and even the bars) all have their own delightful surprises. The stage production everywhere is immaculate and beautiful. The setting is amazing and has beautiful views everywhere. The people are, for the most part, nice and not overbearing. The whole experience felt like I was making a pilgrimage. I hope you all get to do it one day too. I’ll certainly be back.










SHUCK’S HOT GLASTO TIPS SUMMARIZED:
-Just get a coach ticket. It’ll make your life so much easier.
-Bring cold weather clothing. Worst comes to worse, the lockers here are free and usually not busy.
-Make sure you regularly apply sunscreen too. I didn’t get badly burned or anything, but I did get just enough to be a little uncomfortable.
-If you’ve got a little extra cash, Worthy View is worth it for the guarantee of not having a tent in a potential flood zone as well as saving you time for setting up/taking down your tent. In my opinion, it’s not worth it to take the shuttle to the campsite, but others may disagree.
-The international ticket pickup people are not super concerned about you having the right credit card. Also, the trailer for international ticket pickup is unmarked.
-If you’re going to a crowded set at the Pyramid Stage, sneak through one of the urinal troughs (marked with blue fencing around it) and stand in front of the exit.
-The Hare Krishna tent in the Healing Fields always has free food.
-The Meeting Place near William’s Green is…well, the best meeting place at the festival.
-If you’re drinking and not bringing in much booze: do not start early in the day. Wait until much later and save your cash for mixed drinks. The shots are all standardized and the bars can make a lot of different mixed drinks. Have at least one Red Bull towards 10 PM if you want to stay up late. Trust me here.
-NYC Downlow is way tamer than its reputation makes it out to be. Is it worth going into at least once? Yeah, but get in early because past a certain point they will not let new people in.
-The Temple is like a less crowded version of Arcadia. Definitely try to make it out there at least once. (And the Unfairground, too.) [But also go to Arcadia for at least 15 minutes.]
-Glastonbury On Sea, the Glastonbury sign, Strummerville, and the Glade platform have the best views of the festival.
-Last but not least, if you lose something, wait a little bit and go straight to the Lost Property tent all the way at the top of the hill and to the right behind the Pyramid Stage.
-Have fun. I cannot stress enough how unbelievable this experience. Block out at least a 3 hour period to do nothing but wander.

If you want a fancy poster from previous Glastonbury festivals, Mr. Stanley Donwood just put up a bunch of APs for sale at work-avoidance.com/index.php?route=common/home

I’m thrilled to finally grab the 2016 print. There’s also a hilarious anecdote about Radiohead at the O2 in 2012 which is worth reading.

Right?

Alanis Morissette will play at Glastonbury Festival next year.

Alanis Morissette might headline Glastonbury 2023 and she's good.

I know.

Remind me, were The Who in the middle of an “environmentally sustainable tour” and announced dates in Italy before and after Glastonbury that all but made it impossible to play the festival under the low impact standards of their tour, or was The Who example some other shit that’s not at all relevant here?

Yes, I get that it’s kinda bullshit, but there’s wasting a bunch of carbon on an efficiently routed tour, and then there’s playing a couple shows in the UK, then one in Italy, then flying back to Glastonbury, then flying back to Italy for more shows that week.

No, it’s doesn’t.